Tuesday, September 18, 2007
News / News Bites Dennis Byrne's way with words
Posted by Michael Miner on 09.18.07 at 08:38 PM
Did anyone else have trouble following Dennis Byrne's column in the Monday Tribune? Byrne was assigning blame for the sorry state of the CTA, and I'm not sure he clarified much. He began by explaining that it's the "Chicago Way" that makes the CTA a "mess," the Chicago Way dictating that the CTA is first and foremost "an instrument of political power and greed for City Hall and Springfield," with moving people a "secondary consideration."
OK. I followed that. But then Byrne went on to say it's also the "Illinois Way," which he said is actually the "Democratic Party Way" -- though it seems to me that the CTA's troubles go back to the time when Springfield was run by Republicans. And Byrne said, "Let's not forget the Organized Labor Way, which for decades saddled the CTA with outrageous work rules and pay demands. Yes, labor leaders have made some concessions, no doubt in the spirit of public interest, and not because they were forced." Now I was really confused. Was Byrne mocking the labor leaders or was he trying to give them credit where it was due without making it sound like credit?
And after that Byrne blamed the "Riders' Way." He wagged a finger at us riders for not wanting to pay more of the costs, "even though the bargain they're getting, courtesy of taxpayers, allows them to ride for not much more than the price of a good candy bar." Wow, I didn't know taxpayers were treating me to my CTA rides. Doesn't surprise me, though. I've read that taxpayers are picking up the tab for the war in Iraq, and they're the ones who'll pay to repave the Edens. Next time I meet a taxpayer I'll be sure to thank him.
And finally, Byrne said the CTA is a mess because of the "Assured Funding Way." This is the "cultural mind-set" that tries to stabilize mass transit by hooking it up to a reliable revenue stream. These revenue streams can't be counted on forever, which apparently in Byrne's eyes makes assured funding a really dumb idea.
Anyway, there are so many "ways" ticking off Byrne that a reader doesn't know who to blame first. Which means, in an odd way, that there was no point to the column.
Comments (23)
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Mike, Who did you think was paying for the CTA if not the taxpayers? Your comment "I didn't know taxpayers were treating me to my CTA rides" might lead one to believe that the CTA supports itself, and that only riders are taxes for funding. The entire country is taxed to support the CTA. Regardless of whether someone in Wyoming or Oregon ever uses the CTA, Federal tax dollars go to support the CTA. Regardless of whether someone in Hoffman Estates uses the CTA, State Tax dollars are used to support the system. The important question, should other people pay for CTA riders convenience? Should people other than the riders pay for a dysfunctional transport system? JBP
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I'm pretty sure there are a number of local conservatives who can make a coherent argument once a week. Does Byrne have pictures of Tribune brass cavorting with goats?
Byrne smackdowns are best left to Payton Chung, who tirelessly documents the many hidden costs of driving and hidden benefits of public transit. Money passage: "Six different studies from the 1990s ... estimate that each car costs society anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 a year, over and above what the owner pays to operate it. On a per-gallon basis, those estimates range from $3 to $7 per gallon in social costs. So yes, in fact, we taxpayers do 'pay half a motorist’s costs when he drives to work or goes shopping.'" So, yes, John: If society has to pay a cost for someone in Hoffman Estate to own a car, it's fair to ask Hoffman Estate to pay so that I don't have to own a car. And I'm pretty sure that my tax dollars are being used to pay for interstates in Oregon and Wyoming, regardless of whether I use them directly. The difference is that I'm not so myopic that I think my personal use should make a difference.
Rats ... the link got stripped out. Read Payton here: http://westnorth.com/2007/08/11/justifying-transit-subsidies
Luke, Those costs must be pretty well hidden. Why wouldn't the driver in Hoffman just pay his own way, and the commuter in Lincoln Park also pay his own way? Why shift costs outside of user control? The nutty transit time argument is pretty hard to justify (so if people are losing money by driving, why do they drive?) If there is a soul out there that thinks the CTA is a well run operation, please step forward. T JBP
Hidden? If so many studies are able to plum them out, they're apparently not hidden very well. The fact that you are blind to them doesn't mean they don't exist. ...Why wouldn't the driver in Hoffman just pay his own way, and the commuter in Lincoln Park also pay his own way?... Fine. Let's cut out the government and leave everything to the users. I will put my ability to lay track against your ability to spread asphalt any day of the week. ... If there is a soul out there that thinks the CTA is a well run operation, please step forward. ... Stepping forward, sir! Sure the CTA has its annoyances, but 95% of the time it is reliable and adequate. And 50% of the time it is perfect and pleasant. Now what about you? Today's Tribune cites a $4 billion economic cost of the area's congestion, with each traveler experiencing an average of 46 hours of annual delay. Have you the temerity to claim that our roadway system is a "well run operation"? Now if you'll excuse me, I have a 30-minute bicycle commute to attend to.
