Emanuel remains ambitious in his final months serving in his mayoral post

I’ll say one thing for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel – he’s an ambitious S-O-B.

EMANUEL: Won't depart a failure

He’s not seeking re-election, and in fact the process of picking his replacement is now underway. People interested in mayoral politics are focused on the dozens of people with dreams of replacing Rahm.

EMANUEL IS ABOUT as “lame” a duck as one can be. Not exactly someone who’s capable of going out with a “bang,” because most people are determined to ignore anything he says or thinks.

Yet perhaps it’s just evidence of the political-style “fighter” he always was. The guy once nicknamed “Rahm-bo” isn’t going to let himself be turned irrelevant.

And he also seems determined to impose policy changes for Chicago’s betterment; although I have no doubt there will be critics of everything Emanuel suggests – particularly if they’re the type who’ve been complaining about him for the past just under eight years that Rahm served as mayor.

Just the other night, I happened to be in attendance at a suburban City Council meeting where the focus of discussion amongst those aldermen was Emanuel. Let’s just say that Rahm’s name most definitely was taken in vain.

WHAT IRRITATED THOSE suburban municipal officials? Gas prices.

For it was on Tuesday that Emanuel suggested an increase in the gasoline tax – possibly 20 to 30 cents more per gallon, to help raise money for mass transit and road improvements.

By the way, the mayor isn’t talking about having Chicago raise its gas taxes. He’s talking about having the entirety of Illinois do so.

Which makes sense, in one way. If this were merely a Chicago city gas tax hike, it would balloon the price of gasoline at Chicago-based fueling stations so high that no one would ever buy gasoline again in the city.

MAKE IT A statewide thing, and you wouldn’t have such a drastic gas price differential that motorists would find it worth their while to drive out to suburban gas stations in order to load up their tanks on the petrol that enables them to function.

But while Emanuel has some suburban municipal officials on his side, there are others grossly offended. Mainly because they know their local voters will hate the idea of anything that makes gasoline prices go higher.

Usually, the local politicos can make outlandish claims about Arab oil sheikhs enriching themselves. They certainly don’t want anybody doing anything that would make it appear as though blame should be placed locally for rising gas prices.

Particularly since it isn’t just Chicago that has municipal elections come February and April of 2019 – just about every suburb has a mayoral post up for grabs. I don’t doubt many local political people will want to see this suggested gas tax hike fail.

IT ISN’T JUST gas that gets Emanuel worked up. He followed up that idea with suggestions that marijuana be legalized (and taxed, appropriately) and a casino opened in the city. All to try to raise money to pay off a public pension debt that has risen into the billions of dollars.

Those are both issues that will stir up a stink amongst some people in good times. They’d be a test of one’s political strength.

Yet Emanuel is trying to do them at a time when he’s on his way out the door and most people would rather he just pipe down! Does Rahm have the political skill to get any of these goals accomplished? Can he overcome those people who would consider it their own political goal to see Emanuel leave office a failure?

Or perhaps we should consider one other outcome – some of these issues eventually get enacted, but not quickly enough for a “Mayor Emanuel” to be able to take credit. How many might support a Chicago casino, for example, if it means Emanuel’s mayoral successor gets to take credit?

  -30-

Losing yet another tie to Chicago’s past

I must confess to turning a year older today, so perhaps it’s only appropriate that I get all nostalgic over something that I’m sure many people would think totally trivial.

Soon to be history. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

I can’t help but think there’s a loss to the Chicago Transit Authority’s ‘el’ station downtown at Randolph and Wabash streets, which officially closes to the public following this week.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE some sarcastic types will quip that we’re lucky the ‘el’ platform didn’t collapse due to age and decay before the wrecking crews could get around to demolishing it.

Now a part of the reason I feel some sort of affinity for this particular downtown transit stop is that it is a mere block from the Metra Electric commuter trains that I have lived significant portions of my life from.

Which means a trip into downtown would put me right at the Millennium Park site (even though back when I was a kid, no one would have conceived of such a grand park in place of the railroad yards that still exist underneath the park grounds.

The outside view that someday will no longer be

The point was that I have made many trips that involved taking a Metra Electric train, then transferring over to an ‘el’ train at Randolph and Wabash. And if you’re in the city already but not on the South Side, the Randolph and Wabash station was a location that put you near the Marshall Fields’ of old (now Macy’s, which just doesn’t feel the same), State Street’s shopping district in general and just another block away from the Daley Center courthouse (with the Picasso), then City Hall and the Thompson Center state government building.

