Does Chicago Transit Funding Favor Whites?

I’ve skimmed the PDF of the suit (you can find it online), and it seems like one of the big problems it faces is alleging overt racial discrimination, as opposed to inadvertent, unequal service coinciding with racial housing patterns. So, in other words, it’s obvious that the poor, largely African-American neighborhoods of Chicago on the Southside are grossly underserved (as an aside, I’ve been living here for the past month, and the southside really is hard to get to by public transit), but what’s unclear, and perhaps unprovable, is if the CTA/RTA and other officials are consciously neglecting these areas.

Furthermore, I think the issue is deeper than a monetary cost benefit analysis can illuminate–i,e, per passenger spending spending vs. per passenger spending per mile of service misses the underlying issue of equity in coverage. To dig even deeper, I think the reality of the inequality here has to do with equity in coverage of *transit dependents*. Metra users are car owners, or have the ability to own cars. Yes, Metra ridership helps encourage urban living, sustainability, and all of that….but I think part of the problem is that the RTA is funding the privileged at the expense of those most in need of public transit–the carless, the poor, the disabled, etc.

Look, the suit is going to get thrown out. It rests on seriously shaky grounds by virtue of its claims. But it does point to a larger issue of coverage inequality.

This debate, particularly Vin’s comment, is interesting because I just read one of Harvard economist Ed Glaeser’s articles unimaginatively titled “Why do the poor live in cities?” Looking at intra-metro variation, he claims that the poor cluster in cities (relative to suburbs) because of better transportation access. Basically, he claims that the poor make the rational decision to sort themselves where they have the best access to transportation. I think looking at city vs. suburb as opposed to intra-urban (i.e. between neighborhood) variation is a real problem with this study that the CTA lawsuit brings to light.

I also just read another classic piece in transport planning by Thomas Sanchez arguing for the employment benefit of transit–that those with access to public transit had better employment outcomes relative to those without. This seems to support the “are they poor because they lack access” argument. Still, underserved communities are constantly fighting for better access, the Fairmount/Indigo Coalition being one example in Boston, which supports the “they are underserved because they are poor” argument.

So, I guess what I mean to say here is that the relationship between poverty and transit access isn’t fully understood. The causes may be a bit of a chicken & egg situation, but our policy moving forward is a bit more straightforward, if we follow a pro-urban, sustainable, equity in coverage framework.

“Access” is more than geography of rail lines. Just try getting to Hyde Park from the loop–it’s a pain because the 55 runs irregularly and infrequently. The difference is stark if we compare a ride from, say, Lakeview to the Loop, which is about equidistant in miles.

The question is not only if you have a rail stop close to you, but additionally how regular service is and how efficiently it can take people to areas of employment, social services, etc.

Englewood and other southside neighborhoods’ relative isolation compared to Wrigelyville, Lincoln Park, etc is pretty intuitive if you travel around the city at all.

What’s needed is a “passenger trips” method of calculating usage. Passenger-miles always overstate the importance of suburban rail because of the large distances involved. Why should one passenger’s 40 mile trip be as important as 40 passengers’ one mile trips? Similarly, passenger boardings inflates the importance of short lines where passengers must transfer to another mode of transit.

Also flawed is with the idea that we should value passenger trips that are pulled from car trips higher than passenger trips transferred from busses or other forms of mass transit. Simply because the bus passenger has already made the decision to take public transit, doesn’t make them any less deserving of faster, more reliable options.

The focus needs to be on getting the most people where they need to go for the least money. Transit funding that encourages people to live closer to their destinations is something that should be encouraged, not discouraged.

While I find it unfortunate that race is being used to further this argument, I agree that the systems should be built based on ridership, not politics.

here’s the lawsuit: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/21402794/1%206%2010%20Munguia%20v%20IDOT

Passenger-miles don’t vote. Passengers do.

Yonah analyses by ridership and by mileage, but you could also analyse by population. Are the non-CTA areas getting more than their per-capita share of total service costs? (Yes, you can argue about how to assign commuter rail between them, but I’d argue for assigning it all to the suburbs since that’s where its purpose lies.)

I’m not advocating the population-based analysis, only pointing out that existing ridership isn’t the only valid metric.

“We shouldn’t measure past decisions only by today’s values.”

But aren’t we discussing where the money should go not where it went? The suit is arguing that commuter lines are currently being funded at a disproportional rate.

