Reports Differ Slightly On Topic Of Bias In CTA Cuts
By Lindsey Miller in News on Mar 2, 2010 10:20PM
Union leaders and the Rev. Jesse Jackson claimed last week that the CTA cuts impact poor and minority communities on the South Side more harshly than communities on the North Side. The CTA, of course, responded that bus and rail lines travel through many different neighborhoods on their routes. Also, officials said they made decisions about the service cuts in accordance with federal anti-discrimination guidelines. These specifically make sure public transit serves poor and minority communities equally, at the risk of losing federal funding.
The Chicago Reporter, which focuses on race and poverty, investigated and found that cuts seem to be "distributed evenly throughout Chicago ... in isolation." However, the fact that there were more cuts to buses than trains (an 18 percent service cut versus 9 percent) affect poor and minority riders disproportionately because these riders ride the bus to get to work more frequently.
Most recently, the Chicago News Cooperative, which reports for the Chicago edition of The New York Times, found that there was no bias in the cuts. They measured wait times and reductions in service during rush hour and late at night and found that the sections of the city that have an over 50 percent African American population didn't have more cuts and didn't have to wait longer than any other area of the city. They also found that the cuts weren't as bad as the CTA originally said: on average, wait times increased 90 seconds during rush hour and three minutes on off-times.