Trump will no longer loom over Randolph

MY POINT IS that the ‘el’ station feels like a fairly prominent spot for people traveling throughout the area.

Now I don’t know exactly how old that particular ‘el’ station is – although it has the feel of many decades approaching a full century. It has the feel of a place that has experienced first-hand the history of Chicago.

I often wonder if the people who now go about speculating ridiculously about the chances they would get shot by gang members on Chicago streets while waiting for an ‘el’ train at the station are the great-grandchildren of people who waited at the exact same ‘el’ stop, wondering if they were going to get caught in the crossfire of violence by the Capone mob?

My point being the station has the feel of being a part of Chicago that has been around that long.

Among the Randolph Street sites nearby

AND IT SHOWS.

CTA officials are closing the station effective Sunday, replacing it with a new downtown ‘el’ station one block to the south at Washington Street – which officially is being billed as the Millennium station. That station officially opens Thursday.

I’ll concede that I have long noticed the grime that has accumulated at the Randolph Street ‘el’ station to the point where I wonder what I could catch if I touch something too long, and have often cynically speculated about how secure the platform’s wooden boards could be after all these decades of use.

So I don’t doubt the station’s time to be replaced has come.

Will street musicians still gather at Randolph/Wabash?

ALTHOUGH IT’S GOING to mean the decades of habit I have developed in my mass transit routines are going to have to be adapted to comply with the fact that the ‘el’ station is now one block further to the south.

I doubt I’m alone, since many of us develop transit routines that we follow reflexively, not giving them much thought. Now, we’re going to have to think a few extra seconds to make sure we don’t screw up and wind up being taken to the Monroe Street or State and Lake street stations while travelling through the Loop. Besides, I couldn't help but admire the video snippet I found Wednesday on YouTube posted by someone whom I suspect feels a sentiment similar to my own about this soon-to-be defunct 'el' platform.

I’m wondering if this station will take on a sentiment similar to what I feel for the old Comiskey Park. I must admit that whenever I travel on the Dan Ryan Expressway, a part of me expects to see the old brick, whitewashed ballpark still standing as I approach 35^th Street. Which creates a tinge of disappointment when I see the rose-colored concrete structure that actually is now 27 seasons old.

In my mind, this structure isn't just a decades-old postcard

Am I going to sense the ‘el’ platform that used to exist whenever I travel the Loop and my ‘el’ car passes by Randolph Street?

  -30-

El vs. subway, rather than Sox vs. Yanks. What next? Pizza wars!

The New York Yankees made their annual trip to Chicago’s South Side last week, where they wound up splitting their four-game series against the White Sox. When combined with the two of three games the Yankees won earlier this season in New York, it makes for a 3-4 record the White Sox have for 2017.
 

Rahm smirk sell more papers than Christie carcass?

Not exactly an overpowering by the Bronx Bombers over our Sout’ Side Hit Men.

SO PERHAPS THAT was a factor that caused Noo Yawk types to get all worked up this week in their desire to take pot shots at Chicago; specifically, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the mass transit system we affectionately refer to as the “el.”

For it seems that on Monday, the New York Times published a commentary written by our mayor that took the attitude there were things that mass transit officials in New York could learn from Chicago.

It ran under the headline, In Chicago, the Trains Actually Run on Time and offered up a statistic that claimed 85 percent of us are satisfied with the way our trains and buses operate. Keep your Mussolini gag to yourself; Chicago trains and buses are fairly reliable and that is important for a mayor.

It also had Rahm saying the reason Chicago’s system isn’t confronted with the problems New York faces (Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week declared a state of emergency for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) is because our officials emphasize “reliability ahead of expansion.”

IMPLYING THAT NEW York, which has the largest mass transit system in the nation (Chicago is second) has grown wild and out-of-control.

Yanks didn't administer Chgo beat-down, so other issues must occur

Of course, there were those greatly offended that a rube from outside of New York (actually, outside of Manhattan) would dare to know better about anything, That provoked the New York Daily News on Tuesday (a.k.a., Independence Day) to put Rahm on the front page of the paper.

A quarter century later, and CTA still going strong

The Daily News could have gone with front page photos of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s carcass sitting on a lawn chair on the public beach he had ordered closed to the public. But they thought Emanuel would sell more papers, running under the headline Dumb Track Mind and also reminding people, “AT LEAST our riders don’t get SHOT on the way home!”