“Because the value of trips generally increases with their length. People wouldn’t make longer trips if they got the same benefit from shorter ones. Therefore, longer trips are more valuable.”

For an individual person or a neighbourhood, the value of a trip made likely does increase with length. But the claim breaks down when you compare, say, urban with suburban areas — the latter has much higher trip lengths without higher utility. It’s certainly a doubtful conclusion that person A gets a higher value from their trips than person B just because person A has longer trips on average. And everyone else is likely to get a worse deal from A’s longer trips due to the externalities and infrastructure and servicing costs.

AndyDuncan: “I find it unfortunate that race is being used to further this argument.” ???

I wrote a much longer response. But, PEOPLE. Racism isn’t just the overt kind where white people snub everyone else in writing; there’s also institutional racism, which may not be a conscious action, but is just as real. It’s what happens when there’s a long history of white people holding power over what the transportation landscape looks like, and when the basic assumptions the people in power are making (like whether the person with the longer commute somehow counts more, eh hem) more often come from a privileged perspective.

It does not matter if there were no racist intentions; if one group of people gets screwed more than another group of people, that’s worth trying to redress, especially when it just so happens that the people getting screwed have a long history of being oppressed by the other group. And until there isn’t economic and geographic disparity between racial backgrounds, it’s worth looking into what kind of funding different places get.

Sure, it’s important to ask what else might be going on and there’s a lot of nuance to be added. The point about suburban and urban taxes is very interesting. But I’m getting the feeling that some people here are dismissing the claim of institutional racism as somewhat flippant, and I simply cannot abide by that.

“This is not an argument for letting passenger-km vote. It’s an argument that passenger-km are a better proxy for revenue than passengers.”

I can’t make any sense of these statements.

“For commuting purposes, the value of a person who’s chosen to live 30 kilometers outside the city is no higher than the value of a person who lives in the city.”

Nonsense. The most common benefit of longer commutes is lower housing costs. Housing is generally cheaper in suburbs than in central cities. Why do you think people are willing to put up with longer commutes if they don’t get any benefit from them?

You could be right if the argument were political. But it’s a legal argument, and a well-founded racism charge is often the only way to convince a judge to modify the situation. A political argument would go nowhere because people in the suburbs are not going to stop hogging transportation subsidies voluntarily.

Fair enough.

Actually Alon, from your description the answer is Yes. Subsidising white flight by overspending on sprawl infrastructure is economic racism IMO.
As to Chicago, the history is very clear.

It bears on the question of how best to measure transportation benefit in this context. “Passenger-miles” is a better measure than “passengers” or “trips” because it reflects the greater benefit of longer trips.

And “revenue” is a better measure because it reflects actual benefits, not a proxy for benefits…

But in terms of subsidy, the value of a trip is no longer relevant. Good government doesn’t discriminate in terms of people’s value of themselves. What you’re asking is for transit subsidies to be decided based on the same criteria that the Titanic officers used to decide who should get to go on the lifeboats first.

And in terms of good transit, the profitable transit agencies of the world – the MTR, the Tokyo subway operators, JR, the various private railroads in Japan – report passengers first, or only. Passenger-km they report for intercity trips. So your views aren’t just bad morality – they’re bad transit efficiency.

Well, look at Labor-Community Startegy Center vs. LA County MTA. A Title VI lawsuit was successful there. There is precedent for imposing a “consent decree” on agencies, which could mean, for example, a fare freeze on CTA and a program to increase fares on Metra to a court-ordered level.

You can measure revenue relative to expenses, i.e. farebox recovery. In most parts of the US, it’s higher for subways than for commuter rail.

The Titanic comment isn’t silly at all – that’s what happens when decisions are made based on assigning different values to different people.

I’ve also looked at the National Transit Database profiles of the CTA, Metra and even Pace, which is apparently not a party in the suit. All are 2007 data, the most current available.

The suit doesn’t address the cost gap of these services.

First, farebox recovery isn’t much help. Chicago’s urban services and Metra both earn 41% recovery. CTA’s prodigious revenues are very impressive for such a large bus system.

Metra charges fares according to zoned distances. CTA on the other hand charges a flat fare regardless of distance traveled, as is common on most systems.

On the other hand, “local funds” are proportionally much larger on Metra (also 41%) than CTA (27%). In real numbers, though, CTA still collects $307 million while Metra collects $222 million.

