CTA and bikes

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Permalink Reply by Joel on August 26, 2011 at 3:27pm

Running more trains means hiring more conductors.  Fewer, longer, fuller trains are the most economical.  I would love to see more frequent trains, regardless of bike service.  

 

To make it likely that you can even get a bike on, you need to carry along an extra empty car, or half a car, on every train if you want room for bikes.  The cars need fewer seats and larger doors to work efficiently.  Of course that means new cars which can't be moved over to passenger transport quickly.

 

I would say that a bike takes up the space of at least 3 people, at least when it comes to maneuvering one on and off the train.  That is less room for paying passengers.  Would you be willing to pay a 2x fare premium to bring on a bike?  It still wouldn't be a full fare in effect.  

 

What is the cost-benefit ratio of adding enough extra capacity for bikes?  How many new people would start riding?  Does it come anywhere near making fiscal sense?  

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Jared on August 26, 2011 at 3:29pm

The CTA isn't a business.  The $2.25 fare you pay doesn't fully cover their operating costs, only a portion of it.  Spreading their business amongst more cars is going to cost them money, even if they gain a few more customers.

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on August 26, 2011 at 3:41pm

The CTA wants to buy a bunch more cars because many of them are "old and cruddy."

 

Those old cars seem like the PERFECT thing to strip out inside and leave open for us bikers.  I don't care if it is beat up inside.  Pushing bikes in and out of the doors and banging them around is going to beat the crap out of the cars anyhow.  Might as well start out beat up.  Just strip out the seats and they are done other than putting a sign on the outside saying "bike car."

 

God forbid they hire a few new skilled conductors.  It's not like we are facing a surplus of good jobs in this city.  It's not a business and it is not run like one -that is WHY it looses so darn much money.  If they made some SMART business-like moves like acting to increase ridership they'd get more money.  It becomes cheaper to run the system with every extra passenger.  Right now the CTA is not operating at the break-even point because ridership is too low.    God forbid they actually fix that and make a better mass-transit system.  God forbid they move beyond the break-even point and actually be able to LOWER FARES as an economy of scale works in their favoer.

 

If we wanted to save as much money lets just shut the whole darn CTA down.  We'd save a TON of money that way...

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Joel on August 26, 2011 at 3:57pm

Hiring more CTA employees, adding services, modifying trains, etc. means more taxes.  

 

The CTA is never going to run like a for-profit business because you can't run a transit network profitably unless you only serve a few select areas.  They could cut service to the south and west sides and start to break even, maybe. Currently the fares are much too low, probably less than half of what they should be, to cover costs.  Every public transit network is heavily subsidized.  

 

Of course, automobiles are nearly as subsidized.  If we added more tolls, more than quadrupled the fuel tax, and increased fees it might start to cover the cost of the road network.  If automobile users paid the full cost, a significantly higher transit fare might be more appealing.  

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on August 26, 2011 at 3:59pm

that is not necessarily true.  If the ridership were increased beyond the break-even point the CTA would not only be self-supporting, but they could actually lower fares -which would, in turn, further increase ridership as more people would be willing to take mass-transit if it were more affordable. 

 

Joel said:

Hiring more CTA employees, adding services, modifying trains, etc. means more taxes.  

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