Which means if there’s really a sense of cosmic justice or bad karma, there will be a shooting incident on board a subway car somewhere in the Bronx.

NOT THAT I’M hoping for such an incident. But for a newspaper that contends its provocative front page layouts are intended to sell papers for people who make an impulse purchase while walking by a newsstand or news box, I just can’t see where Rahm’s goofy smirk really does much to inspire New York news interest.

Besides, for all the things that people can complain about Chicago, one has to admit that our mass transit system does work fairly well – particularly when one considers how old it is.

Some 125 years, with parts of it dating back a century. The basic concept in moving large numbers of people around various parts of Chicago isn’t that radically different than the days when Al Capone was a living, breathing human being in these parts.

It also is one of the things I miss about life in the city proper, and why on those occasions when I return to Chicago proper I make a point of relying upon mass transit to move about.

ANYBODY WHO SERIOUSLY pays $35-40 to park their car for an hour or so in downtown Chicago is a fool. Our mass transit is one of the things our beloved Second City is doing right!

For what it’s worth, my guess is that this outburst (which Emanuel himself is managing to laugh off) is just the usual New York vs. Chicago rivalry; a holdover from when they really were the two largest cities in the country and where Chicago maintains a significance regardless of how much larger Los Angeles may ever become.

A hefty meal, and not junk food

Perhaps if the Yankees could have swept the four-game series against the White Sox, the need to dump on Chicago over mass transit might have been reduced.

Then again, we’ll always have pizza to quarrel over – particularly with those individuals who seriously look at those flimsy slices sold in Brooklyn and can’t see the superiority of something from Uno’s or Lou Malnati’s.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: As for the Daily News claim that Chicago is the "murder capital," these days St. Louis has the highest homicide rate in the nation, with some 60.37 slayings per 100,000 people compared to 18.6 for Chicago (and 7 for New York).

What’s good for Hyde Park sticks it to South Chicago, while the masses yawn!

In my mind, I already can hear the lone voice or two out of the South Chicago and South Shore neighborhoods along the lakefront who will express furious anger at the thought of the limited access to public transit they already have being cut even further.

Metra may make it easier to get to Hyde Park from Randolph and Michigan at the expense of other parts of the South Side. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

The rant will be vociferous. It will be sincere in its emotion. And I also don’t doubt that the masses, particularly those involved with mass transit in the Chicago area, will care less.

I’M REFERRING TO the proposal being put forth by the Metra commuter railroad system that takes people from all across the metropolitan area into downtown Chicago to alter the set-up of the Metra Electric line, which goes from Millennium Station at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue south to University Park, with branches that break off and take people both to Blue Island and also to the aforementioned South Side neighborhoods.

According to Metra officials, their intent is to boost the number of trains on the line that pass through the Hyde Park neighborhood. Under the current set-up, once the morning rush hour is over, trains go through at the rate of one per hour – the same as through the rest of the south suburbs on the line.

But because Chicago Transit Authority “el” service doesn’t stretch into Hyde Park, people living there rely on the Metra for contact with the rest of the world. Metra officials say they’d like to have trains stopping in Hyde Park stations (every two blocks from 51^st to 59^th streets) every 20 minutes.

That’s nice for them. I think that’s great. Particularly since I often use the Metra Electric (I’m old enough to remember when the line was a part of the Illinois Central railroad, and there are many old-timers who still think of it as the “IC line”) to get to Hyde Park, and it would be nice if trains ran more frequently.

BUT I ALSO was born in the South Chicago neighborhood, and know that CTA trains don’t go anywhere near the neighborhood. Even the number of bus routes are limited.

A trip downtown on the Number 30 South Chicago bus route that eventually puts you on a Red Line train at 69^th Street is slow, makes multiple stops and can take over an hour each way to make the commute.

It’s part of the reason activists in this area are pushing for the CTA to extend the Red Line train south to 130^th Street, which would make it possible to use other bus routes to catch the “el.”

 

UChgo influence makes Hyde Park transit a priority

But just at a time when CTA officials are moving forward with that long-rumored project, Metra now wants to come in and reduce the service the area already had.

NOW I’LL ADMIT a bias here. I was born in the South Chicago neighborhood, and remember as a kid visiting my grandmother who lived just one block from the 91^st Street station that is the end of the South Chicago line.

