Doomsday

I am officially sick and tired of the doomsday mentality the CTA continues to harbor. They're not fooling anyone and no one in their right mind is going to waste their precious emotional energy laying awake at night thinking about the future of the CTA. A system so large, so widely used and accessed has no reason to be in financial trouble. How can such a system lose money, how can such a system not turn a profit. The CTA's constant whining over budget and money problems is more a tell tale sign of their own mismanagement of funds and personnel more so than a true barometer of the status of state government.

The other day posted in an EL Train was a bar graph comparing what other state governments contributed to certain large city's transit authorities compared with Chicago. Naturally, Chicago's was the lowest on the graph. The only problem was, certain pertinent information was left out of the graph, this information including the cities of Washington D.C. and New York. I stood for a moment thinking about the comparable, if not larger, size of the transit systems in those two cities. By the end of the ride I was thinking less of how horrible our state was for not giving the same amount to public transit as LA does and more about how New York and DC fund theirs. "I wonder if the state doesn't provide anything, or significantly less than Illinois." That was the thought this graph planted in my mind. Nice try CTA.

If a system so large, so widely and consistently used does not turn a profit, it deserves to die. ANy fool business man could tell you that. Of course, there in may be a problem. It seems as though the CTA is being run more as a business anymore than a public service. And from what I hear (take it or leave it, it's hearsay) the upper CTA officials seldom if ever use public transit. This is odd considering if one works for Ford they must own and use a Ford.

Enough with the doomsday. I'm actually at a point where I'd find it quite comical to see the CTA bleed to death, they have it coming. It would be nice if the system was slowly auctioned off piece by piece and having the lines ultimately run by separate, private business as it used to be. At least there'd be competition again. Of course, this would not work because some large car company would swoop in and buy everything, dismantle the system and it'd be LA all over again. No more doomsday, get on with whatever it is you're going to do and let us get on with figuring out how we're going to get to work without you. Either work for us or get the fuck out. On a good day, I can already cover the same distance on my bike in a similar if not better time than the train. It's the snow that concerns me. Either way, though, I suppose for the winter we'll all just create some elaborate car pool system. I don't know, but I think it may be time to start buying stock in "ZipCar" and "IGo."