The Great American Transit Disaster by Nicholas Dagen Bloom

Author:Nicholas Dagen Bloom [Bloom, Nicholas Dagen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS000000 HISTORY / General, HIS036060 HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, TRA009000 TRANSPORTATION / Public Transportation, POL002000 POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / City Planning & Urban Development
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2023-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Figures 19a and 19b. Latino immigrants were crucial to sustained CTA ridership in areas well served by transit on the Near West and North Sides (upper map). But the decentralization of the Latino population to areas barely served by transit threatens to undermine their ridership levels (lower map). Source: Hispanic or Latino, 1970/2020, Social Explorer, accessed June 26, 2021.

CTA has had some modest successes in the last few decades, such as the elevated southwest Orange Line (1997) to Midway airport, renovated rapid stations, new buses, and has expanded bus signal priority.235 However, transit’s overall share of city commuters between 1980 and 2018 sank from 32.4 to 26.1 percent, while city automobile commuters increased from 58.5 to 65.4 percent in the same period.236 CTA has a limited ability to address these trend lines. Its mandatory high farebox recovery rate diverts most revenue to basic operations. In 2019, for instance, its rail farebox recovery of 49.6 percent was high compared to most peer agencies nationally. CTA is also dangerously underfunded on the capital side, with an estimated $18.9 billion in capital need. A considerable number of rail cars, for instance, have been kept in service beyond their projected lifespans. Complaints on both the bus and rail lines are up.237

The launching of the CTA in 1946 on a “pay as you go” model was widely praised at the time by fiscally conservative leaders. Yet CTA’s self-supporting model, even with efficiencies from streetcar substitution, was unsustainable in an auto-centric, racially divided, and low-density region. Ridership fell but ultimately stabilized on modern elevated lines, but decades of fare increases and service cuts on the more comprehensive bus system accelerated ridership decline. Chicago demonstrated that American transit would fail to compete with cars absent deep subsidies.

The crucial role of density in transit operations also comes through powerfully in Chicago’s story. The dispersed pattern of suburban living, where most Chicagoland residents, rich or poor, live today, makes it exceedingly difficult to provide transit outside the central city. In 2018, for instance, just 20 percent of regular commuters in the Chicago region living below the poverty line chose transit. If this growing working class in the suburbs lived and worked in suburban places better served and designed for transit efficiency, a large population might want to spend less on their automobiles.238

Chicago’s transit history also points to the necessity of balancing transit and highway planning. Chicago was a leader in developing the country’s first highway median rapid lines, but the experiment faltered thanks to lack of funding and suburban cooperation. CTA lost ridership for many reasons, but primarily because driving became a better option. City and state leaders who created an excellent highway network, lots of CBD parking, and widened streets knew exactly what they were doing.

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