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Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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“One of the means under discussion to raise the needed additional funds for transit is to impose surcharge on tolls on the Illinois Tollway.” Can anyone tell me which tollway route duplicates a transit line? Mr. Hinz? Anyone? Greg can’t. You can’t. It doesn’t exist. The political animals want to tax drivers who can’t make use of Chicago transit to pay for empty seats to be dragged and driven all around Chicago and the surrounding counties. To put the ‘mass’ back in mass transit, there needs to be less service. The CTA/Metra/Pace operations are not Uber, with its nominal 1.3… Read more »
How much would it cost to run buses 24/7/365 to only go to the 4 stops proposed for the RLE?
$5 million a year tops?
The interest on the bonds alone would exceed $250 million a year.
Ridiculous proposal!!
The buses are already running there. This whole project is a scam.
Who will realize the folly of spending taxpayer money on a rail boondoggle first – California with their bullet train to nowhere or Illinois with spending 1+ million on a rail line to satisfy it’s liberal white guilt?
Waddles is, almost without exception, trying to replicate everything his arch rival for the White House, Pelosi’s nephew Newsome is doing. Would that Newsome threw himself off of one of those stunning vistas in CA and Waddles made for the Garden of the Gods in southern Illinois.
From the article:
https://archive.ph/C2Dfh#selection-2717.0-2717.153
“But at better than $1.1 billion a mile, the Red Line extension may be the most expensive elevated and at-grade (as opposed to subway) line in the world, transit experts say. At a total of $5.7 billion overall, the project is approaching three times what the CTA spends annually to operate its entire fleet of trains and buses… To put it a different way, at $20 a pop, spending $5.7 billion on one transit line extension would pay for 285 million Uber rides for needy South Siders..”
From Greg Hinz, even. He’s right. This project is insane.
Mark, this entire project is an excuse to increase the pile of cash available for the grift. This was par for the course from the Autopen-in-chief’s time in office, with the foxes carting off any hen within reach and being handed truckloads full of hens by fiat. The political animals can crow about ‘transit equity’ all they want. The fact remains that this project will expensively pull riders who are already riding CTA bus service in that area. The CTA cannot claim a dollar taken from the left pocket and placed in the right pocket as a new ticket sale.… Read more »