If your panties were in a bunch about your Chicago card expiring, you may now partially un-bunch them. Your card will still expire, but you'll no longer lose your balance.

Customers voiced their complaints about having to renew their own cards, and CTA officials heard them. They are now offering a new option for riders whose cards are set to expire — sit around and wait until a new card comes to you! Well, if your card is registered. If it's not, you'll still have to go to CTA HQ or call them.

If you are one of the cardholders whose card is hitting the 4-year expiration date, the agency will be sending you a new one, good for another 4 years, before the old one kicks it on October 17. “Chicago Card doomsday” averted.

We know you may be CTA-ed out, but we wanted to remind you about the expiration dates on Chicago cards so you aren't caught with your pants down. Why? Because the Summer of No Pants is over!

Nearly 10,000 cards that some of you have held in your hot little hands for four years are set to expire October 17. The upside is that existing balances can be transferred to new cards, issued free of charge. The downside is that you will lose your balance if you procrastinate, which we are often wont to do.

So if you've had your card for a while, check the dates online or in person. Contact the CTA by phone or in person, and let them know your old card is old hat, and request a balance transfer if you don't want to lose any more money to the agency. Unless you do. In which case, disregard.

Image via bettertransit.com.

Wednesday, some of you were upset at the thought of a short-term solution to the CTA's ongoing budget crisis. We were upset at the thought of bus lines being cut, fares being raised and people losing their jobs just because the legislature couldn't give the transit budget deficit one more serious consideration. We said we think it would be a good idea for the CTA to take the $24 million dollars that the governor offered up as a temporary stop-gap. We do think it's very strange that the CTA is being temporarily bailed out by Governor Blagoevich, the same man who slashed and burned the budget, leaving out the CTA. However, while we'd like to see fares and service remain the same, we now are thinking a little better of this money.

Yesterday, CTA's top officials took a $24 million funding advance to help the situation ... sort of. It will only avert the "doomsday scenario" until November. Clearly, something more substantial needs to be done. The RTA also needs to approve the measure today. CTA Board President Carole Brown said the plan will "give the legislature more time to craft a long-term funding solution for the region." The question remains to see if they will. Even if approval goes through, Nov. 4 becomes the new doomsday. Worse yet, this money isn't money Blagojevich found somewhere in the budget. It's only a loan of sorts of the state's contribution to the CTA in 2008. Oh. That's no good.

CTA President Ron Huberman is sticking to his guns and saying that unless the legislature comes up with the original $110 million, the contigency plan (which is the raise fares, cut service plan) will still happen, lest the CTA not meet its December payroll, which would "force a systemwide shutdown." Despite Huberman's resistance to taking the money, he said in a CBS2 story that “I was on the bus the other day and I was talking to a high school student…” Huberman said. “He now has to walk through a gang territory to get to his bus once these cuts are implemented.” So, hopefully he understands the gravity of what we're talking about here. PACE paratransit won't be included in the $24 million and so will definitely get fares raised.

Upon hearing this news, we are concerned yet again. According to the Tribune, Illinois hasn't had a capital-improvement program in four years. However, despite the lack of funds, the CTA has approved a $91.2 million contract to finish the work to reduce slow zones on the Blue Line. In order to get the money, the CTA will do "short-term bonding, borrowing against future federal capital funding that the agency anticipates receiving from Washington." Man. We are in some trouble.

"Untitled" by Scott M.

Good news. NBC5 reports that with four days left to the forewarned service cuts and fare hikes on the CTA, Governor Blagoevich has stepped up with some help. He now says that he will try and find some money in "state coffers," and offered up a figure of $20 million. We realize that what he's offering is just a quick fix, but sometimes you put a butterfly bandage on a wound until you can get to the ER for stitches.

Ron Huberman says that the CTA needs a structural fix rather than a short-term one, and we heartily agree. But we have to say it isn't nice to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when this proposed money saves riders from service cuts and raises to the fare system (not to mention employees' jobs) . The NBC5 article reiterates that "The Legislature is expected to meet next week to address the CTA crisis, but without a longterm solution, the CTA is looking at about 700 job cuts, 39 route cuts and fare hikes up to $1 for a single ride." Huberman said that a check for $20 million by Friday would, in fact, provide a temporary reprieve for Chicago-area commuters. We can't see the harm in taking Rod up on the offer.

"The Chicago Transit Authority. I hate you." by TheeErin

We've all been talking about the CTA, their budget crisis, and what exactly will (or will not) happen if they CTA doesn't get some help from their governmental parents in the Illinois legislature. While the CTA isn't ruled by the IL government, we think this is a little like the college kid who keeps drinking hard, wasting her money, and wondering why she keeps getting into situations that don't have great consequences — thereby necessitating a few calls home for extra cash. And the CTA often acts as the parent to all its customers, having family meetings to let us all know what's going on, but just pretending to let us have a say. Seemingly, when all is said and done, all the decisions have already been made.

Maybe we'll get a little extra transportation help if Daley's Paris-inspired bike program goes through. Let's face it, though: Riding a bike in drifts of snow just isn't feasible for a lot of riders for various reasons. The governor, mayor and the Illinois legislature didn't manage to pass a bill that would have helped fund the CTA and avoid service cuts and fare hikes.

