Nicky Cheese

Coming from the CTA Tattler: “Funding woes got you down? Ride the Santa Train!”.

Really?

Riding the Santa Train will help alleviate my CTA-related worries? Supporting a completely unnecessary expenditure — cited in 2004 to cost about $200,000 by then-president Frank Kruesi — will extinguish my concerns of the endless doomsday-bailout-doomsday-bailout cycle?

Or, maybe just inflate them…

Call me crazy, but I think the CTA needs a heavy dose of internal reform, a sort that — yes — goes beyond getting rid of the Santa Train. Something like what our friends at the Illinois Policy Institute having been touting for some time now. A couple weeks ago, the Chicago Tribune cited their work in an article by Dennis Byrne entitled, “No guts in Springfield, no transit fix”.

Great stuff. Like I said, it talks about internal reform. Not simply relying on external revenue sources as Illinois lawmakers have been proposing — most recently Mike Madigan via casinos. No, these are meaningful, sustainable solutions. The cessation of expansion projects. Using competitive contracting and independent audits. Yes, even increasing fares and cutting some buses.

So how about it Springfield? Give free markets a chance! Hey, once that happens, for all I care every train can be a Santa Train.