I know Metra officials are arguing that the specific train lines they’re talking about cutting so as to shift the service to benefit Hyde Park have fewer than 10 passengers, and sometimes only one or two.

But I’d argue that it’s because Metra in recent decades has offered such a scant service to the area that local residents have come to not expect it as an option when they need to get from place to place.

Older area residents recall the days when trains ran regularly on the South Chicago branch – in fact, as frequently as the every 20 minutes that officials are talking about creating for Hyde Park! I’m sure area use would increase if service were available.

YET THAT ALSO requires some ambition and a desire to actually provide a product. Whereas in the past, Metra has clearly considered getting people from suburban locations into downtown Chicago as its priority – with the stops that Metra trains make within the city considered as a thing of the past.

You'll need a car to get to area around 95th St. bridge

So yes, Metra officials deserve some praise for wanting to bolster Hyde Park service – possibly by summer’s end.

Yet here’s hoping that residents of South Chicago and the surrounding neighborhoods that would rely on Metra service if it were more frequent and reliable can get their voices up loud enough where they’re heard over the din of public anger on so many issues.

Otherwise, it will be too easy for Metra officials to dismiss them as insignificant; leaving a sizable part of Chicago further isolated from the rest of the city.

  -30-

Waiting for the ‘el’ or a bus, the quintessential Chicago experience

We’ve all endured it, getting drenched by the rain or pelted by snowfall while standing at a street corner waiting for the damned bus that just doesn’t seem to ever want to arrive.

The concept of mass transit in Chicago is a wonderful way to get around the city. It makes it possible to avoid owning an automobile (and dealing with the expense) without being reduced to the life of a shut-in.

BUT WE ALL know how unreliable those Chicago Transit Authority buses and elevated trains are when it comes to showing up on time. The great uncertain is figuring out how much time to allot for the actual commute because you don’t know how long it will take to complete – particularly if a bus or train transfer is involved.

I know I have read those alleged schedules that claim buses on many lines run every 15 minutes, and that there are times of the day when ‘el’ trains are supposed to come along every seven minutes.

It’s supposed to be the endless system where one can just show up at the street corner or ‘el’ station whenever and catch the next train or bus. It is the reason many city residents claim they could never live in the Chicago suburbs, where the trains and buses run on set schedules once an hour (or sometimes even more infrequently).

Yet those suburban Pace buses and Metra trains at least have set schedules, and people know when the train or bus is late. City residents are expected to just cope with the delays, and hope they don’t work for the kind of boss who looks for reasons to rant against his employees.

WHICH IS WHY I found it amusing to learn of a new survey by a mass transit app called Moovit that says the amount of time people spend waiting for their bus or train is less in Chicago than it is in other cities.

Thirty-one minutes is supposedly the amount of time we spend each day waiting at the street corner or train platform, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

By comparison, New Yorkers wait an average of 38 minutes a day, 39 minutes a day in Boston and 36 minutes in San Francisco.

Supposedly, Los Angeles residents wait an average of 41 minutes per day. Although my understanding of LA mass transit is that it isn’t as extensive as what other cities try to do, which means many people avoid it and turn to the freeways where they cause those daily traffic backups that can be just as frustrating as getting drenched by rain while waiting for a bus.

I’M SURE CHICAGOANS don’t feel comforted in the least by learning their average commute is less than other U.S. cities – particularly since we all have memories of incidents where we waited at least an hour for the bus to show up.

And whenever there’s a mechanical problem or a heavy weather-related storm, all bets are off in terms of getting to work on time – or even at all if things get particularly bad.

If anything, it is memories like this that make me remember fondly the summer some 30 years ago when I lived in an apartment on Damen Avenue just three doors south of the Brown Line ‘el’ station, which also was a bus stop.

Living in such proximity (I could see the ‘el’ platform out my bedroom window), I developed an inner sense of knowing when the trains and buses would arrive so I could avoid the waits – a sense I haven’t had at any other point in my life and one that I (along with many other Chicagoans) wish I could get back.

  -30-

Residency issue, in reverse?

Usually when we hear of residency being an issue in government, it involves those people who have some requirement related to their jobs that they live in the city of Chicago proper – but try to have a more suburban lifestyle.

RAKESTRAW: No longer suburban

We’ve all heard of the enclaves of city workers (with a large percentage of police and firefighters) on the southwest and northwest edges of the city – allowing them to live within blocks of the city limits and suburban communities.

NOT THAT I have anyone choosing to live in a suburb. It’s their life, and if they’re willing to endure the lengthier commute to get into downtown Chicago, so be it.

