Harvey, Ill. – Winfred Wilson was struggling to reach the end of the month in less than $ 700 per month, so he moved with his daughter, resigned from his car and began to depend exclusively on public transport to take him where he would need to cross the Chicago. South suburbs.
While waiting for a bus connection in his hometown of Harvey on a recent trip to the grocery store, Wilson greeted family travelers regularly through the key transport center that serves one of the poorest areas in the region. Many, he said, find little resistance from drivers when they address Without paying.
“People in rich neighborhoods, have cars and personal transport, but do not want to be trapped in the peak time,” Wilson said. “We couldn’t live without that.”
Public transport agencies in the United States have been deal with a fiscal cliff stimulated by the number of passengers and the imminent federal setting Covid-19 relief financing. The Chicago area faces particularly bleak service cuts that officials warn that they could start up as soon as Saturday if Illinois legislators postpone without connecting a $ 770 million hole in the transport budget.
The travelers of the big city would be affected strongly, with the Chicago Transit Authority ready to close four of the eight elevated train lines and 74 of 127 bus routes in the worst case. But perhaps no place illustrates the rank of potential results more vividly than Curmudgeonwhose mayor, Christopher Clark, a lifetime resident, says that it was “Southland’s metropolis” before plants and factories closed and divestment seized.
Already the most busy station for PACE, the suburban bus system in the region that also serves Parratransito clients, Harvey recently earned money from state and federal subsidies for an avant -garde installation that would place buses under the same roof as the Metra Cailer Stop AA railway a block. The plans eventually require a high -speed bus line that connects the Harvey station with the Red Line L train that crosses the Downtown Chicago Loop.
Such update could be an economic blessing for Harvey, where companies are now vacancies in almost all blockages of the center and where more than 1 in 4 residents live below the poverty line. But even if the new station is built, finishing or cutting off the buses and trains that pass could be sent to the city staggering in the opposite direction.
“It would be chaos for us in the suburbs,” said Cheyane Felton, after finishing his turn in a coffee stand in the basement of the Harvey City Council. “I would cut us.”
Without additional state funds, PACE could be forced to stop buses in Harvey and in other places on weekends and after 8 pm Monday through Friday, said executive director Melinda Metzger.
“The disadvantage of this is disastrous,” he said in an interview at Harvey Stop. “I would be reducing their service by at least 40%, without giving people viable trips. They could go to work, but they could have a night change and cannot get home, so passenger will also collapse to match the service cuts.”
The main public transport agencies throughout the country have had different degrees of success by pressing their legislatures to obtain more support with federal emergency funds that will expire at the end of the year.
Maybe no place reflects the current situation of Chicago more than Philadelphia that faces a budget deficit of transport of $ 213 million next year, even after the governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro authorized redirect part of the state road money to mass transport. In the absence of more funds, passengers could see a 20% increase in rates, a curfew of 9 pm, and the elimination of 50 bus routes and five of the eight regional railway lines, said the transport authority of Southeast of Pennsylvania.
New York governor Kathy Hochul signed a Rescue package in 2023 to help finance the subway and bus of New York City. She also opened a new important source of traffic income through the implementation of congestion price For drivers in Manhattan, but it remains to be seen if the new tolls will survive the threats of the administration of President Donald Trump to close them.
Boston, San Francisco, Washington, DC., And many other traffic dependent cities have also been fighting to avoid the main cuts.
“Without funds without reform” has been a common mantra among the legislators of Illinois who work to make a solution for the Chicago traffic crisis before leaving Springfield on Saturday at the end of their regular session.
Technically, the money is not exhausted until the end of the year, and it is likely that there is a veto session that could provide another opportunity in a 11 -hour rescue. But transport officials say they will have to start designing the specific cuts next week if the financing does not arrive by then.
“It is not a light switch that we can turn on or off,” said Leanne Redden, Executive Director of the Regional Transportation Authority, which supervises the planning and financing of the traffic agencies of the area. “Even if we find funds at a future point, it is a slow process to relax.”
Until now, there have been no important advances in financing, although a commitment arose this week to create a new umbrella organization that, among other things, would ensure that the various agencies work in unison instead of how competitors for the clients themselves.
“They should be able to go up and go where they want to go, and that has not been happening with the government that we have had so far,” Governor JB Pritzker saying.
Chicago traffic agencies argue that they are more efficient than their peers in other states and overvalue with a smaller part of state funds.
Clark, the mayor of Harvey, said he still imagines that his community benefits from the economic promise of a new traffic installation instead of supporting disappointment once again.
“I guess some people want to paint an image that is a nuclear armoredon or something,” he said. “I cannot paint that image because I have to continue with the hope that we get what we need to obtain in due time. The government is a long game.”
