Doomsday Averted

[jajuan]

The transit bill passed in the House 61-47. The Senate is debating now and about to vote shortly. That is if that windbag Hendon stops talking long enough.

[jajuan]

The bill has passed in the Senate. So it looks now as if doomsday is finally over.

[Busjack]

Yep, just got the Tribune e-mail alert, with the link. One of our posters wins, and the kvetching, including in the media can stop. Now we can get our articulated hybrids, more Pace midbuses, and the South Cook Restructuring.

But wait maybe 4 or 5 years....

As I mentioned, it looks like I saved $1.87 on my TV.

[Guest bohica]

This should have been passed along time ago. CTA has spent millions posting signs about the dooms day cuts and then taking them down. The company has wasted money on 24,000 signs and all the over time used to do this. Now these signs have to be taken down again. They were put up three times and be taken down for the third time. It is ashame to see the money wasted. We got the funding and new contract. Raises for the next two years go straight into pension. No raise will actually get in employee's hands until the third year of the 5 year contract. Person who made up this contract must be a close personal friend of Blago. CTA should have still raised the fares. CTA is thier own worst enemy. Company will be in same postion again if they don't raise fares.

[jajuan]

This should have been passed along time ago. CTA has spent millions posting signs about the dooms day cuts and then taking them down. The company has wasted money on 24,000 signs and all the over time used to do this. Now these signs have to be taken down again. They were put up three times and be taken down for the third time. It is ashame to see the money wasted. We got the funding and new contract. Raises for the next two years go straight into pension. No raise will actually get in employee's hands until the third year of the 5 year contract. Person who made up this contract must be a close personal friend of Blago. CTA should have still raised the fares. CTA is thier own worst enemy. Company will be in same postion again if they don't raise fares.

Hmmm. Maybe, but there's only so many times riders would tolerate another fare increase. There were plenty of people I knew of who went and bought cars in droves during the late 80s and early 90s with the fare increases that were happening back to back in their view. If the CTA were to still raise fares again they should bring back transfers for cash fares, or make sure that the adequate fare media will be available to purchase. There are people in my neighborhood who throw away money paying $2 per ride because the stores and currency exchanges in the area keep running out too often for their tastes. They're not convinced these places are reliable enough to keep going back trying to find passes and transit cards.

[trainman8119]

This should have been passed along time ago. CTA has spent millions posting signs about the dooms day cuts and then taking them down. The company has wasted money on 24,000 signs and all the over time used to do this. Now these signs have to be taken down again. They were put up three times and be taken down for the third time. It is ashame to see the money wasted.

As I have said all along, this demonstrates the poor management and terrible fiscal responsibility shown by the CTA. The short term bailouts were used for nothing but political nonsense. I really wished that some of the congressmen would have woke up and seen that and refused the money, at least short term and forced the meltdown. I think all in all it would have been a better outcome. I was all ready to put my claim in that it would take about 6-7 months for CTA to be crying poverty again, but unfortunately the blowhards at Metra took away my fun by already implementing a fare increase. Don't let the riff raff fool ya, it is not about rebuilding the capital fund. Pagano is already whining about letting seniors ride free. You watch the news, within 3 months it will be reported that the short changed agency will be giving their top execs 3-4 % increases. For what, 6 months of bellyaching?

I am so done with all of this garbage....and now, in the long run, nothing, but nothing will have changed, yet we all pay the price, in some cases twice. Thank you to all of the pols who think they are doing me a favor...hogwash. Don't even think of asking for my support on anything, especially your reelection vote !!!!

[jajuan]

As I have said all along, this demonstrates the poor management and terrible fiscal responsibility shown by the CTA. The short term bailouts were used for nothing but political nonsense. I really wished that some of the congressmen would have woke up and seen that and refused the money, at least short term and forced the meltdown. I think all in all it would have been a better outcome. I was all ready to put my claim in that it would take about 6-7 months for CTA to be crying poverty again, but unfortunately the blowhards at Metra took away my fun by already implementing a fare increase. Don't let the riff raff fool ya, it is not about rebuilding the capital fund. Pagano is already whining about letting seniors ride free. You watch the news, within 3 months it will be reported that the short changed agency will be giving their top execs 3-4 % increases. For what, 6 months of bellyaching?

I am so done with all of this garbage....and now, in the long run, nothing, but nothing will have changed, yet we all pay the price, in some cases twice. Thank you to all of the pols who think they are doing me a favor...hogwash. Don't even think of asking for my support on anything, especially your reelection vote !!!!

