We want the whole world to see in 2016 that we are a world-class city, an Olympic host city. To prove this, however, we need a world-class transit system. To build such a system, our rail and bus transit agencies are demanding new Chicago and suburban taxes. The biggest demand comes from the CTA.
It’s time we compare ourselves with London, the 2012 Olympic host city. How does Chicago transit compare with London transit? Chicago’s transit covers 3 million residents and London’s transit covers 7 million. The CTA has 2,000 buses and London has 8,000. The CTA has 1,200 train cars and London has 4,000. Chicago wants world-class Chicago Transit Authority ; London has world-class mass Transport for London.
The CTA is a 43-year-old monopoly. It maintains the kind of ingrown Old-Boy management and rigid unionized workforce that have driven GM, Ford and Chrysler to the brink of bankruptcy. Its trains today are just like the ones it had 43 years ago. The CTA is afraid to preserve endangered bus routes by switching from expensive big buses to cheaper small buses. It allows its buses to bunch up on the streets, and it has no simple email list with a forecast of schedule changes or station closures.
The CTA’s costs are twice as high its revenues. Wages and overtime costs alone are 60 percent higher than its revenues. Its retirees enjoy complimentary medical care forever. Its 10,000 employees have 17 labor unions, and any one of the 17 unions can hold CTA hostage with a strike threat. It cannot convince its employees to regularly come to work on time. No wonder CTA’s trademark slogan is “doomsday.”
Once upon a time, London’s transit was in similarly bad shape. Londoners fixed it, however. London now has 23 years of experience in regulating 20 private bus companies. London hires community activists to electronically record bus arrivals and publishes results on the Internet. London’s private transit operators are paid for ridership and on-time performance.
London’s subway trains recently increased capacity by 50 percent, thanks to incentives for the three private operators to grow subway customer base. London has 70 years of experience with double-deck buses that double customer base, and its transit system won 7 awards last year for efficiency and service. London’s transit is also 80 percent towards breaking even.
CTA managers compared their system to an old $130,000 car. For years, they insisted on subsidizing transit with somebody else’s tax money. Now, the CTA wants to subsidize its managers and 17 unions by taxing everyone in Chicago and the suburbs.
Ingrown managers and 17 unions do not deserve our sales tax dollars. If CTA wants us to pay for world-class public transit, then it needs to run a world-class organization.
If London can do it, so can Chicago.
Read More of Efficient Public Transportation: If London can do it, why not Chicago? off-site...Randall Sherman says:
Actually, the CTA is a 60-year-old monopoly. The legislation estblishing the agency was enacted shortly after the end of World War II.
Michael Livshutz says:
It's a good point about CTA monopoly. CTA was created in 1946 to take over the private operators. The intent was to continue subsidizing transit. As a new monopoly, it did a good job in removing multiple competing transit lines. Interesting thing is that it continued to make money until 1964. I think 1964 - 1974 was the time when Chicago City Hall directly subsidized CTA. Afterwards it was subsidized through RTA. It got a lot of federal grants to expand into Skokie, etc. After these grants were spent, CTA went into status quo maintenance mode, which is where it is now.
It would be a good change to correct 43 years to 60 years and "monopoly" to "subsidized monopoly".
Thanks!
Michael
Michael Livshutz says:
Mr. PC,
You raise good points about London's TfL. I did not yet have a chance to research it further. The TfL management is pretty satisfied with 'Tube' operations, at least according to their documents. They come across as far more satisfied than CTA.
However, I am mostly impressed with their bus system privatization. I will post a followup here, hopefully soon.
thanks,
Michael
John Powers says:
PC and ML,
I also note in the Financial Times that service did not hiccup when one of the players went bankrupt, there was a very small probability that the State was on the hook for the $4 Billion, and other players were in line to take up what TfL left off. Nothing like this level of flexibilty has ever been shown by the CTA, RTA and the State of Illinois (though I am impressed with the shifting of pensions for defined benefit to defined contribution by the CTA).
The congestion charge is a bit of red herring. Chicago has a great parking infrastructure (in my opinion), that is taxed around 50% of revenues, making it somewhat equivalent to a congestion charge. The money collected is no allocated for anything more than the typical mush, but an accounting construct could certainly be measured vs. a congestion fee.
JBP
Michael Livshutz says:
John, the 401k plan for CTA is still a proposal. It is not clear when the first employee will be enrolled. Also, it is only for newly hired employees. CTA not about to hire lots of new employees. This plan will only save money if the existing employees convert.
Now, that is a proposal to get them to strike. CTA is also very quiet about other problems uncovered by the IL state auditor report. It was a stroke of genius by Julie Hamos (state senator from Evanston) to get the IL state auditor to run this audit on CTA. The real problem today is that she is settling for miniscule reforms and stifling the real CTA reform opportunity of our generation.
Michael Livshutz says:
This is not Olympic-class service. Sure, money will fix a lot, but it by itself can not fix the corporate culture.
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Quotes from "Feds blast CTA over Blue Line derailment"
One NTSB member compared the checks and balances in the CTA's track maintenance and oversight to "swiss cheese": full of holes.
Federal investigators found that 80 percent of the Blue Line inspection records for the months leading up to the accident were missing.
And because CTA track inspectors were also responsible for maintenance, there was a "disincentive" to identify problems that they would have had to fix the next day, NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said at a board meeting in Washington.
PC says:
Ah, the world through rose-colored lenses. In fact, Transport for London has a lower fare recovery ratio than CTA -- 42% for TfL vs. 44.3% for CTA. (The congestion charge, laughed out of Chicago's City Hall, provides a big source of revenue for the buses.)
Privatization has "not proven as efficient as expected in terms of service improvement," according to Fitch Ratings' April report on TfL; indeed, the Underground's repair workers are <i>right now in the midst of a series of strikes</i> that shut down 75% of the Tube earlier this week. Why? Because Metronet, one of the two PPPs set up to handle systems renewals, went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers liable for $4 billion in cost overruns.
And I might also remind you of the multiple deadly derailments blamed on shoddy work by Railtrack and its replacement Network Rail, both ill-fated and costly schemes to offload Britain's railroad maintenance onto the private sector.