But it is a reality that makes the current residency controversy on the Metra commuter railroad board all the more ironic.

For in that board’s case, there is a member being asked to resign his post because he is not in compliance with the residency requirement. For the Chicago Tribune has figured out that the board member actually lives not only in Chicago, but is one of those people living in a high-rise that gives him a wonderful view of Millenium Park.

He’s right in the heart of the action.

BUT SINCE HE was given a seat on the Metra board by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, it seems she believes he must have a suburban Cook County home address – even though he believes he merely has to live somewhere within the county (either city or suburb).

For the record, I have never met Stan Rakestraw (the Metra board member in question). He used to be a nursing home administrator, but now operates SCR Medical Transportation, Inc., along with his wife, Pam. I don’t know how good a performance he provided in his service on the board that oversees those commuter trains taking people from the outer suburbs into downtown Chicago (and include some stops in the Far South and Southeast sides of Chicago).

Published reports indicate that Rakestraw got the appointment back at a time when he still had a home address in suburban Flossmoor. Although the Tribune reported that the house was damaged by fire, and his response was to move to a downtown-based condominium.

PRECKWINKLE: Needs a Metra member

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In my wildest fantasies, I wouldn’t mind living that close to the action of urban Chicago. If he can swing it financially, more power to him.

AND HE CERTAINLY isn’t gaining that wealth from the political appointment – the Metra board post only pays $15,000 annually.

But there is the fact that the Metra board was meant to be a suburban dominated entity; as a counterpart to the Chicago Transit Board that oversees the CTA buses and elevated train lines and has a Chicago-dominant board.

In the case of the Metra board, Mayor Rahm Emanuel gets one appointment to Preckwinkle’s five – with the understanding that only the mayor gets to pick a city resident. The heads of county government in the five surrounding counties each get one appointment.

Which makes for a 10-1 suburban/city ratio on the Metra board. That may be a bit much (and goes a long way toward explaining why Metra is willing to let its stops in the city deteriorate).

BUT I ALSO comprehend the idea of regulations that ought to be followed. Maybe we ought to consider a change in the composition of these boards? To that end, Gov. Pat Quinn created on Thursday a 15-member commission to study mass transit boards -- one of whose members is former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. A move that had many political cynics pleased.

But until some sort of action is taken, the regulations are going to have to be followed. Which is why Rakestraw peacefully resigned his post Thursday afternoon, instead of putting up a political fight. He does, after all, serve at the pleasure of Preckwinkle, who to her credit asked for Rakestraw’s resignation once the situation was brought to her attention.

Although we all should admit that, relatively speaking, this is a minor infraction by a government appointee. We can only fantasize that this is the worst thing we will see one of our officials commit.

  -30-

Convenient? Or crowded? What about public buses brings out the worst in us?

When it comes to the whole issue of “concealed carry” of firearms, the part that particularly astounds me are the people who have problems with the idea that mass transit is a place where firearms ought to be restricted.

Because while I believe in the concept of mass transit (and particularly like riding the “el” trains, even when they become subways), I’ll be the first to admit the mix of individuals of all sorts can create a volatile situation that is easily triggered.

THE IDEA THAT someone who is of a paranoid-enough nature to think they need that pistol tucked into their waistband (or in a shoulder-holster, if they’re really hard-core and have watched too many cop movies on the late show) in order to feel safe might just as easily be the type who gets provoked into pulling it out at the least little incident.

Just this past weekend, a CTA bus driver wound up having to receive medical treatment for burns to his face. What happened?!?

It seems that a passenger got on the bus at the Jefferson Park transit center, recognized the driver as one who passed him by earlier in the day, then persisted with this feeling of being “wronged” by attacking the driver.

No, the passenger was not armed with a pistol. But he did have a cup of coffee, which he used to toss into the driver’s face!

FORTUNATELY, THE DRIVER wasn’t actually driving at the time. So it wasn’t a moving vehicle that could have harmed many other people.

But it makes me wonder if this person who felt wronged could have been a serious threat if they had somehow been permitted to have a firearm on their person.

Watching old “All In The Family” reruns makes me realize that for all the nonsense spewed by actor Carroll O’Connor’s “Archie Bunker” character, he wasn’t that far off when talking about the odd mix of people he encountered while riding the New York subway.

