Zipcar has a decent presence on Chicago's North Side. However, I suspect that its future profitability, if any, will be characterized by thin margins. They will probably end up as an acquisition candidate for one of the car rental companies.
Chicago has a relatively good mass transit system, though it is being strained by heavier usage and a lack of funding for upgrades. When I go into the city, particularly for business, I take Metra and use the CTA as much as possible. I have never had a problem getting a seat going in, and always make sure that I arrive at the station early when going home. I have seen very few "standing room only" cars.
If Obama is elected, I am sure that Daley will be tapping him for transit funding.
Record ridership strains CTA, Metra, Pace—and it's likely to get worse
Lack of capital improvement catches up to transit agencies
By Jon Hilkevitch and Richard Wronski
Tribune reporters
September 2, 2008
Hop aboard the bus or train, if there's an inch of space for the doors to close, and prepare for a rough ride.
The surging popularity of mass transit in the Chicago area is on a collision course with the system's shortcomings: too few seats and inadequate capital funding.
Fueled by high gas prices, ridership is at or near record levels for Metra and the Chicago Transit Authority. Expect it to become even more crowded with Labor Day in the rear-view mirror and families returning to work and school from summer vacations.
"There's a huge bounce in ridership after Labor Day vacations," said CTA President Ron Huberman, who noted CTA ridership historically peaks in September.
It promises to be challenging for the CTA and Metra to accommodate the extra riders. As it is, try to squeeze onto the overcrowded CTA "L" platform at Clark/Lake—let alone actually get onto the next train—at about 5 p.m. on a weekday.
"It's another wild night on the cattle drive. Moove along," commuter Katie O'Shea, 33, said during evening rush last week as she held her backpack in both arms and pushed toward a Brown Line train approaching the station.
The CTA is hurriedly hiring hundreds of bus drivers and train operators after higher-than-normal attrition and a hiring freeze last year prompted by a series of "doomsday" threats that would have slashed service, raised fares and furloughed hundreds of workers.
Delivery of new CTA rail cars—to replace trains that began service in 1969 and should have been retired more than a decade ago—remains at least two years away. In addition, the CTA has received only half of the 400 new buses it ordered to replace 1991 models that had been due for retirement in 2003.
The predicament leaves the transit agency no option except to attempt to recycle its existing equipment more quickly on routes and put supervisors on train platforms and at bus stops to improvise service changes to deal with waiting passengers.
"I guess you could call it the poor man's version of expanding the fleet," Huberman said.
There's no hiding the desperation.
The CTA is removing all the seats from some of its rail cars and reducing seats on some buses as part of an experiment beginning this fall to pack in more riders.
To boost its seating, Metra ended bar-car beverage service Friday and plans to remove some on-board toilets. The commuter railroad is also rehabbing five 1950s-era bilevel coaches that it had sold to a Virginia commuter line and bought back earlier this year.
Even the Pace suburban bus system, the unfortunate symbol for years of how the car is king in the suburbs, is packing them in these days on routes that feed Metra and CTA rail stations and business parks. Pace reduced special express service to Cubs and Bears games to free up buses for regular evening service, officials said.
The CTA, which provides an average of 1.7 million rides a day and is already operating at full capacity during rush periods, is bracing for up to 200,000 additional riders each weekday, transit officials said.
At least many CTA customers ride for relatively short distances. Most Metra riders aren't as lucky, traveling up to 50 miles each way, in some cases while standing in the aisles and vestibules or sitting on the steps of packed trains.
When the trains are too crowded, the conductors don't always collect cash fares, so revenue is lost, Deborah Moore pointed out after her morning Union Pacific North Line train arrived last week in downtown Chicago more than an hour late.
"Metra, the way to really fly," said Moore, mocking the commuter railroad's slogan. "Oh, yeah, how could I forget? Flying doesn't seem like a good idea these days, either."
Sustained ridership increases month after month leave little doubt that transit across the U.S. is experiencing a renaissance as commuters drive less. The 53.2 billion-mile reduction in total miles driven nationwide since last November has surpassed the mileage decline during the oil crisis of the 1970s, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
But in the Chicago region, another crisis that has been developing for years—no new money for capital improvements for mass transit—threatens to erupt as transit ridership grows.
CTA bus ridership has increased 6 percent through July, compared with the first seven months of 2007, while rail ridership rose 2 percent, the CTA said. Weekend ridership on the CTA system also increased 6 percent. And ridership in 2007 was the highest since 1992.
"We're ecstatic about the phenomenal growth in ridership but concerned about our capacity to manage and keep the new customers," said Huberman, who calls state passage of new capital funding to help pay for new buses and trains the CTA's No. 1 priority.
"Some people are willing to push onto a crowded train or bus during rush hour and find that acceptable," Huberman said. "Other people simply will not opt for that transportation."
The CTA plans to introduce operational changes after Labor Day to try to maximize efficiency. Its efforts include:
• Deploying managers who have the authority to call extra buses into service at pinch points during rush periods. The goal is to redistribute buses where they are most needed and ease bus-bunching.
• Increasing the number of train runs through the end of the year as slow-zone construction is completed, particularly on the O'Hare branch of the Blue Line and in the Red Line subway.
• Doing more short-turning of trains on the Brown Line corridor and along the Blue Line to address pinch points where waiting passengers cannot board already full trains. Short-turning involves running some trains on a portion of the route in the morning to pick up passengers at high-volume stations and deliver them to the Loop.
Meanwhile, Metra ridership increased 5 percent in the first half of this year, compared with the same period in 2007.
Metra expects 2008 to be its third consecutive record-setting year, said Lynette Ciavarella, the railroad's director of planning and analysis.
Eight of Metra's all-time top 10 ridership months have occurred since June 2007, she said. In particular, weekend ticket sales are outstripping all categories, up 20 percent in the first half of 2008, she said.
But without millions of dollars in new funding from a state public works program, Metra cannot buy the additional cars it needs to meet ridership growth, said spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet. The commuter railroad has not acquired any new trains since 2005.
Pace's total ridership increased 3.6 percent through July. July's ridership was up 10.6 percent compared with the same month last year, the highest July hike in the suburban bus system's history, said spokesman Patrick Wilmot.
Pace is also coping with equipment shortages due to the capital funding shortfalls. With increases in ridership slowing service, on-time performance has suffered.
"We've used a majority of our capital funding to cover operating deficits over the past several years," Wilmot said. "The issue for us is whether a capital bill is passed soon enough and is adequate for us to replace our fleet."
jhilkevitch@tribune.com
rwronski@tribune.com
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