Chicago Weekend Fun!

The Chicago Tribune reports that the CTA has received 27 Million dollars in funding from the state of Illinois in a last minute bailout cash “infusion”. I’m not exactly sure what “infusion” means in this scenario but we take it that extra funds were approved from somewhere in the Illinois state budget and the price hikes and route cuts will not go into effect on Sunday. 

I repeat: The cost of CTA ride fares will not increase and bus routes will not be cut on Sunday November 4th. Now I just have to figure out what got cut or which tax got raised to provide these previously unavailable funds to the CTA. The news says that the money is just going to cover costs until December 31st 2007. After that in January we may all be paying $84 dollars a month for a monthly CTA pass and paying $3 dollars a ride at rush hour peak times.

I was riding home on the train tonight noticing that the CTA funding message posters that have been up for the past 2 weeks in the ad slots on the top of the trains had mostly been removed. What I don’t know, is if this meant that they had given up the fight for more funding, or that they knew that the money was on it’s way? Either way, it means a lot of people who already have a hard time getting by financially, get to pay the same rate for CTA transportation for a little while longer.

It would be nice if this was the last time we heard about this money issue, but since this is another temporary fix, the debate over CTA funding will be at least a yearly issue in the city and state budgets and sooner or later we will still have to pay more to get to work. (But we really do appreciate the postponment of that doomsday for a little while longer.)