So if people are losing money, do they drive? They don't of course, drive to lose money. There must be some benefit to driving. The key difference between the roads and the tracks is that the roads SHOULD not require as much human intrevention as the tracks do. Humans are certainly political animals, and we get stuck with a 50% perfect (highlighted by empty bus bunching, forged records, and mindlessly scheduled) system run by politicians. Privatize it and be done with it. JBP
I don't deny that there are benefits to driving. And city snob that I am, I'll even concede there might be benefits to living in Hoffman Estates. But what the "Why should I pay for public transit?" contingent appears to deny is that there is are enormous costs to driving that is not paid by the individual drivers.* Likewise, there are enormous benefits to public transit that are enjoyed by everyone, whether they ride or not. * I again quote the ever-quotable Payton Chung: "Your gas taxes pay for roads, but they sure don’t pay for my asthma medication. (The asthma hospitalization rate for neighborhoods along the Dan Ryan is four times higher than the national average.) Gas taxes also don’t pay for fire trucks and hospital bills when a child gets run over in a hit-and-run. Gas taxes don’t pay to mitigate the 19 pounds of carbon dioxide produced by that gas — just that one cost is worth $1.61 (per gallon!) under Sweden’s carbon tax. Gas taxes don’t pay to keep aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf. Gas taxes didn’t pay for the Deep Tunnel sewer system, which was only needed after suburban sprawl paved over the whole of Cook County. Gas taxes pay for roads that could be 90% smaller if all they carried was commercial and emergency traffic. Your gas taxes and tolls, according to any fair study of 'the full costs of driving,' amount to a small fraction of what driving costs our society — the taxes should be anywhere from $1 to $5 more per gallon if they did."
The secondary and terciary effects of driving (or any other activity) are quite a bit harder to quantify than Payton Chung makes it out to be (the asthma argument being particularly spurrious). When the CTA backers cannot even face the primary issue...why does a nursing home resident in Schaumburg (for example) pay for a yuppie in Lincoln Park to zip out to Rush Street bars...the argument is pretty much moot. Fix the primary problem first. It might be suprising how quickly the secondary and terciary problems fix themselves afterwards. JBP
It's settled, then. Let's privatize every inch of transportation infrastructure in the country. And after the invisible hand sprinkles the magic fairy dust over the land, we will magically still have a functioning economy. The End.
... why does a nursing home resident in Schaumburg (for example) pay for a yuppie in Lincoln Park to zip out to Rush Street bars...the argument is pretty much moot. ... Because, like the Medicare that pays for her oxygen, public transportation is just one of myriad programs that all of society benefits from, whether individuals derive direct, personal benefit or not. I don't have children ... does that mean none of my taxes should pay for schools? Of course not. Because with all those yupppies on the train and not on the highway, she'll having a fighting chance of getting to Northwestern Hospital in time for her surgery. Because it's not just yuppies who ride the trains. It's also the hundreds of thousands of service employees who depend on it to work downtown, where thanks to the low cost of transit, her son is able to enjoy a sandwich for under $5. (Not to mention that she'd still be a spry, active member of society and not locked up in a nursing home if she'd spent more of her life biking and walking in the city instead of driving everywhere in Schaumburg. Tut, tut.) ... the asthma argument being particularly spurrious ... Explain why. You don't believe cars exacerbate asthma, or you don't believe it's expensive?
One more: Without those hundreds of thousands of yuppies choosing to make Chicago their home -- doing so precisely for its mostly functional transit system and easy access to Rush Street bars -- there would not be hundreds of thousands of yuppies making trips to IKEA. And without IKEA, would Schaumburg have a reason to exist at all?
As air pollution has been going down, asthma has been going up. Should we increase air pollution to 1980's level to get ashtma back down to 1980's levels? Luke, I understand what you are saying, but you keep making 2nd and 3rd level arguments as to why people should not pay for their own transportation. The simple question, which CTA backers always avoid, should people pay for their own transportation? Should people pay for their own housing/food/education etc? Where does it stop? JBP
"you keep making 2nd and 3rd level arguments as to why people should not pay for their own transportation." Yeah, and so? Just because you don't like the secondary and tertiary costs/benefits doesn't make them cease to exist. And if you stubbornly continue to deny them, then I guess we're at an impasse. "The simple question, which CTA backers always avoid, should people pay for their own transportation?" Avoid, my eye. The answer is a resounding no. You might as well ask, "Should people pay for their own national defense?" What serves the common good should be funded by the common purse. If you REALLY want people to "pay for their own transportation," then I'll yield to a $5 CTA fare as soon as you yield to a $6/gallon gas tax that reflects the true cost of driving. "Should people pay for their own housing/food/education etc?" Y'ever hear of public education? Home-mortgage deductions? Sugar subsidies?
