My bus is doomed.
It’s scheduled to be un-scheduled next spring as part of the Chicago Transit Authority’s massive ongoing cost-cutting program.
This I confess upfront because today’s sermon is about transportation. Specifically, it’s about the sad state of getting aroundin Illinois. And importantly, it’s about the brief opportunity the Illinois General Assembly has this month to do something about it.
Maybe it’s too late for lawmakers in Springfield to save my bus, but there may be time (though not much) to save your bus, your train or your state highway (before too little maintenance and too much traffic turn it into Swiss cheese.)
There is a deal cooking in Springfield to raise desperately needed capital improvement funds for the CTA, for Metra suburban rail and for the road-building Illinois Department of Transportation. This would be accomplished by adding 3.75 cents to the state’s gasoline tax (raising it from 19 cents to 22.75 cents a gallon) and by hiking annual license plate fees, now $48, to $65.
OK, so you don’t want to pay more for gasoline and license plates. Neither do I. It has been great living and driving at a time when a gallon of no-lead sells for less than a jug of Hinckley & Schmitt. Why, just seeing one of those “$1.17/gal.” signs makes me want to jump in the minivan and peel off to the outlet mall near the Wisconsin border.
But folks, there’s trouble ahead.
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For some, it’s here already. Just ask the thousands of Chicagoans who recently lost their bus, or their night owl service, in the first phase of the CTA’s $38 million service cutback. Former CTA President David Mosena put the best face on it, claiming the cuts will impact only 2 percent of CTA riders, but don’t believe it.
But let’s say you don’t ride the CTA, or even the Metra trains. Let’s say you commute daily by car from suburb to suburb, which is now the most common pattern of transportation. It is you, Mr. and Mrs. Suburbanite, who need this gas tax increase the most.
You scoff, but let me explain:
Thanks to the budget balancing going on in Washington, the days of constantly increasing federal highway dollars are over. (In fact, the Illinois congressional delegation is trying to stop a change that would drastically cut Illinois’ share of federal road funds.) The federal largess was great while it lasted, helping Illinois build a state and interstate road network second to none. Only now, in case your shock absorbers haven’t told you, much of that network needs to be rebuilt.
A recent government survey found that 43 percent of Illinois’ federally subsidized roads are in poor or mediocre condition. A fourth of our bridges–some 6,000 of them–require major repair or replacement. (One downside of being the nation’s rail hub is that Chicagoland leads the nation in rusted-out railroad viaducts.) Meanwhile, even though our population is barely growing we’re spreading out and driving more–with miles traveled up 33 percent over a recent five-year period. One researcher estimates the resulting epidemic of potholes and bottlenecks costs Illinois motorists about $1 billion a year, or $144 for every driver. (Pay me now or pay me later, as they say at the muffler shop.)
The proposed hike in the gas tax and license fees would go a long way toward turning things around. It would raise $1 billion over five years for IDOT to repair 5,000 miles of broken highway; $700 million to widen city and suburban bottlenecks; $570 million for counties and municipalities to fix local roads; and (Hallelujah!) $35 million for new license plates. (Anything but pale blue-on-white, fellas.)
And one more thing: The deal would free up $1.1 billion in state funds for mass transit repairs and equipment across northeastern Illinois. The CTA could use its one-half share of that money to rebuild its decrepit Ravenswood (Brown) or Douglas (Blue) rapid transit lines or to replace the one-quarter of its bus fleet, which is running on borrowed time.
So why, you ask, has this gas-tax/road-repair deal popped up during the legislature’s fall veto session, when lawmakers were supposed to be concentrating on school funding and electricity deregulation? It’s because those deals are close to getting done . . . and in the fine art of Springfield logrolling, it’s often easier to do more deals than less. A $550 million kick for the CTA might, for instance, convince Senate Minority Leader Emil Jones (D-Chicago) to go along with a school funding plan that doesn’t do all that much for Chicago.
Besides, this looks like a one-time offer. Gov. Jim Edgar, who drafted the road plan, is a lame duck in search of a legacy. He’ll be there next year, it’s true, but so will the legislative and gubernatorial elections, which chill any chance of a tax increase for roads or schools. After that, there’s the 1999 Chicago mayoral election, with all the racial polarization and no-new-taxes pledges that implies.
In other words, it’s either next week . . . or next millennium.
I don’t know about your car, but my minivan won’t hold up that long. And I’m going to need it more than ever, now that the CTA has doomed my bus.