Public Transit Crisis

This week’s Chicago Reader "First Tuesdays with Maya [Dukmasova] & Ben [Joravsky]" at Nighthawk on the topic of “Public Transit Crisis” lived up to the theme. The conversation with state representative Kam Buckner and activist (and former Streetsblog reporter) Lynda Lopez touched on familiar CTA woes: the ongoing triple-whammy of sub-par cleanliness, safety, and reliability; the predicted $730 million Chicagoland transit system budget shortfall by 2026; and a punishing funding structure that keeps the system hobbled. But it was the audience Q & A where on-the-ground frustrations of riders—and CTA workers in particular—gave a pulse to the urgency of the crisis at hand.