From the Daily Southtown:

Our View

Amid Springfield follies, Metra faces cuts, fare hikes

October 29, 2007

The Issue: Metra has presented two options to deal with funding problems. Fare hikes are likely, and Sunday service could be eliminated.

We say: Leaders in Springfield have failed time and again to come up with funding needed to support mass transit in the Chicago region.

Elonzo Hill, a Country Club Hills resident who serves on the Metra board of directors, put it best:

"Both of these options stink."

Hill was referring to two proposals on the table that would help the Chicago-area rail agency confront a $40 million budget deficit. Neither option is pretty. But because the kindergarten approach to governing the state of Illinois has yielded no new dollars for public transportation, Metra and other transit agencies have no other choice but to take measures that will result in increased fares, possible service cuts and the elimination of long-range projects aimed at providing better service.

How much howling will it take, how many critical editorials will be written, how many commuters will have sleepless nights before something is done to help improve the financial situation of public transportation in a region of 10 million people?

Without more state money, Metra riders will pay higher weekday fares, as much as 10 percent more each year for at least the next three years. Under one option, the popular weekend pass would increase from $5 to $7. Under another option, Sunday service on Metra would be cut altogether. Administrative and janitorial jobs also are on the chopping block under either scenario.

And projects down the road also are in jeopardy. Among them are the planned SouthEast Service line that would connect the Loop with the southeast suburbs as far as Crete and the STAR Line, linking Joliet with O'Hare International Airport via several outlying suburbs.

As we've written before, at a time when there should be more financial support for public transportation as the region increases in population and roads become more congested, our elected officials treat it merely as a legislative poker chip. Funding, as we've found out in this current legislative session from hell, never is a certainty.

How can our state leaders be so ignorant about the potential consequences of their inaction? Don't they see the necessity of public transportation? Considering that very few legislators rely on public transportation, it's no surprise they are out of touch with the impact it has on millions of citizens. Jobs and businesses are affected, and that in turn impacts the state's economic health.

Springfield offers no solution. Instead we get folly after folly. It's like the ghost of Flo Ziegfeld is controlling things down there.

Take last week: Our increasingly unpopular governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced there was a plan to bail out mass transit. It was a done deal as soon as one legislative leader signed off on it, he said. Of course, that one leader happened to be House Speaker Mike Madigan. The two Democrats haven't agreed on anything since Michael Jordan was on the Bulls. So Blagojevich sends a Republican, Tom Cross, to sell Madigan on the plan. Only in Illinois is a Republican used to try to broker peace between two Democrats.

Needless to say, no agreement is in the works. Instead, we hear again and again about plans involving casinos, sales tax hikes and siphoning money from gasoline taxes normally earmarked for other projects as ways to solve the transit crisis. But there's nothing concrete at this time.

And as Illinois becomes more and more regressive, Metra prepares to slash. It has no other choice. And that stinks.

Metra will host a public meeting on its proposed 2008 budget at 4 p.m. Nov. 7 at the Homewood Village Hall, 2020 Chestnut Road.