As the General Assembly continued its fall veto session, Chicago area transit officials on Wednesday braced for the grim prospect of a continuing stalemate over transit funding.
Already burned by unfulfilled promises of long-term help from Springfield, CTA President Ron Huberman refused on Wednesday to slam the door on yet another bailout but warned that delays in approving new transit funding would result in service cuts and fare hikes in January that will “scare a lot of people.”
Huberman postponed his planned release of the Chicago Transit Authority’s 2008 proposed budget until Friday at the earliest.
The CTA board, without any public discussion, went along with his strategy to wait for a signal from state lawmakers, recessing their scheduled meeting at CTA headquarters downtown after being in session about five minutes.
Meanwhile, Pace officials on Wednesday outlined their own “doomsday” scenario, stiffening up a list of suburban bus service reductions and fare hikes that will go into effect Nov. 4 and unveiling even deeper bus route cuts that would be made in January if the deadlock in Springfield is not broken.
The new cuts, which officials labeled “devastating,” will cause Pace to lose nearly 11 million riders in 2008, the agency said. The cuts and fare hikes would be required to close a $32.9 million shortfall in Pace’s $145 million 2008 budget for suburban bus budget and a $17 million shortfall in its budget for regional paratransit service.
Under the proposed 2008 budget, all service after 7 p.m. and dozens of routes would be eliminated. Higher fares for bus, paratransit and dial-a-ride customers would be imposed.
Pace passengers could see fares rising on or about Jan. 1 to $2 on all fixed route and local dial-a-ride service; all weekend service eliminated; 24 fixed routes eliminated, either entirely or on weekends; all evening service after 7 p.m. eliminated; all paratransit fees increased to $4, and taxi-access fares hiked to $6.50.
Pace Chairman Richard Kwasneski and other board members said the agency had no choice but to impose the cuts and fare increases, saying the agency was obligated to adopt a balanced budget and work with only the funds it has available. They blamed the crisis on a lack of leadership on the part of legislators and the governor.
“We’ve done what we could do over the past several years to run a tight ship and make the funding issue known to lawmakers, but to date there has been no resolution and we’re out of options,” Kwasneski said.
The proposed Pace budget next goes to a series of 13 public hearings prior to approval by the board of directors in November.
At the CTA board meeting, Huberman warned there would be a “wholesale closing” of bus garages and bus terminals and possibly “certain rail lines” starting in January if no new state funding has been approved.
“It’s going to scare a lot of people. It’s going to make our riders nervous. It’s going to make our employees nervous,” Huberman said.
Also in the works are big fare increases and employee layoffs well in excess of the more than 600 pink slips already sent to CTA workers in preparation for the agency’s Nov. 4 “doomsday” scenario, Huberman said.
New CTA cards posted on buses and trains to inform the public about the transit funding crisis contain an image of a bandage encircled in red with a line going through it — a reference to the CTA’s opposition to any quick fixes.
But Huberman, who last month pushed the CTA board to accept an offer from Gov. Rod Blagojevich to advance the CTA $24 million in 2008 state subsidies, declined Wednesday to rule out another Band-Aid, although he said a permanent solution to structural funding deficiencies is the goal.
“Whether we would accept a short-term bailout, we would have to take a look at what that looks like,” Huberman said after the abbreviated CTA board meeting.
“But certainly we are not in a position to accept any more loans or put the authority in more of a financial deficit,” he said. “Any new dollars that we would accept under any circumstance would have to A, come with reform; and B, come with new dollars as opposed to simply mortgaging against our future.”
He said the CTA will enter 2008 with almost $40 million less than it planned to have for operations. The shortfall includes Blagojevich’s $24 million advance of 2008 reduced-fare state subsidies to help close the CTA’s $110 million 2007 deficit, and $14 million less from the Regional Transportation Authority in public subsidies for next year.
Without providing a preview, Huberman said the agency’s 2008 budget will be “significantly more challenging for our riders and for the CTA than those cuts we will be forced to do on Nov. 4.”
The CTA plans to eliminate 39 bus routes, raise fares to as high as $3 per ride and lay off about 620 employees on Nov. 4 if the transit funding stalemate continues in the legislature.
That plan is a scaled-back version of cuts the CTA unveiled last spring. They would have included scrapping 63 bus routes and the Purple Line/Evanston Express and Yellow Line rail routes and raising fares to as high as $3.25 per ride.
Doomsday No. 1, originally set for Sept. 16, was called off when the governor offered to advance the $24 million the CTA is already counting on for next year, a move critics compared to a payday loan.
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