CTA Cuts On Hold?

By Sam Bakken in News on Dec 15, 2004 11:02PM

An article in the Sun-Times today reported that CTA President Frank Kruesi and Senate President Emil Jones have reached an agreement to delay major cuts in CTA service. The CTA has its "doomsday" meeting tomorrow and is set to vote on the cuts. If the cuts pass, CTA would eliminate 30 bus routes, lay off 1,250 workers and stop overnight L service.

Kruesi and CTA board president Carole Brown have said they would delay the cuts if they had a "strong commitment" from Springfield to help with funding. The Sun-Times is saying that's what they got from Senator Jones.

"I've advised the CTA to hold off until such a time we can come to a solution to the problem," [Jones] said. "That's as strong as a commitment I can make . . . without a machine to print more money. We don't have that, but we will work until the end to do something."

You don't have a money-making machine Mr. Jones? Thanks for telling us. Boy would WE have been red-in-the-face had we asked you to shake yours.

Kruesi ain't sayin' shit. So we'll just have to wait until tomorrow.

The possible delay may also affect the fare strike that started today. By the by, Midwest Unrest denies any involvement with yesterday's bogus press release. But the turnstile-jumping logo used by both the press release's creators and Midwest Unrest, along with the abundance of spelling errors on the press release and the few on Midwest Unrest's fare strike site, suggests otherwise. Hey Midwest Unrest! Do you need a copy editor? Chicagoist is totally available! Call us!

Anyway, we didn't notice anyone jumping turnstiles and we called the Chicago Police Department's media desk and they hadn't heard of any increase in theft-of-service. However, Officer Carlos Herrera told us that turnstile-jumping occurs everyday and they wouldn't know for a couple of days whether there was any increase. We also called the CTA, but they haven't gotten back to us yet. We called Midwest Unrest and another individual involved in organizing the fare strike and nobody answered. We wanted to know if since the cuts are on hold, the strike is on hold as well. Maybe someone will let us know in the comments.