This is where the point of contention would likely stem in the subsidy discrimination issue. Yet this alone does not adequately establish discrimination. Metra’s subsidies don’t indicate what portion of its riders are black or Latino, or how many Chicago city riders reverse commute to destinations in the suburbs. Removing money from Metra would hurt a similar rider cohort.

CTA, though, collects much more state and federal funds proportionally and in real dollars than Metra. This could also imply that Metra uses up more local subsidies than CTA because it either forgoes or is ineligible for state and federal funding.

There is also an “other funds” category for both, but these might be service-specific grants or other monies that cannot be reallocated.

When it comes to service, there’s a wide gulf between costs in both systems.

Metra’s operating expense per boarding is $6.58, with more than 74 million annual unlinked trips. CTA’s bus and rail services both get $2.82, with nearly half a billion unlinked trips annually.

Yet the cost per passenger mile is extreme. Metra posts a 29 cent per pass/mile expense. CTA’s rail services post a 48 cent per pass/mile expense. CTA’s buses, which would be the most likely to be expanded in the lawsuit, post a massive $1.14 per pass/mile expense.

How would a CTA bus costing almost 4 times more to run be resolved in the case? Is it fair to cut 4 pass/miles of Metra service to pay for 1 pass/mile of CTA bus service?

The other elephant in the room is operating expenses. Payroll is 69% of Metra’s expenses, but 80% of CTA’s.

Pace, meanwhile, limps along with a 24% farebox recovery and zero local funding support. What are the racial and income compositions of Pace riders for local services?

It needs $4.13 for every bus boarding, but has an operating expense of 61 cents per pass/mile. Pace relies on private contractors to provide a great deal of service, so wages are lower. Payroll is only 58% of total operating costs, the best out of all 3.

The inclusion of Pace implies that Chicago has considerable bloat in its operations expenses. The service cuts have largely to do with its payroll outlays and high pass/mile operating costs.

Metra can’t be held at fault for bus service being so darn expensive within Chicago. Pace proves that fact.

Plus, Pace has a mix of directly operated and contract-operated transportation. A majority of Pace’s buses are operated in-house, which are likely more expensive to run than contract services.

So does this mean that the plaintiffs’ restitution may hinge upon running very expensive service as a legal remedy? Or does this mean CTA can defend itself by pleading that it’s mismanaged?

No on both counts. But it does show the challenges of trying to mesh legal demands with the costs and provisions of real-world service.

Jeremy, why would you take the 55 Garfield to either the Green or Red Lines and then to the loop when you can take the 6, X28 or 2 directly downtown (to the loop) or the IC (granted out of system)?

But yes, the south side is poorly served compared to the north (it’s also much larger and has lots of open areas in the far SE regions of the city).

Jim, most instances of US racial inequality today come from preserving ideas from 100+ years ago that had no racial component to them, but are now useful in keeping minorities in their place.

For example, the district-based system of funding education was not meant to exclude blacks; at the time it was instituted, the South had segregated schools and the rest of the country had too few blacks for anyone to care. But beginning in the 1950s, the white middle class moved to the suburbs to avoid sharing school districts with blacks, and then ensured that inner-city school districts couldn’t annex suburban territory as they did before the system was so racialized.

For another example, many states keep laws on the books disenfranchising ex-felons in order to keep blacks off the voter rolls. Those laws date to the 19th century, when blacks couldn’t vote anyway, which is why the Supreme Court has not struck them down; however, the intent today in keeping these laws is racial, as witnessed by the racial fearmongering that comes whenever someone tries to reform the system.

Where to begin? As a Chicago resident I think the plaintiffs are on very solid ground. There is a funding formula, and it systematically screws the CTA. Ever since the 1983 deal that bailed out transit in the Chicago area, the CTA has received 59 percent of RTA operational subsidies, even though it accounts for 82 percent of ridership. Metra gets 27 percent of funding, for 12 percent of riders. One consequence is that we have really very cheap commuter rail fares. But there’s another story lurking behind the headline figures.

That is the sales tax pattern that funds RTA. For a long time, it was one percent in Cook County and 0.25 percent in the collar counties. In 2008, due to the long-term trend toward decreasing sales tax revenues that has been completely ignored by Illinois politicians, those tax rates were changed: 1.25 percent in Cook; and a combination 0.75 percent in the collar counties, two-thirds for the RTA, and one-third to be spent on either local transportation or local public safety at the county board’s discretion. (Illinois sales tax goes disproportionately on goods, and almost totally ignores services, and so is in decline because a) consumption has trended strongly towards services over the past 30 years and b) taxing goods as heavily as we do simply encourages people to do mail order.)