While I will agree with you that alot of those in Springfield don't deserve to be reelected (i.e. Blagojevich, Hendon, and some others who'll make the list too long), I can't agree with you about the money going towards informing the public would happen in a possible doomsday being a waste on the CTA's part. Yes the money could have gone toward other operational costs but it was Springfield at fault in part for forcing their hand and backing them in that corner in the first place. What would have been worse, losing millions of more dollars from riders fleeing mass transit after a meltdown or spending part of it to keep riders informed that the job wasn't finished and keep them informed of what was at stake if nothing longterm was accomplished? One of the biggest complaints about the CTA has been it doesn't inform its riders about valuable info in a timely manner, and I think the public needed to know what buses they could have lost if everyone didn't sit down together and come up with some compromise that works. Is it a perfect plan? No, but it's better than losing more than half the current bus service in the city alone. Plus it got people jolted into making Springfield at least give the appearance of taking the issue seriously after all this time. They were more concerned about saving their butts come Feb. 5th but why look that gifthorse in the mouth if doomsday has been averted? What could else could they do? They were all still in a Catch 22 with all these stopgap measures when the problem could have been solved at this time last year instead of dragging out for so long with the political shenanigans in Springfield. Why risk even more ire from riders for not informing us of what we possibly could have lost had doomsday still happened?

[Busjack]

Although I said "It's over...it's over" (and certainly won't mess with Ask Carole anymore), a few quick points:

• Part of the problem was that RTA didn't even propose a tax plan until the last week in May, assuring that it couldn't pass in the regular session with a majority vote. It took getting into this year's regular session to get it passed.
  
• While CTA is under a duty to inform the riders if in fact it appeared that it would be necessary to implement the plan, I had criticized the August RTA commercials about the impending September Doomsday, as not being informative, but as asking for you to write your legislators.
  

Thus, if I were doing something with the Governor's haufen mist, I would hurl it at the RTA, which instead of being cleaned up, was given more illusory powers. (The reference is to the German song Schnitzelbank and the Governor's comment about looking for a pony.) Schlichtman was complaining that he didn't have the time to run a transit system, but he never did that, anyway.

The one good thing from all of this is that Kruesi was moved aside (but still protected by the Mayor) and since Carole Brown has fulfilled her function (crusading for funding and lending some expertise to the pension issue) and will be getting a $25,000 pay cut by being removed from the RTA Board, maybe her time is limited, too.

[Guest]

While it was good news yesterday that the transit bill passed and that the transit crisis is over, for now! Im still upset over how this was all handled. The politicians involved who couldnt find a common ground on this starting with Blago should not be reelected. I hope this will hurt his chances in the next election. He surely demonstrated his incompetence in all this trying to save face for his 360 on tax increases by offering seniors free public transportation after failing to get his ideas off the ground.

[jajuan]

While it was good news yesterday that the transit bill passed and that the transit crisis is over, for now! Im still upset over how this was all handled. The politicians involved who couldnt find a common ground on this starting with Blago should not be reelected. I hope this will hurt his chances in the next election. He surely demonstrated his incompetence in all this trying to save face for his 360 on tax increases by offering seniors free public transportation after failing to get his ideas off the ground.

Part of what Busjack was saying in his last post brings up why I've been questioning the need to have the RTA and the three service boards instead of just one agency with one board that has equal say between the suburbs and the city without the back and forward arguing about which side is getting more than the other. I know that's wishful thinking with some of the current political dynamic between the city and suburbs, but I just think the current system as it's structured now only encourages this game of the city saying the suburbs are trying to takeover and the suburbs saying that the city wants to run everything. There's already some partial cooperation between the bus services with Pace accepting CTA passes and transit cards and the mostly unified route numbering system with CTA using 1-206 and the suburban service using all those above.

And I do agree CTA5750 about the governor standing in the way of moving on the best compromise that the Legislature could come up with given the ideas that were on the table without offering any real ideas of his own. He kept hiding behind the line that only they could come up with legislation and he couldn't sign thin air. That's a cop out because he can still make proposals that can be debated and added or deleted from a final compromise draft of legislation sent to his desk.

[trainman8119]

The most hilarious thing about all of this is the legislatures whining on how the gov did his thing, and they are not happy, yada yada yada. All they had to do was say no. They didn't have the guts to stand up, unite and say no gov...it's our way or the highway. Their giving in was a pretty irresponsible act. I know there are those who will say that passing the bill was the responsible act, however fares will go up (some already have), service will (eventually) be cut and through it all, you watch, the CTA, Metra and Pace boards will vote themselves nice raises or bonuses because of the fine job they did. IMO, I think doomsday was not averted, but in fact has just begun.

[busfan4022]

So do the seniors get to ride free or not? O_O

[jajuan]

So do the seniors get to ride free or not? O_O

In about two months. In the transit bill, the legislature and governor gives CTA, Metra and Pace that long to work out how to implement the new program.