CTA: No fare increases; Fare reduction through discount cards

CTA: No fare increases; Fare reduction through discount cards

Chicago Transit Authority officials cite more riders, sound management and high technology as their reasons for no fare increases next year, even while they upgrade service and vehicles.

"Our operating house is in order, as well as our capital side," CTA Board Chairman Valerie Jarrett said Thursday in presenting the transit company's $869 million operating budget for 2001.

Chicago's transit agency is the only one in the U.S. that uses fare-card technology on both its bus and rail systems, and the payoff for riders is actually lower travel costs, CTA said, being only 42 percent of them use cash.

CTA charges $75 for its 30 Day Pass, down from $88 two years ago, and the agency offers service for any 30-day period now, instead of requiring use of the pass from the first to the last day of the month. Its 7 Day Pass at $20 offers unlimited use, making it, CTA said, a great deal for riders.

Referring to CTA's good financial condition, Chicago Defender Publisher Colonel Eugene Scott told Jarrett during a meeting Thursday, "One of the things we've noted with amazement is what resources will do for improved service."

CTA President Frank Kruesi said, "There's a connection between how we do things financially and how we renovate. When riders feel what we're doing day in and day out results in their being treated well, customers respond in a positive way."

For example, he said, research shows that when CTA operators pick up trash on their vehicles, customers notice it and less littering results.

"It's an exciting thing," he said.

CTA's customer-friendly policy results, Jarrett said, from management's awareness that for many of its 1.5 million weekday riders, CTA is the only way they can travel. Holding fares at current rates for a tenth consecutive year is meaningful to customers, she said.

Next year's operating budget increase of $28 million represents a rise of 3.3 percent as officials expect ridership to increase by 3.4 percent and revenues to rise by 2.6 percent. The budget includes $427 million in improvements through CTA's five-year capital plan. It will result in renovation on the Cermak (Douglas) Branch of the Blue Line and capacity expansion on the Brown Line.

Kruesi said one of management's greatest challenges is how to tailor transit services to businesses whose workers change shifts and create sudden, temporary ridership increases.

"We need to make sure we shift service to getting people to and from work," he said. "CTA used to say, "`We're providing bus service, but now we look to the community to serve its needs."

He said, "CTA is no longer aloof and separate. Many of our office, housing and beach turnarounds show we designed a more coherent set of services."

Jarrett talked history, too.

"When I joined the CTA board five years ago, the agency's financial outlook was grim," she said. "Because we've been careful and creative with our spending, we've been able to make improvements in our service and still keep fares low. We want to continue with that strategy."

Kruesi said, "We're certainly not perfect, but we're getting a lot better."

One way it will get better is by putting 200 new, air-conditioned buses on the streets and renovating more than 200 old buses over the course of the next year.

"We'll go to a fleet of fully air-conditioned buses within a couple of years," he said. "Now on an average weekday, a million riders use buses, and half of them on a hot summer day won't be on an air-conditioned bus. Some of the buses are 18 years old, although a bus becomes obsolete in 12 years."

In 1983, he said, 80 percent of customers were bus riders, and last year that portion fell to two-thirds of CTA users.

"The erosion of our bus riders is easiest to fix, and next month for the first time since 1985 there will be new buses. A hundred-fifty by early 2001 will be added, and after that, 160 new buses per year."

CTA will continue to test ways to cut down on bunching, through a program that will enable some bus drivers to make route adjustments when they see problems.

"A preeminent problem is trying to space our buses," Kruesi said. "In congested traffic, there will be operator empowerment, enabling drivers to self-direct on 21 or 22 routes."

"The CTA is faced with a wonderful problem," Jarrett said. "It is that people are rediscovering transit. Ridership is higher, both for choice riders and for people who have no choice."

Article Copyright Sengstacke Enterprises, Inc.

Photo (Valerie Jarrett)