Note that Cook revenue pattern. It’s a countywide tax. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the CTA, as the city and about 40 adjoining suburbs are, or outside of it. It’s still the same tax rate. Cook County outside the CTA is the area that is therefore getting most screwed, as they’re paying for Chicago levels of service and not getting it. That’s not to diminish the south side situation, which is just as bad in its own way as the outer Cook situation and in some respects worse as a large proportion of inner city residents don’t have the kind of access to a car that people in, say, Barrington do. It simply points out that south side minorities aren’t the only ones getting screwed. And to add spice to the situation, there’s a substantial area in south Cook County that are as devoid of CTA service as Barrington, and as poor and minority as the inner city. That’s where you’ll find the people who are truly getting screwed the most, Thornton Township, places like that.

Last point for now, an important bit of history. One of the big problems for south side transit users is the lack of connectivity between rail lines. As the Illinois Central (Metra Electric) was downgraded after the second world war, it became, at least off-peak, less like a rapid transit line and more like conventional commuter rail. It easily has the capacity to turn back into rapid transit, if only it would be used. But getting people to use it means connecting it with other lines, such as the CTA. And two black pastors on south 63rd street, Arthur Brazier and Leon Finney, managed to destroy that opportunity in 1997 by prevailing upon the CTA to demolish the newly renovated connection on the Green Line between Cottage Grove and the Metra Electric at Dorchester. Brazier, of the First Apostolic Church of God megachurch right on 63rd street, had real estate interests along 63rd street, and both were/are of a generation that’s still stuck in a very suburban mindset. They were genuinely convinced that the el tracks on 63rd drew crime (there are no empirical data that I know of that backs that up, however), and they decided the way to redevelop the street was with suburban style homes rather than in an urban form. So down went the tracks, due to a combination of conflicts of interest, a weak-willed CTA board whose decision making was entirely driven by a handful of people in Woodlawn rather than the needs of the South Side as a whole, and a 1950s suburban mindset on the part of the developer-pastors. It cost less than $10 million to renovate the old tracks; demolishing the newly renovated tracks required the CTA to reimburse the federal government for matching funds and for the proposed Dorchester transfer station; doing it over now would be hundreds of millions. But some kind of extension of the Green Line to Metra Electric is vital on all sorts of counts; making rail transit viable on the South Side; connecting Hyde Park to more African American neighborhoods, and above all making Woodlawn the hub it once was.

Alon –

Whites fleeing the city because, all of the sudden, black people showed up in 1955 is the popular narrative. Having lived through it, the reality was something different. whites had been leaving the city for 20 years- to larger, modern housing that was subsidized by federal and state governments on nearly every level – before the riots of the late 60’s/early 70’s that sparked the mass exodus of more whites (in certain neighborhoods). With governments divesting from urban areas and government(s) practically paying people to move to the ‘burbs it would’ve happened eventually anyway.

In fact, wealthy and upper-middle class whites had been leaving the city since the advent of passenger rail. Go no further than Riverside, IL, ca. 1868, with Olmsted himself writing that the brownstone was “really a confession that it is impossible to build a tasteful and convenient residence in [the city] adapted to the civilized requirements of a single family, except at a cost which even rich men find prohibitive.” Even the more modest middle class had been fleeing the central city since the advent of the streetcar. There has been an anti-urban streak in this country going back a lot longer than Eisenhower’s interstate.

When most of my extended family (and most of our neighbors) were leaving Flatbush for greener pastures in Staten Island, Long Island and NJ it had nothing to do with black people. The neighborhood was almost entirely Jewish, Irish and Italian. First and foremost, it had to do with the crummy apartments that most people were living in and the seduction of a new house and yard that they could call their own. The demographics of the neighborhood only started to change a good 15 years after the exodus began.

The reasons urban blacks were stranded while our cities were falling down around them is partly due to a lack of employment based, economic mobility (read: employer racism) and partly due to racist housing policy and practice and partly because many of them were still arriving from the south as industry and capital was leaving the city (and the country for that matter).

Now, if you can bring that all back to a 120 year old rapid-transit system and an even older commuter rail network in Chicago (and the suggested intrinsic racism) I’d be much obliged.

