"Shovel-Ready Mass Transit" in Chicago

A Chicago Transit Authority insider's analysis of the woes of mass transit:

1. The funding mechanisms for transit are perverse--IL funds its transit systems' operating budget through sales taxes and a small amount through real estate transfer taxes. The feds stopped providing operating support to transit systems in 1998. Roads are funded (again, generally speaking) w/gas tax. There have been attempts to realign this crazy situation with congestion pricing and other more equitable arrangements but nothing has come of it. And to recover federal capital dollars a state usually has to provide a state match (and sometimes a local match). IL, unable to pass a capital program since 1999, has recently forfeited much of the federal transit dollars it was to receive in the last transp. law.

4. That said, CTA currently has about $7 billion in unmet capital needs just to get our system into a "state of good repair"--i.e. our bridges safe, our rolling stock upgraded, signal systems upgraded, etc. That's not expansion, that's not "improvements"--that's just getting it into the shape it should have been in had capital support remained at appropriate levels. So the needs for us is huge. Put another way, we are $7 billion in the hole and it's growing. The real cost to the region (and taxpayers) here is much larger. Congestion, land use, job creation, mobility, air quality all suffer (and conversely improve when transit is appropriately funded). The "death spiral" awaits--given teh recovery ratio, transit systems cut back service to meet recovery ratio requirements, thus fewer riders ride, thus systems have to charge more to pay for service, thus fewer ride, until no one's left.

5. Add expansion plans, and we're talking around twice that just for CTA. We have concrete, vetted expansion plans that are "shovel ready" (at least most of them are). I'm not an expert in the permitting/federal funding process, but my understanding is that roads are much, much easier to build from a regulatory standpoint. In an interesting twist on this, most new rail expansions in metro areas w/established transit systems are being done on toll road right of ways--see O'Hare Blue Line, DC's Metro, for example. The Tollways have been so well supported that they are up and running and transit systems are begging to have access to their right of ways to expand. To me the "readiness" argument is bullshit.

8 So this is all to say that from a policy standpoint, transit loses v. roads right now. From a funding standpoint, they lose. From a political influence standpoint, they lose (some say because most manufacturers of transit rolling stock--buses and trains--are no longer in US, which shouldn't in itself be a problem). Transit is still viewed as a service for low income minority populations, and still viewed as a colossally bad investment given the high entry costs. Experience after experience,e expert after expert, has shown this to be bullshit, but roads still command the policy and political attention.