Archive for CTA
Oct
26
In Chicago, private money to renovate a station
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A few months ago, the MTA unveiled the details of its first subway station naming rights contract. For $200,000 a year over 20 years, Barclays will attach its name to the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. stop. Once — or if — the new Nets arena opens at that location, the station will become Barclays Center/Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. It is geographically accurate, if a bit unwieldy, and we all know that the MTA needs the cash.
Additionally, we’ve often discussed expanding the MTA’s economic horizons by instituting an Adopt-a-Station program. Similar to the Adopt-a-Highway program in place across the nation, local businesses would pay to get their names on the station. These businesses could then be responsible for ensuring the cleanliness of subway stations or the money could go toward renovation and rehabilitation projects at that station. It is an unorthodox call, to be sure, but not out of the realm of the ordinary.
In fact, that is just what the Chicago Transit Authority may do. According to a CTA spokesperson, Apple and the Windy City’s transit authority are in talks to have the computer giant sponsor a station rehab. Lewis Lazare of the Chicago Sun-Times reports:
A CTA spokeswoman confirmed that the transit authority is in talks with the computer and iPhone behemoth about a deal that could net the cash-strapped CTA as much as $4 million in funding from Apple to pay for an upgrade of the run-down subway station at North and Clybourn, which is adjacent to an Apple retail store now under construction and expected to open next year.
In exchange for its millions, Apple would receive first dibs on any and all advertising that eventually goes up at the rehabbed subway stop, which would allow Apple to create what is known as a “station domination” advertising effect at the North and Clybourn station.
According to Lazare’s report, the funding deal would not include naming rights. Chicago is not yet ready to turn over the names of their El stops to private corporations.
For Chicago, a deal of this nature makes perfect sense. The CTA is in worse financial straits than the MTA and has recently proposed massive service cuts and a 30 percent fare hike. They desperately need any money they can get.
So again, though, I propose this idea for New York. At some point, the MTA should seriously considering looking at local business investment in subway stations. The agency’s new modular approach to station rehabilitation and component replacement is a bid step in the right direction and helps alleviate the nearly unattainable State of Good Repair for the system’s stations. With a little bit of creativity, the money though is out there, and we need not look further than Chicago and to Apple for proof.
Apr
30
New York giveth away and Chicago taketh
Posted by: | Comments Lucky Chicago. They aren’t afraid of change and progress, and now the Windy City is getting what should be ours if it hadn’t been for Sheldon Silver and his crony of cowardly representatives.
When New York decided not to adopt congestion pricing, the City forfeited around $354 million that would have gone toward anti-congestion measures as part of the new National Strategy to Reduce Congestion. Since our wonderful leaders don’t seem too concerned with reducing congestion, the feds instead decided to dole out $153 million to Chicago. That city will implement a bus rapid transit system with dedicated lanes and ramped-up enforcement as well as variable-rate parking meters.
Los Angeles — the king of congestion — will receive over $200 million that will go toward implementing a tolling system designed to encourage car-pooling and other high-occupancy vehicle commuting. I prefer Chicago’s plan, but the one in Los Angeles is not without merit.
Catrin Einhorn of The Times has the story:
In Chicago, officials said Tuesday that they planned to use $153 million for projects like creating the first 10 miles of lanes dedicated to faster buses that make fewer stops and set off sensors that lengthen green traffic lights and shorten red ones. To discourage driving downtown, meters and parking lots there would charge more during peak traffic times.
In Los Angeles, which would receive $213 million, officials said high-occupancy vehicle lanes would be converted to toll lanes. Cars with three or more people would be exempt from paying. The federal money would also finance bus service in the new toll lanes.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, through a spokesman, applauded the efforts of both cities.
“While it’s sad that Washington, which most Americans agree is completely dysfunctional, is more willing to try new approaches to long-standing problems than Albany is,” Mr. Bloomberg’s press secretary, Stu Loeser, said, “we’re glad other places aren’t as allergic to innovation.”
Mayor Bloomberg is clearly still smarting from the defeat of his groundbreaking (in the U.S., at least) congestion pricing plan. He’s not the only one. “We’re disappointed that New York didn’t get it,” Tyler D. Duvall, acting under secretary for policy for the Department of Transportation, said to The Times, “but we’re extremely happy to have the opportunity to work with L.A. and Chicago.”
For New York, the blow stings a bit. Chicago, in particular, is adopting measures that New York really needs and should have. At a time when many are noting that our own BRT system may be delayed a few years, Chicago’s gain is New York’s loss.
We could have had BRT money; we could have had funds for traffic reduction programs and public transit expansion. Instead, we have risk-averse politicians who wouldn’t even put the plan up for a floor vote, and we get to sit back at Chicago enjoys the money that could have been ours. That’s some example to set as a global city in 2008.
Mar
26
Chicago facing one ‘L’ of a problem
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A glimpse down the ‘L’ tracks in Chicago. (Courtesy of flickr user sftrajan)
Once upon a time, the New York City subways were a mess. Decades of Robert Moses’ iron-fisted rule of the NYC metropolitan area’s transportation policies had left the subways near bankrupt and in a state of disrepair. Old train cars derailed frequently and otherwise crawled around the city. Service problems numbered in the thousands per year, and no one wanted to ride what was once the bets subway system in the world.
In those days, grime and dirt marred the subways. The cars were covered from floor to ceiling, inside and out, with graffiti, and crime underground transcended a problem. It was an epidemic. Looking at popular NYC culture from the time, movies such as The Taking of Pelham One Two Three show New Yorkers resigned to their fates. Submachine guns on the subway? It’s just another day’s commute.
These were dark days for New York City. Emerging from bankruptcy itself largely brought about by Robert Moses’ reckless spending and the need to maintain his automobile-centric infrastructure, the city was known as a seedy den of sin and social disorder. Times Square meant peep shows and prostitutes, not Disney and The Lion King. in 1984, at arguably the low point in the City’s recent history, one man – Bernard Goetz – took personal vigilantism to a whole new level when he shot four young men he believed to be threatening him.
Whether or not Goetz’s incident was the clear turning point or Rudy Giuliani’s crime prevention measures were the real cause of the New York City turnaround doesn’t matter. Twenty-five years ago, the subways had no money, few riders and a grim future. No politician wanted to invest in them; no one in his or her right mind would want to ride on them. How times have changed for a subway system that will soon see its first new line in decades and may witness record ridership numbers by the end of the decade.
But while we enjoy a subway renaissance, our neighbors 800 miles to the west aren’t so lucky. While social conditions in urban cities in the U.S. has improved since the 1980s and riding the subway isn’t nearly as dangerous as it once was, not all subway systems are maintained with the same devotion and dollars that our expansive highway system enjoys, and now, Chicagoans are starting to pay the price. The ‘L,’ Chicago’s 100-year-old rapid transit system, is breaking down. The money isn’t there to modernize the trains, and a boom times in Chicago are stressing the system to what some are calling its breaking point. The Times has more.
