Progress Illinois

Chi-Town Daily News spotlights a new report from Citizens Taking Action which found that Chicago public transit users pay more than riders in other America cities.  Their piece quotes a spokesman for the organization saying, "It's tough to advocate the use of public transit when the deciding officials work against you." 

So how exactly are Illinois officals working against public transit advocates?  Part of it has to do with the extraordinarily high "recovery ratio" mandated under law here in the state.  A unnamed CTA insider explained the situation to the Nation's Chris Hayes last week (more on that here and here):

For CTA, under law we have to recover 50% of our operating costs from our customers (it's called the "recovery ratio"). Or, put another way, only 50% of our operating costs are subsidized by government. Houston, Denver, Phoenix all have much, much lower recovery ratio requirements (I think Houston is like 11%). Thus they can "afford" to build out there transit infrastructure because they know they will be able to recover the requisite operating costs through revenue.

The stress these revenue requirements put on the system is devastating:

The "death spiral" awaits -- given the recovery ratio, transit systems cut back service to meet recovery ratio requirements, thus fewer riders ride, thus systems have to charge more to pay for service, thus fewer ride, until no one's left.

It's that death spiral that's led to CTA's high fares relative to other transit systems.  And as the insider goes on to explain, if the CTA is going to continue to exist as a public entity, the government needs to pick up more of the tab:

Transit is a money losing venture if you look at money put in v. revenues generated. And it SHOULD be. If we asked our riders to pay the actual cost of a ride, we're talking about $6 per ride. That is not only untenable, but exactly the opposite of how we should ask our customers to support us given the benefits we provide. We should find progressive funding mechansisms (congestion pricing) because the actual transaction for taxpayers and metropolitan regions continues to be one that greatly favors transit investment. Roads, on the other hand, are bad investments when looked at regionally.