skip to nav skip to content

Home > Blogs > Charlie Sykes: Sykes Writes

FPO

Charlie Sykes: Sykes Writes

$9.90 A RIDE

By Charlie Sykes

  • (13) | COMMENTS
  • Print

.. and we ain't giving back anything. Patrick McIlheran on the joys of public transit systems and the unions who run them.

 It costs, the Chicago Tribune reports, $9.90 per ride to run the Chicago Transit Authority. The system takes in, on average, 98 cents per ride in fares. The rest gets made up by taxpayers...

And why is transit so expensive? Some of it is because rail construction is fantastically expensive -- the figure drops to $7 per ride if you exclude just a few of the more recent rail construction projects.

But some is labor, too. Public transit is staffed by unionized, public-sector labor, and that costs a lot. Reports the Trib:

“CTA labor union contracts provide a 3 percent wage increase this year and call for 3.5 percent hikes next year and in 2011.

“CTA President Richard Rodriguez and CTA board Chairman Terry Peterson have asked the unions to make similar concessions to cut costs, but union leaders have so far refused.

“ ‘We're not giving up anything,’ vowed Darrell Jefferson, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241, which represents bus drivers and bus mechanics.”

13 COMMENTS

ADD A COMMENT

VIEW ALL COMMENTS

  1. CPA - Nov 19, 2009 10:36 AM

    0 0 Click thumb to rate
    0 0 Please login to rate
    It is made to appear labor costs are the culprit, which may be true, but until I see all the financial data regarding operating expenses it is premature to accept this attack on the union workers. An unbiased reported would have given all the operating expenses so readers can make their own judgements.

  2. - Nov 19, 2009 10:49 AM

    0 0 Click thumb to rate
    0 0 Please login to rate
    Regardless of the union issue or not, this is an interesting element of implementing a liberal totalitarian governmental control on the public. Force everyone into cattle cars, er, trains so they are dependent on them, then put all your cronies in charge of the system and pay the cronies off with higher taxes extorted from the public. What, you don't want 90% of your income taken in taxes, fine, shut down your only means of transportation. Individualism is banned.

  3. Bjorn Yesterday - Nov 19, 2009 10:52 AM

    0 0 Click thumb to rate
    0 0 Please login to rate
    The Union has partnered with the Democratic Party to save millions of jobs from leaving the country. That is why, election after election, we remain loyal, steadfast supporters of the Democratic Party and it progressive actions.

  4. John H to Bjorn Yesterday - Nov 19, 2009 11:53 AM

    0 0 Click thumb to rate
    0 0 Please login to rate
    So if these unions don't accept concessions the CTA is going to move their bus routes to China? Out of curiosity when was the last time you rode the CTA or Metra?

VIEW ALL COMMENTS

Storm Team 4

    Watch latest weather video 7-Day Forecast ALERTS

    advertisement

    620 WTMJ