The CTA has put September 16 out as the date when said hikes and cuts would occur and have started putting posters around train stations and buses showing the proposed cuts and the money needed to help rescue the system. Down in Springfield, there are plenty of people still trying to fight to keep us at the status quo (for whatever that's worth), discussing the transit funding on Monday, Sept. 17, and encouraging the CTA to hold off a bit. However, the CTA is planning on fixing the machines to charge higher fares and apparently have their 630 layoffs all set to go.

Just as a cloud of gloom began to set in over the carless masses of Chicago, a ray of hope came as the State Senate has been called into session on Monday. While a spokesman for Senate President Emil Jones would only say that the session would include discussion of the "transit issue," Sen. John Cullerton, (D-Chicago) told Crain's that he thinks they are going to take up the same bill that Julie Hamos was forced to table earlier this week. “It puts pressure on the House to do something. We can’t just sit around and do nothing,” he said. Neither house was scheduled to meet prior to Monday's session.

It's not all sunshine and lollipops for Chicago commuters, however, as the Monday session is expected to include discussion of a capital funding plan for construction projects around the state, which House Republican leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego) has indicated is the only way that his group will support funding mass transit in the region. That discussion is expected to include a gambling expansion in the state — something that has been contentious and undoable thus far — which would put a mega-casino in Chicago and allow two more in the state. Daley has been interested in a Chicago casino for years now, but House Speaker Mike Madigan says that there isn't support for it in the House.

So here we are, ten days to the collapse of the CTA, and the General Assembly is still playing games with who can be the baddest bad-ass. Madigan is trying to wrestle Julie Hamos' bill through the House, and Tom Cross wants more money for roads, saying suburban commuters are "sick and tired of sitting in traffic." Rod Blagojevich is opposing the tax increase, calling it a backdoor fare hike and a "tax on working families for transportation." None of which will much matter on September 17, when hundreds of thousands of Tom Cross' suburbanite constituents that come into Chicago everyday to work for a living have to slog through the commuter disaster that is about to befall all of us. And if Blagojevich thinks that working families will be rejoicing over their sales tax savings when they can't even get around their own city, well, we have to wonder what he's been smoking.

We've about had it with all of this nonsense. We have to wonder how elected officials in Chicago didn't know that this was coming years ago — certainly dire situations like this one don't emerge out of the blue. If we have to live in a one-party state, the least the leaders can do is make sure that it works for the rest of us.

Image via TheeErin.

Bad news hit the Chicagoist offices late yesterday afternoon as word came through that SB572 — the bill that would have raised sales taxes in Cook County and the five surrounding "collar" counties, as well as the real estate tax in Chicago, to help fund regional transit — failed to reach a "supermajority" of 71 votes in the Illinois House. Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), sponsor of the bill, halted voting and placed it on the Order of Postponed Consideration, in hopes of rounding up the needed votes.

House Democrats provided the majority of the 61-48 vote, with a handful of Chicago-area Republicans joining in. House Minority Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego) said that he opposes the bill, preferring to pass a massive capital bill to support construction projects around the state. Mass transit should be part of that spending plan, he said. Besides Cross, Blagojevich opposes the tax increase as well, saying:

I believe a tax on working families for transportation is a backdoor fare hike, and I believe the legislature was correct in rejecting that approach. For months I have urged the leadership in the House to consider alternatives, but unfortunately no progress has been made. Now, after the legislature’s rejection of Speaker Madigan’s tax increase, we are in early September without a resolution and the clock still ticking. This has never been a question of whether we should fund mass transit — that is essential. It is a question of how. I will continue to push to close corporate loopholes and to find other sources of revenue to help fund the CTA and RTA without raising taxes on people.

Hamos implored legislators to support the transit bill, saying "rarely is a vote so important," while suggesting that the international decision to let Chicago host the 2016 Olympics would be influenced by Illinois' vote on this bill. House Speaker Mike Madigan has vowed to go back and try and get enough votes to pass this bill, saying:

We’ll talk to all interested parties on the issue. We’ll talk to Rep. Cross … to find converts for this bill…. There were certain Downstate Democrats who in my judgment were voting no because the governor’s office was telling them to vote no. If you’re looking for areas to find additional votes, I would suggest you look at the House Republicans and those who are interested in working with the office of Gov. Blagojevich.... This is a good, solid bill. This is a bill that ought to have the support of a governor of Illinois who lives in the City of Chicago and within blocks of the most popular rapid transit lines in the city, that being the Brown Line. This should have the support of the [House Republicans] because there is capital in the bill.... There ought to be enthusiastic support for this bill.

The legislation is expected to come back up for a vote as soon as Madigan thinks he has the votes to pass it. That won't happen this week, and it might not happen next week, either. As we headed home from work last night, sweaty and packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the L, we wondered how much worse it could get. We may be forced to find out. As the General Assembly quibbles and quarrels over this bill, it's sure to be a tense few weeks here in the City by the Lake.

Thanks to Rich Miller for the extended quotes!

Image via TheeErin.