With its budget deficit growing, the CTA moved Friday to eliminate more than half of its bus routes by early January, threatening to strand tens of thousands of daily commuters and worsen gridlock across the Chicago area.
The new plan, while living up to its label as a “doomsday” budget, would also sharply boost fares and employee layoffs beyond those already set to take effect next month — if the legislature does not approve new funding soon to fill a projected $158 million deficit for 2008.
But transit supporters said the severity of the cuts may finally be the impetus for the state’s legislative leaders and governor to end months of bickering over the transit crisis.
The stakes have been raised simply too high for an area already suffering terribly from traffic gridlock to allow the dismantling of the CTA, the transit backers argue.
“This will help focus attention on how bad things are,” said state Sen. John Cullerton (D-Chicago), the Senate sponsor of legislation to increase the sales tax earmarked for Chicago-area mass transit. “My prediction is that we are going to come back very close to the first doomsday deadline in November when there won’t be a lot of time to negotiate and pass a transit bill.”
The new round of CTA cuts, coming at the same time that the suburban bus agency Pace is scaling back to erase its own deficit, shrinks the number of locations in Chicago or the suburbs where commuters would still have access to public transportation.
The CTA’s service cuts, fare hikes and layoffs totaling 2,436 employees would likely hasten the breakdown of its already crumbling system, if the stalemate in the General Assembly continues over increasing operating subsidies to the CTA, Pace and Metra.
‘Can’t get to work’
“The whole [transit] grid falls apart,” CTA President Ron Huberman warned as he announced the elimination of 43 bus routes starting Jan. 6, on top of the 39 bus routes that would be slashed Nov. 4. That represents more than half of the current 154 bus routes.
The CTA expects to lose about 250,000 rides a day from the impact of the service cuts and fare hikes. Its bus service accounts for two-thirds of the 1.6 million rides that the transit agency provides each weekday.
“There will be people who simply can’t get to work through transit,” said Huberman, calling on lawmakers to find a remedy immediately.
The CTA’s eight rail lines were spared the January cuts. But the Purple Line/Evanston Express may be suspended on some days — operating instead as all-stop Red Line trains — under the contingency plan taking effect in November, officials said.
CTA fares would be raised to as high as $3.25 per ride in January for riders paying with cash under the proposed budget.
Users of the electronic Chicago Cards and Chicago Card Plus fare cards would also pay more to ride, although students and senior citizens using reduced-fare passes would see no fare hikes.
Thirty-day passes, now $75, would increase to $84 in November and $94 in January, likely resulting in massive transit ridership losses and more traffic jamming expressways, major streets and parking garages.
Springfield may be ready to act
Amid the increasingly dire warnings from CTA headquarters, the growing sentiment in Springfield appears to be that almost a year of inaction on the transit emergency is nearing an end, according to Democrats and Republicans interviewed Friday.
“We feel we are inching forward to get a full transportation bill passed that will increase funding for the CTA and mass transit and provide more money for roads,” said David Dring, spokesman for House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego. “We could get it done in a few hours if all four legislative leaders and the governor went into a meeting with an open mind.”
Gov. Rod Blagojevich opposes a proposed sales tax hike in northeastern Illinois to aid CTA, Metra and Pace. That legislation failed to pass in the House but is still considered alive.
The House bill, considered by many experts as the long-term solution to avoid annual transit funding crises, would increase the sales tax imposed by the Regional Transportation Authority in the six-county area by 0.25 percent in Cook County and 0.50 percent in the collar counties. The five collar counties would have the authority to use half of the sales tax increase for much-needed road improvements.
Senate Republicans, with the support of Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), favor passing a state capital bill to address infrastructure needs for roads, mass transit and schools, then come back to possibly boost transit operating subsidies.
The CTA, Pace and Metra face a combined $226 million operating shortfall in 2007. The CTA’s deficit, already $110 million this year, is projected to grow to $158 million in 2008 unless new funding is provided.
‘CTA blackmailing riders?’
If a compromise is not reached soon, Blagojevich and the legislative leaders “will have underestimated the fury that will come down upon them,” Cullerton said. “The public gets it, and they are angry.”
In addition to time running short for riders, CTA unions wouldn’t have to honor pension and health-care concessions made by its members and retirees if the pending House legislation does not become law by Jan. 1.
The CTA’s budget deficit for next year includes $44 million in employee pension and retiree health care costs that the agency hopes to reduce.
CTA officials called their $1.03 billion operating budget for 2008 — $45 million lower than this year’s budget — “Back to Basics.”
But many CTA customers said the latest “doomsday” budget would seem more like Armageddon, and they aren’t buying the CTA’s argument that the cash-strapped agency’s woes are all Springfield’s fault.
“Why is the CTA blackmailing its riders once again?” said Barb Shafer, an executive assistant at a Loop investment firm who uses CTA buses and the Orange Line to get to work. “It’s obvious to everybody who uses the CTA that this organization is completely mismanaged.”
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jhilkevitch@tribune.com