I followed the logic of Mr. Byrne’s column, and although corruption is not partial to any political party here in the great state of IL, I think he was pretty much on target. Witness what just transpired down in Springfield, were the right-wing Mr. Watson cozied up with Blago and E. Jones in order to pass yet another expansion of gambling, and then failed to address the structural problems with the RTA/CTA. They didn't address the pension crises, any accountability issues, or how exactly we are going to make the necessary capitol improvements to ensure the CTA is a safe and viable asset to this city’s residents. Once again, all PR and no substance. This is the one issue were we finally have exposed all the elected officials (Rep. Hamos and a few other rank and file members of the house aside who I think genuinely made an effort to look after the common good), the unions, the civil servants...all of them have shown that their own interest trumps the interest of the constituents that they are suppose to serve. That's the Chicago/IL way.
The secondary and third level arguments are extremely hard to prove. The primary argument...the cta is incompetent and wants more money is very easy to prove.
John, I don't think I'll ever be able to convince you, and frankly I'm beyond sick of wasting my time responding to online inanity, but I come to defend my good name. I only need the asthma meds on muggy, smoggy summer days. Where does the smog come from? Car tailpipes. Who pays for that inhaler? I do and my boss does; I bicycle, he takes the 'L.' Simply put, there are internal and external costs and benefits to all actions. Driving has high internal benefits and high external costs (although you write them off, these are in fact well proven). Transit has high internal costs and high external benefits -- there are many "free riders" who gain economically from transit, even if they don't use it. Thus, transit's balance sheet looks a lot worse: its benefits mostly accrue off its own balance sheet. Some of what we as a region gain from transit is enhanced productivity and incredible land value. It's hard to untangle these benefits, but suffice to say that the existence of Chicago (and thus its suburbs) can be seen as a singular external benefit of railroads. Most of the railroad companies that serve Chicago long went bankrupt -- including the old street railway companies! -- but the properties that they gave access to have continued to appreciate in value. Hence, the world's only profitable subway system is Hong Kong's -- not coincidentally a subsidiary of a giant real estate corporation. The CTA's costs were shown by the Auditor General to be roughly in line with its peer systems, although they are rising quickly and service quality is lower. However, contract privatization (again, it's never going to make money) has not proven a panacea wherever it's been tried, whether the Hired Truck Program here or Railtrack or Metronet in the UK.
Payton, So why is it when pollution goes down, asthma goes up? Do you think there might be other things going on here that don't fit you stretched argument? The people of Peoria, for example, have absolutely no control as to the management of the CTA. It is a horribly run service, yet there is no recourse for people outside of Chicago in its management. I understand there may be some external benefits to mass transit, but no one will face the problems as long as we keep feeding it money. And private rail service worked just fine in Chicago till Harold Ickes decided he wanted to appropriate it, to politically punish Sam Insull. JBP
I've been following this, and Luke wins hands-down. You can tell by the fact that John is unable to refute his facts, whether the CTA is mismanaged isn't relevant to the question of who should pay for it.
Facts like nursing home residents should be happy to pay for Lincoln Park residents to go bar-hopping? Or reducing air pollution causes asthma? I think it is a good practice, in general for interested parties to pay their own way for most anything, rather than passing their bills onto other people. If the riders of the CTA would actually pay for the CTA, perhaps they would demand that the CTA perform better. As long as the CTA patrons can pass off the problems of the CTA to the Feds and the State, there is little incentive to improve operations. JBP
that's great John - so here's a concept for you, howabout instead of diverting $400,000,000 in property taxes each year to private developers and businesses, we put it into the CTA? it is OUR money after all, why shouldn't it support a system we all use (and even if you just drive, the CTA still helps, as without it the gridlock would be so much worse it would truly be unbearable).
Carter, Absolutely. Property taxes are completely appropriate for funding mass transport. The people that get the benefit pay the tax. Higher property values in the Loop for example merit more taxes than property in Woodstock, Illinois. Getting people to pay for things they value is a key element of bringing some market discipline on shared services like transport. JBP