He’d call them “creeps,” “weirdos,” “preverts” and other sorts of slurs. But it is accurate in that it is a mix that people shouldn’t toy with if they don’t know who they’re dealing with.

BECAUSE, AS THE Chicago Tribune reported, this weekend there was a guy who was all upset about having a bus drive right past him to the point where he felt the need to seek revenge with a scalding cup of coffee.

It didn’t even matter that the person wasn’t at a properly-marked bus stop – which justified the driver’s actions in driving right on by. That was a person who felt wronged, and used what he had on him in order to get back at the CTA.

Throwing ammunition and a weapon capable of discharging it in a lethal manner into the mix is only asking for trouble.

Fortunately, the person in this incident was arrested at the scene. There will be some sort of criminal charges against the individual. Although I’m sure some pundit will try to twist this into one of those incidents in which government runs amok over the rights of the individual.

THEY’LL PROBABLY TRY to claim that the CTA and the police are wrong to seek punishment against a coffee-cup wielding person – as though he were merely someone trying to enjoy a beverage, but couldn’t because of the inept mass transit service.

Actually, we ought to be thankful that all this incident had was a cup of coffee. Because at least the facial burns suffered by the driver were easily treatable.

Throw a pistol in to the mix, along with a self-righteous belief that someone is somehow standing up for their rights, and the incident instantly becomes a national mess.

Something like the early Sunday stabbing of a man at the Red Line’s Belmont Avenue “el” station

  -30-

EXTRA: Scouring for Sunday parking?

I'm almost nostalgic for this sight

A part of me is twisted enough to want to take my hunk-of-junk automobile out for a ride across as much of Chicago as I can cover come Sunday.

Because I’d want to see just how much of a difference it makes now that people will no longer have to feed those new digital pay boxes (we can’t really say we’re “feeding the meter” any longer) in order to avoid a parking ticket.

OF COURSE, THAT would be more of a waste of gasoline than I’d want to encounter. Somehow, I suspect that would cost more than I’d save by not having to pay for parking on the one day of the week that God supposedly told us to rest.

Besides, in my case, I’m going to be with family out in the Beverly neighborhood on Sunday – a massive barbecue being done on behalf of Father’s Day. It will be interesting to see mi padre, even though if I’m comprehending the change in parking policy approved earlier this month by the City Council, that particular area is among those where people still have to pay.

It’s only a dozen of the 50 wards where the new no-paying-on-Sunday policy takes effect on Father’s Day. The rest of the city is going to have to wait until July 1 – which could make Independence Day the learning period for the bulk of the city (particularly those parts up North).

Which means I’m likely to have to resort to my usual methods of scouring for a not-blatantly-illegal place to park my automobile when I make my trip.

IT’S ALSO GOING to mean that Chicago residents and people visiting the city are going to have to keep it straight in their minds where they can, and cannot, leave their automobiles without paying up.

It will be worse when the council later this year is expected to approve enough exceptions for business districts across the city where you will still have to pay on Sunday.

The bottom line seems to be that city officials want to receive credit for doing something to eliminate parking fees – a contentious issue ever since former Mayor Richard M. Daley a few years ago sold off control of parking meters to a private company.

A parking meter alternative? Image by railroadpictures.net

But that doesn’t mean government officials want to lose the money being pumped into those machines. They just want us to quit despising and blaming them so much for having to pay up!

JUST THINKING ABOUT this confusion of where one can park without hassle is headache inducing. It makes me wonder if I need to start carrying aspirin with my when I drive into the city.

Or better yet, just revert back to my habit of using mass transit in the city whenever possible. That’s the easiest way to avoid parking tickets by a cop too eager to fulfill his quota.

  -30-

EXTRA: No major complaints from Red Line riders. Not yet, anyway!

This is encouraging. Now can the Chicago Transit Authority keep it up?

  -30-

Some people compelled to complain

Soon to be undergoing long-overdue repairs. Photograph provided by LHOON

I write this during the weekend anticipating all the rants and rages we’re going to hear Monday from South Side residents who have to rely on the Chicago Transit Authority’s “Red Line” trains.

That, of course, is the line that was shut down completely beginning Sunday so that crews can work around the clock (instead of in shifts around “el” trains) for the next five months to upgrade the track.

IF IT HAD been done in shifts, it would take years to complete the work. Which would mean years of inconvenience.

By doing an outright shutdown, the work can be completed sooner and the benefits to be derived from upgrading the train that runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway to 95^th Street will be felt sooner.

