When Mayor Daley says, “Ours is a 1920s system. It’s costly and inefficient,” you’d be excused for thinking he’s talking about local government.
Instead, it’s the CTA, which the mayor has suddenly realized is a mess.
This afternoon he announced that the agency will borrow and bond its way to improving service. This will be welcome news to riders who have watched the transit system deteriorate dramatically over the two decades Daley has been in office, and perplexing news to everyone wondering why Daley has been unable to find a management team interested in doing this before now.
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Dan Kelley says:
I have been reading history books as of late. Chicago's transit troubles have been continual. The street cars (horse drawn, belt driven and electric), and the elevated trains have been a source of constant problems for more than a century. Apart from band aid fixes and short term solutions, nothing has worked as the system has limped from Mayors John Hopkins to Carter Harrison to Edward Dunne to Bill Thompson to Ed Kelly to Martin Kennelly to the present day. Nobody cares about fixing the system, the politicians simply want to reshuffle and cut the cards or to slice the new pie in a million different new pieces.