CTA Says Less is More

By Louis in News on May 18, 2007 6:33PM

We all know how much money the CTA doesn't have, but they won't let us forget that it is about 110 million. Now Chicagoist struggled through accounting classes in college, but that seems like a lot of money. Mayor Daley and CTA president Ron Huberman are on their second trip to Springfield in search of a bailout, and they are throwing out every possible worst case scenario they could come up with.

Though Huberman has already cut 12.5 million from the CTA budget, without a little cash from the great state of Illinois, Captain Ron* is threatening service cuts and increased fares. Even though the CTA is still a bargain, fares were raised just last year by $0.25, and what exactly do service cuts entail? What do you get if you decrease service on the blue line? We hesitate to venture a guess.

We like to hate on the CTA, but they did just purchase a ton of low-emission New Flyer buses to replace aging TMC buses (we have no clue what brand is the Mercedes of Buses), and they claim to have seven more Brown Line trains running during rush hour in the Belmont/Fullerton area.

Also, we witnessed a medical emergency when a woman had a seizure on our train to Midway yesterday. Though we aren't sure why we stopped in the middle of nowhere for about 10 minutes until the conductor had checked on the passenger, but by the time we arrived at the next stop, the Fire Department was waiting on the platform.

So, c'mon Illinois, help our transit system out.

*(+2 blog points for referencing a bad Kurt Russell movie)

Image via thirdrail