Indeed all that is needed to implement the Gray Line are some faregates/TVMs and a few T/Os to run the tighter headway trains. Extending Metra Electric density to Hegewisch will cost a bit more money to clean up the Kensington bottleneck. All of this is cheap, relatively easy and has the advantage of short term results. Repairing the stupidity on 63rd sadly is not likely, although if the Green line were extended west to Midway, getting the connectivity to Metra would become obvious.
I have read that Metra is considering restoration of stations on the Rock Island which haven’t been served in decades–Englewood, 47th(?), and 35th.

FG > “The Gray Lines biggest problem, which is never adequately addressed by it’s supporters, is the street running of the South Chicago Branch – increasing frequencies would create gridlock (the comparisons the the yellow – very quick and low frequency, as well as major streets grade separated and the end of the brown with grade crossings, again with no major street crossings) on the very busy south side streets (Jeffrey, Stony Island – an eight lane boulevard, etc) which more frequent trains would cause is not truly addressed in these proposals”.

Mike >> While this is of course the second decade of the 21st Century, from the 1920’s to the 50’s the South Chicago Branch ran with MUCH MORE frequent IC train service. Some small street crossings would be closed; and I don’t think more frequent trains would cause that much congestion on the busy streets, it certainly would not cause any gridlock – I know – I used to lived there.
Even trains every 5 minutes crossing Stony Island at 71st St. could not cause half the congestion that exists at the six-way Stony Island/79th St./South Chicago Ave. intersection one mile south which has no rail crossing at all.

FG > “And of course, there would still be no direct connection into the CTA’s rail system – not even a tranfer corridor – the el is a block and a half away downtown and the closet subway a block further”.

Mike >> True, there would be no direct physical connection, but there would be charge-less fare card connections downtown like Orange Line to Red Line at State & Lake or Library/State & Van Buren.

FG > “Plus all the headache it would cause at the downtown stations – having to add a third operators fare control and platforms (Randolph/Millennium has separate platforms) downtown and at transfer stations. And of course, lots of people were happy to have the turnstyles removed about five (or six) years ago as it is”.

Mike >> ALL CTA ‘L’ stations have turnstyles (and are manned during all train operating hours), this would be a new CTA ‘L’ line, so it would be no different. Question: Do you think that the stations on the new Red Line extension will have turnstyles?

And the headaches I think are far less than the $2 billion cost of building a completely new 22 mile rail infrastructure to use CTA ‘L’ type cars.

DBX wrote:

Where to begin? As a Chicago resident I think the plaintiffs are on very solid ground. There is a funding formula, and it systematically screws the CTA.

CTA is screwing CTA just about as much as the RTA’s funding allocation to it.

The plaintiffs will have a problem if they win the case.

The remedy will be an increase of bus service to the underserved black and Latino population of Chicago. First, there has to be a definition of who fits into the population, and second, how will the money be distributed.

The other problem is that whatever services — most likely, buses — will be restored, 80 cents of every dollar earned as a remedy will go into CTA’s payroll.

This is in all probability what was the driving (no pun intended) factor behind the cuts. CTA may very well go to court and say it had to cut its most expensive (highest cost to lowest productivity ratio) services.

As you said about Metra taking an outsized portion of subsidies for a small percentage of ridership, it takes 41% of local funds because for some reason, it’s rather lightly subsidized by the state and the feds. CTA collects more state and federal subsidies to make up for the proportionally smaller local share.

The poor service in low-income/minority jurisdictions outside the CTA coverage area poses a problem. Is CTA, at least its buses, confined to the Chicago city limits? (The urban rail services leave the city.)

The lawsuit wouldn’t address this issue, as Pace, the non-Chicago bus service, is not a party to the suit. The allegations state racial discrimination for black and Latino residents of the city of Chicago.

“Indeed all that is needed to implement the Gray Line are some faregates/TVMs and a few T/Os to run the tighter headway trains. ”

Plus refurbishment of the stations. They are often suffering from severely decayed concrete (in need of repair) and need ADA elevators/ramps and platform edges.

That’s still not very expensive. And it should have been done YEARS ago. The GREY LINE is just something which should have been in place decades ago. The grade crossings in South Chicago are not an issue, as the traffic there really isn’t that high.

It’s Metra which is engaging in ‘transit racism’ — its investments seem to be going everywhere *but* the minority-majority Chicago stations. Moving money from Metra to CTA would probably benefit people overall, but if the issue is institutional racism, the suit should have targeted Metra directly rather than the RTA.