For what it’s worth, CTA officials claim that improved tracks will allow for the “el” trains to speed through the area faster – possibly reducing as much as 10 minutes off the total commute for anyone who goes from 95^th Street all the way to downtown.

Now as one who has, from time to time in my life, had to rely on commuter trains for transit (and still uses them on occasion), I comprehend that it’s going to be a pain in the behind for those people who are used to relying on the Red Line (which, in a sign that reveals my age, I still think of as the Dan Ryan Line).

THEY’RE GOING TO have to find an alternative. And I’m sure there are some for whom shifting to a Green Line (a.k.a., Englewood/Jackson Park Line) train or using the Metra Electric trains that make stops on the Sout’ Side between Michigan Avenue and Blue Island is not going to be practical.

Some people may have their livelihoods seriously interfered with by this repair work.

But the simple fact is that all things eventually wear down. Eventually, everything needs serious upgrades in order to keep them in use. Unless we want them to deteriorate to the point where they become unusable – if not downright hazardous!

Now some people want to see a racial angle in this move because of the fact that this repair work is going to impact overwhelmingly African-American neighborhoods – since the reality is that many of the white people who use the southern extension of the Red Line (they think of it as the train that goes north to Howard Street and cuts through the Lincoln Park and Lake View neighborhoods) are off the train by 35^th Street.

WHICH MEANS THE Chicago White Sox may be impacted – although many fans I talk with say they already try to avoid the Red Line crowds and prefer other ways (I’m inclined to try the Metra Rock Island line train with its nearby stop named for one-time state Rep. Lovana Jones) of getting to U.S. Cellular Field.

JONES: No, she didn't play for the Sox

I’m not sure I buy that angle. Although if there is a racial angle to this issue, it may well be that CTA officials were willing to let the southern part of the Red Line deteriorate to its current condition without having done these repairs much earlier.

The Red Line dates back to the 1960s, and there are parts of the track that are now going to be replaced that literally date back to the opening.

Although I suppose compared to how old the Green Line extensions to neighborhoods on the West Side were (just over a century) when CTA officials finally got around to doing upgrades on that track in recent years, the Red Line might be considered in prime condition.

THE POINT BEING that this work is long overdue. We never hear of the elevated train lines running through North or Northwest Side neighborhoods going that long a time period without repairs.

And if it had been done in a more-timely manner, the commuter inconvenience would be long past – a thing of history.

  -30-

We’re headed for chaos! A ‘firearm’ situation as messed up as redistricting

The mere mention of firearms these days brings a blackened mood over the Statehouse, such as in this century-old postcard

Our state legislature is really a stubborn lot!

Just one day after the Illinois House of Representatives rejected a bill that would have permitted for a “concealed carry” law that would give great discretion to local police to decide who actually gets a permit to carry a pistol on their persons, the same legislators knocked down a measure that would have ensured just about anyone who wanted such a permit would be able to get it.

SO ONE DAY after the National Rifle Association types were able to crow about how they knocked down their dreaded bill, their fantasy bill got knocked down for the count.

Which means that what we have in Illinois is a situation where everyone is digging in their heels on the issue of gun control measures. They’re using their political powers to ensure that the other side doesn’t get what they want.

“Victory” is being defined as the opposition losing!

And the rest of us are confused about what will wind up happening.

BECAUSE WE’RE IN the situation where a Court of Appeals for the Midwestern U.S. (and based in Chicago) has given Illinois until mid-June to come up with a law that permits some people the ability to carry a pistol in public for their own defense.

If the court winds up having to get involved because the political people weren’t able to pull their heads out of their behinds, then we’re truly going to get a situation that everybody hates.

I suppose it’s possible that the next month-and-a-half could see our government officials come together and reach some sort of negotiated deal that could be approved prior to the state Legislature’s scheduled adjournment at the end of May.

Soon to be a common Illinois sight?

Then again, it’s always possible that the Chicago Cubs could play far above their abilities and actually win a championship of sorts. In short, fat chance!!!

ANYBODY EXPECTING SERIOUS compromise is missing the point of our modern-day government structure with all of its politically partisan leanings.

It’s kind of like the redistricting process, which in most decades winds up being resolved with a random lottery because the two sides can’t even come close to negotiating a serious deal on legislative and congressional boundaries.

The lottery process was written into the Illinois state Constitution on the theory that the randomness of it all (with one side getting absolutely nothing) would be so scary that it would force people to talk.

