Peter's Files of Original Comedy, Jokes, Satire, Parody, Commentary & Video in One Safe for Work & Home Blog!

----------------
Now playing: Koko Taylor - But On The Other Hand
via FoxyTunes

I have a commentary and a cool video for you.

Being from Chicago and having lost friends to the Death Ryan Expressway, I very strongly support Public Transportation, especially in high-density, high population areas where well-funded, customer-oriented public transportation can make a dramatic difference in the quality of urban life and reduce the cost of moving people, commercial and industrial freight through ever constricting and congesting highway and rail corridors, especially those where air travel is already maxed out and difficult to move through in this post 9/11 era.

Transit is much safer, 10 times safer per mile than highway driving. I have nearly lost my own life to drunk drivers several times (not myself[!]) including last January when one actually struck my car going 90 on 294. My being alive has a lot to do with defensive driving skills and lots of time behind the wheel, and luck.

Chicago is an excellent example of a city where public transportation, facing incredible financial constraints as the State, County and City Governments have failed to find a stable way to effectively replace the $80+ million dollars a year of Federal operating assistance that the Chicago Transit Authority, or CTA, used to receive in the 80's (a deficit of nearly a Billion Dollars since then!!!)

Of course all public transit properties operating more than 50 buses daily lost at least some funds across the nation, but Illinois, with its upstate/downstate baby-nana-poo-poo-funding-fighting that failed to provide a really stable source of funding for public transportation operations in the state. Since CTA is a state-funded agency, operated under the six-county Regional Transit Authority, funding support should happen at all three levels. Some may not know that in addition to operating service in the city of Chicago, CTA also provides service to 22 suburbs. Many more if you include those who use Metra to come in from farther out then use CTA once in Chicago.

Why am I thinking about this? Because as our local news, WBBM, WMAQ, WLS, WTTW, WFLD, both TV and Radio where applicable and WBEZ-FM the NPR affiliate have been reporting, CTA's "doomsday" is November 4, 2007.

That's the day that CTA must implement "Draconian" cuts in service and staff to balance its budget as required by law.

At least the cuts planned are motivating. They eliminate just about all of the express bus service that brings suburbanites that don't pay extra sales tax that supports CTA to their offices downtown and puts them on regular buses with the rest of us. It also cuts a lot of the services (see list) that made CTA more efficient unfortunately including the crosstown X express routes that skipped routes and really made service on key routes more efficient.

Worse yet, the "crisis" allows Huberman the new CTA President to cut hundreds of CTA positions held by qualified, experienced individuals, and fill them with political hires in direct violation of the Shackman lawsuit agreement. IS this funny or what!

What's at stake is the customer satisfaction of those making only a million and a half rides a day.

What's the big deal, none of those people vote anyway do they? Wrong.

It's not like a lot of them could just decide to drive tomorrow and really mess up traffic? Wrong. Most CTA riders choose to ride CTA and can afford to buy another car according to Grant Funded independent research.

And CTA deserves cuts, they've been losing riders for decades! Wrong! Ever since the CTA got serious about doing real system level peer-review-able Customer Satisfaction survey and acting on what customers said, since they started noticing after the first survey in 1996 and 1997 CTA ridership has reversed the trend of decades and has been going up since then.

This is not a sign of failure, nor is it a time to cut riders and support staff. The idea is ludicrous! Between growth in congestion and Chicago's population the only sane thing to do is grow CTA.

Of course, I do have one commute option for legislators who wish to cut CTA's budget. It would work equally well from the top of the Sears Tower, the John Hancock, the Spire, or any real downtown building. Unfortunately, unless they have any really large buildings near their home it might be a ONE-WAY commute option, so I strongly suggest they try it out before voting against any CTA funding initiatives.

Feel free to email them this option by sending this page using the envelope below. Or you can email them thhe link to this page along with your own letter at the Save Transit In Chicago Website which will automatically find and send letters to your legislators.

If nothing else, at least the view will give them an overview on the problem!

You can also call them using this portion of the same website it will help you find your rep's phone numbers.

After all that -- you deserve this video, if you can't see it, double click on the link above or try using the Safari web browser,

Don't be surprised if a little editing and spell-check/grammar work is done on this one, the pizza is here!

Thanks for visiting the Peter Files Blog of Comedy! Bookmark us and come back soon! Feel free to forward posts to your friends and to taunt them with your savvy nature for finding this blog first!

Peter, Chief Editor and Spelling Wrecker
The Peter Files Blog of Comedy, Satire and Commentary
Http://ThePeterFiles.blogspot.com

We strive to keep our humor and comments safe for home and work. Some of the links that appear on the sidebar may not meet our standards. If this appears on a regular basis, please let us know at "thepeterfilesblog at gmail dot com". Thank You!

----------------
Now playing: Koko Taylor - But On The Other Hand
via FoxyTunes

Labels: Chicago, Comedy, Commentary, CTA, Legislation, Stupidity, Transportation Video

===> We love comments about our posts good or bad!
Please make comments by clicking on the word "Comments"!
Click on the Envelope to forward posts to your friends! Thank you! The staff.