In an effort to stem growing deficits and service cuts at the Chicago Transit Authority, the chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority proposed Wednesday to wipe the slate clean and consolidate the RTA`s separate suburban and city transit arms into a single new superagency.
RTA Chairman Gayle M. Franzen called for state legislation creating a Regional Transit Service to take the place of the RTA, the Chicago Transit Authority and the Metra commuter rail and Pace suburban bus agencies.
Under Franzen`s plan, the city would give up the control it now has over the CTA to a board on which the suburbs had a majority vote. But city mass transit could receive an infusion of funding from the surpluses amassed by suburban rail and bus operations. The RTA is now prevented by law from tapping those reserves.
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”I`m not going to be the captain of the Titanic,” Franzen said. ”I`m not going down with the ship. We are headed for an iceberg, and we have to steer clear of it.”
But the proposal no sooner was made public than top legislative leaders dismissed it, saying it would not survive the General Assembly.
Consolidation could trim 400 to 500 administrative jobs, save at least $40 million a year and avert a budget shortfall of $84 million over the next 2 1/2 years, Franzen said. It would eliminate duplication of services, such as marketing, legal, capital planning and legislative affairs.
The alternative, he asserted, would be more service cuts, hitting CTA riders first and hardest but ultimately affecting patrons of Metra and Pace.
Neither city nor suburban interests found much to like in the plan.
In Springfield, Republican leaders said Franzen`s proposal would be disastrous for the suburbs by ending the independence of the Metra and Pace boards.
At the same time, Democratic leaders said incorporating the CTA into a regional superagency would let the suburbs dictate service cuts for Chicago transit users.
Nearly all agreed that with only five weeks left in the spring session, the proposal arrived too late for lawmakers to give it serious consideration. ”I think (Franzen) is sincere in his observation that something has to be done,” said Senate President Philip Rock (D-Oak Park).
”But the political reality hasn`t changed since the RTA was first instituted,” Rock said. ”I`m not sure the city of Chicago or the CTA is willing to sacrifice itself any more than Metra or Pace are willing to sacrifice themselves.”
Franzen wants to merge suburban transit boards ”that have done a good job . . . into a system that is not doing a good job,” said House Republican leader Lee Daniels of Elmhurst. ”The first thing we ought to do is see what the CTA does as far as correcting its own problems.”
House speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) said the proposed restructuring would unfairly shift control of CTA operations to a suburban-dominated board: ”An authority dominated by people outside of Chicago would not have the sensitivity to service-level needs in Chicago.”
Senate GOP leader James ”Pate” Philip of Wood Dale said, ”Politically it`s very difficult to combine all those agencies under one umbrella and fire a lot of people because, as you know, a lot of those people who work there have clout.”
And Gov. Jim Edgar said, ”I`m not sure this solves the CTA problem.”
Mayor Richard Daley said he had not seen the plan and did not comment.
Ironically, combining all of the RTA`s divisions into one agency would be very much like returning to the way mass transit was operated before the state-mandated RTA reforms of 1983. At the time, political squabbling and revenue shortfalls had nearly bankrupted the agency.
As a condition of state aid and passage of a six-county sales tax to support transit, the General Assembly reorganized the RTA, dumped its old board and spun off its commuter rail and suburban bus activities. The RTA board retained control over finances, while the suburbs gained operating control over Metra and Pace.
But making transit dependent on sales taxes made the system vulnerable to severe economic downturns. This past winter, the CTA was forced to plug a $10 million budget gap by discontinuing bus routes, closing rapid transit stations and raising fares by 20 percent.
The CTA will have to cut another $20 million to $25 million in spending by summer, Franzen said.
These cuts are unavoidable, Franzen said, regardless whether the RTA reorganization is approved. As for the future, he added, ”We are in such bad shape, it`s within the realm of possibility that early next year, the southwest transit line from the Loop to Midway Airport may not open.”
Franzen said that he based his cost-saving estimate on a report by RTA consultant Temple Barker Sloane, which said earlier this year that the region`s transportation system could go bankrupt by 1995 unless expenses were reduced sharply.
”I would not be climbing out on this thin limb if I didn`t think this was a long-term solution,” Franzen said, adding, ”It`s a very thin limb.”
Nonetheless, CTA President Robert Belcaster criticized the RTA chairman for ”making projections of savings and arguing for a superagency without really analyzing the operations of the CTA, Metra and Pace . . . in terms of where these areas of duplication are.”
”We do not think that just because you`re a division, you`re inefficient,” Belcaster said, ”or that if you`re one superagency, you`re efficient. In fact, the entrepreneurial attitude is deadened the larger an agency becomes. Witness the federal government.”
CTA Chairman Clark Burrus said that Franzen failed to consider at least one other cost-cutting option: Abolish the RTA and its annual budget of nearly $17 million and funnel funding directly to the three service boards.
”Looking at this as a business, if we`re going to have a regional system with people crossing political boundaries to get from home to work, it probably makes some sense to have it served by one agency,” Burrus said.
However, he added that the plan ”poses some thorny issues of governance and finance. Who chooses? Who controls? Right now we have a regional authority dealing with funding and planning issues and having nothing to do with the level, quality and-most importantly-the location of service.
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”If what you`ve done is turn the CTA over to the suburbs, personally, I`d never support that,” he said.
Implicit in the reorganization, however, is that Chicago transit interests would have access to nearly $24 million in reserves at Metra and Pace. Unlike the CTA, the suburban agencies have been able to bank surplus revenues for future capital projects.
Together, the CTA, Metra and Pace have more than 16,000 employees, nearly 2.2 million daily riders and combined operating budgets approaching $1.2 billion a year.
But the CTA alone has 13,000 employees, an average weekday ridership of 1.9 million people, and a $780 million operating budget. Consolidation inevitably would result in a transit agency overwhelmingly oriented toward the city at the operations level, even if the suburbs commanded a voting majority at the board level.
Franzen denied that his plan was a bailout of the CTA.
”This is a regional problem,” he said. ”The CTA carries most of the people moved every day in the region, 80 percent” of those who use public transportation.
Though Franzen`s proposal would give the suburbs seven seats on the Regional Transit Service board to the city`s five, they would need a supermajority of nine votes to approve a budget. A supermajority also would be required to elect the 13th board member, the chairman.
Suburban Cook County would get four seats, three of which would have to be filled by sitting suburban mayors or village presidents representing the northwest, west and south suburbs, respectively, Franzen said. One board member would represent Du Page County; two, the collar counties of Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will, and five, Chicago.
Donald Totten, one of four suburban Cook County RTA board members, said that he supported Franzen`s plan and suggested that with more people now living outside Chicago, a superagency board could end up getting one more suburban member to protect suburban interests.
”We`ve got some financial crises ahead,” said Totten, who also is Schaumburg Township Republican committeeman. ”It`s dumb to have four boards.”