Thursday is D-Day for CTA

Agency to decide about service cuts

By Jon Hilkevitch
Tribune transportation reporter
Published December 16, 2004

The Chicago Transit Authority board is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to cut bus and rail service in January or find other ways to eliminate a projected $55 million deficit in 2005.

State legislative leaders, advising the CTA to hold off on the service cuts for up to six months, this week issued vague promises to work on a transit-funding increase in the spring.

But with no guarantees from Springfield, the CTA could find itself facing a more precarious financial situation if the service cuts are canceled and no new funding materializes.

Additional cuts, eliminating as much as 40 percent of bus and train service, would be required to work off a worsening deficit, officials said.

"Unfortunately, there could still be service cuts starting Jan. 2. But several board members are not comfortable yet with risking deeper cuts in July [by delaying the cuts] in the hope that Springfield will take action this spring," said Greg Longhini, CTA board secretary.

The CTA is required to submit a balanced budget to the Regional Transportation Authority, which is scheduled to approve 2005 budgets for the CTA, Metra and Pace on Friday.

Meanwhile, a campaign led by an anarchist group urging CTA riders to refuse to pay fares flopped Wednesday, transit agency officials said.

Four people among the CTA's 1.5 million daily riders were arrested for trying to skip out on paying their fares, said CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney.

A little-known group called Midwest Unrest, protesting threatened CTA service cuts, distributed fliers around the city asking CTA riders to participate in the fare strike on Wednesday.

"It's been a typical day. The four people attempted to evade fares rather than not to pay on principle," Gaffney said, adding that the scofflaws appeared to be homeless.