Monday, October 15, 2007

Don't Forget The Capital Funding Side

With all the hullabaloo over increasing operating funding for public transit via SB 572 we should not forget the issue of capital funding for transit. Chicago Metropolis 2020 recently sent the General Assembly a letter, co-signed by a group of business/community leaders, focusing attention on the capital funding bill (SB 1110).

The letter states that the proposed capital funding for transit is inadequate. (At today's Lipinski Symposium Representative Julie Hamos said that the ratio of transit to highway capital funding in the bill is a paltry 1:10.) The letter characterizes SB 1110 as a "grab bag" of projects that "lacks a coherent sense of purpose or direction."

Read it here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It should be noted that these business types conclude with a stark warning: "Failure to support the region’s transit system with operating and capital dollars plus needed reforms will cost the regional economy more than
$2 billion per year.

We can’t afford that."

What the governor and legislators are doing, in other words, is wrecking our economy for everyone. You'd think that would matter more than "moments of silence" and all the rest of the brainless crap they've "accomplished", but apparently not.

As far as I can tell, the region's legislators have the numbers to block all capital funding statewide until there's an equitable share for public transportation. Their job is to represent us. If they don't, we need to kick every one of them out of office.