CTA: Feed Me, Springfield!

By Margaret Lyons in News on Nov 9, 2007 10:53PM

Well, it wouldn't be a real week if we didn't have a least one troubling post about the state of the CTA, so here goes: One-fourth of the buses are 16 years old, and one-fifth of the tracks are "slow-zones." And it would cost $6 billion to fix this.

Recall that the CTA budget has two sections: Capital and Operating. Most of the Doomsday talk is about operating costs, which means we've all been ignoring the major issues with capital funding. According to the Trib, "capital funding to the CTA has fallen by almost $200 million a year" for the last five years, plus public funding has increased only 4 percent over the last five years, while inflation has gone up 11.3 percent in the same time.

Shoring up, modernizing and expanding the mass transit system in the six-county Chicago metropolitan area comes with a breathtaking price tag that exceeds $10 billion during the next five years for CTA, Metra and Pace combined, according to the Regional Transportation Authority.

Ah, the cool $10 billion.

The appropriately titled "CTA Woes" by P2wy