Instead, the natural greed of political officials makes them like the option of getting everything (with their opposition getting nothing) that they don’t even try to talk.

THAT IS THE same mindset at work here. Everybody is holding out for what they want – which in many cases seems to be ensuring that the opposition gets stuck with something they detest.

Such as the plans being put forth by the firearms advocates who think they’re making significant progress by including a few places (such as government buildings) in which people could not bring a pistol – even if they have a permit.

I can’t help but notice they insist that CTA trains and buses NOT be included on any exempted place. As in they WANT the ability to have a pistol on them if, by chance, they happen to be riding the “el.”

I’m sure they’ll give some jibberish about wanting to protect themselves from potential muggers. Although it strikes me more as the mentality of those people in other states who persist in carrying a holstered pistol while visiting a Starbucks franchise.

THEY JUST WANT to get in the face of people they see as different from themselves. It’s the bully mentality at work.

This may well be less about the firearms themselves and more about payback for the current partisan situation where the two-thirds of Illinoisans who live in the Chicago area predominate over the one-third that lives in the rural parts of the state.

After seeing the NRA-preferred measure go down to defeat Thursday, an NRA spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times, “Chicago’s not going to get their own permitting system.”

Will we hate it as much as these boundaries?

Is this really about the rural parts of the state asserting themselves on this issue out of some sense of political payback for the election results of 2010 and 2012?

YES, I’LL ADMIT to being wary of the firearms advocates and their interests – mainly because too many of the ones I have met seem to be a little too eager to have a legal justification to shoot someone else!

But I’m also aware of the definition of “compromise” and realize it means getting only a part of what we want – instead of seeing the results of a political stalemate, doing nothing and getting stuck with something we all despise.

Just think! We in Illinois could get stuck with a “concealed carry” practices that causes as much bickering as the redistricting process does.

  -30-

If I didn’t know better, I’d think there was a transportation-related conspiracy

As expected, the Chicago Transit Authority gave its approval this week to the implementation of a new system by which people would pay their fares for bus and elevated train rides.

Too costly a place to ride to, or park near?

One that would encourage people to pay larger sums of money up-front to purchase contactless cards. The way to persuade people to quit thinking in terms of paying for individual rides is to raise the fare – from the current $2.25 to $3 – for those customers.

OF COURSE, THOSE people catching an el train at O’Hare International Airport would get hit with a $5 fee for that single ride – all part of the rhetoric that says the only people who will really wind up paying the higher fare are those out-of-town tourists who decide to use the “el” during their Chicago visit.

As I wrote earlier this week, I sympathize with those activists who object to this new system, believing that people who rely on mass transit but don’t have the kind of cash to put up front into purchasing a card will get hit with the bulk of the higher fares.

I wasn’t shocked with the CTA approval. I would have been amazed if they could have been swayed.

But now I learn about how city officials also are considering changes in the fees that people pay when they use a downtown parking garage or lot.

AS IF THOSE fees weren’t already enough.

I know that the last two times I was in a situation where I had to drive an automobile into downtown Chicago and park it, I got hit with $34 fees – for leaving my car in a garage for not more than two hours each time.

CTA officials defended their own changes, in part, by saying that the new fare schedule will be complex – and that it is overly simplistic to portray anyone as having to pay an increased fare.

But after reading about the proposal made this week by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, I’m wondering if he’s determined to out-complicate the CTA.

FOR WHAT THE city has in mind, according to the Chicago Tribune, is to alter the taxes on parking fees from an escalating fee to a percentage-based system.

The people who literally are using the garages to park their cars for just a few minutes (or maybe up to 1 hour) could wind up paying less.

Like I wrote, my recent parking experiences in the downtown garages weren’t all that long – yet I still got whacked with what I consider to be a ridiculous fare. A fare that likely will be even higher when/if I get stuck paying it again.

All I know is that it truly discourages me from wanting to have my automobile with me when I have business to take care of in downtown Chicago.

YET THE THOUGHT of using mass transit to go downtown is something that could also become an expensive proposition.

I find Chicago’s downtown district too intriguing a place to want to avoid altogether (and I pity those people who claim they never set foot in or near the Loop). But it almost seems like certain people are determined to put financial obstacles to our ability to go downtown and stay there long enough to enjoy it!

You’d think these people with an interest in propagating the image of the city so as to bolster its economic potential to the max would be interested in avoiding moves such as these that wind up discouraging some people from wanting to come here.

  -30-