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"No one wants riders punished with deep service cuts. Transit matters to the region. But it doesn’t make sense to impose a sales tax hike on non-users to cover for poor choices."
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Audio and summary Why the Holdup Using Artificial Intelligence to Cut Illinois Government Costs? – Wirepoints
May 19, 2026
8 Comments
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Note to readers from Mark Glennon re: Ukraine
May 6, 2026
4 Comments
Everybody needs a side hustle these days, and mine is Ukraine, where I am now.
Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer – Chicago’s struggling commercial real estate and more
April 22, 2026
5 Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
Audio and summary
Who else could not raise prices for nearly 10 years and stay in business?
“No one wants riders punished with deep service cuts. Transit matters to the region.” That quote from Dylan Sharkey is about 25% correct. The rest of Dylan’s words are blowing in the wind, just like CTA/Metra/Pace ridership. The key is ‘riders’. Of course, we really don’t want ‘riders’ punished. However, the RTA/CTA/Metra/Pace lacks them, punishing taxpayers to pay for empty seats dragged all around Chicagoland. Chicago transit ridership peaked in 2012 and has declined ever since. The executive directors and boards like to point to ridership gains from 2019 and service improvements since then. That’s nice, let’s pay these urchins… Read more »
The maxim “the purpose of a system is what it does” perfectly applies here: the true function of a system is revealed by its actual outcomes, not its stated intentions or goals. As suggested, the primary role of CTA, Metra, and Pace appears to be providing stable government jobs and pensions for a select group of employees, with reliable transportation for riders coming in a distant second. This is starkly illustrated by the persistence of near-empty buses and trains operating on fixed schedules, even as regional ridership remains 55.6% below 2012 levels Running these low-occupancy or even empty trains and… Read more »
Service reductions would not put the ‘mass’ back into mass transit. The political animals have made Chicago so inhospitable to employers and employees that business and their jobs fled. There isn’t the mad rush at Union Station like there was. CTA trains are not standing room only journeys, except to Lollapaloosa. The CTA runs Lollapaloosa service every weekday, minus the customers
Service cuts would at least fill the trains and buses a bit more by serving the 80% of remaining customers.