A Sign Of The Times ???

[trainman8119]

The way I see it, the article really shows the mismanagement of the CTA. I mean, if ridership is that good, where does the money go that that ridership generates...was the fare hike to the extreme it was done really necessary. And service is still nowhere to the level it once was.

[Busjack]

I think there are several ways of looking at it. As far back as I remember, bus companies (not just the CTA) have said that they lose 50% per customer, to which one response might be that if you lose your customers (as CTA tried to do with the doomsday scenario), the losses go down (seems not to have worked for Ford and GM, however). On the other hand, the comments that 2005 ridership numbers look so good don't take into accout what I mentioned in Post 26; the enormous drop from 1992 to 1997, and the recession of 2002. The ridership numbers are now just getting to the 2002 level, but there was no growth over those three years. Similarly, if sales tax receipts had gone up the past 3 years at a steady pace, the three service boards wouldn't have been fighting over the stagnant or slowly shrinking pie. One also must consider such things as the cost of a bus has gone up from about $240K to $330k in the past 13 years, fuel from 80 cents to $1.75 a gallon in the past year (estimates, but probably good ones; the diesel fuel is presumably free of state taxes).