glennk419 wrote:I read on another website that the CTA (Chicago) had cancelled its annual Santa Trains due to impending layoffs, and not wanting to portray a mixed message to the public. Amazingly, the CTA's budget deficit is also in the $60M range.
The situation there is that the CTA wants to reopen the RTA funding formula, and take some of the money that presently goes to Metra (commuter rail) and PACE (suburban bus). As with SEPTA, there is some questioning of the credibility of CTA leadership.
I've also seen reports of budget and funding woes at MTA and NYCTA in New York so we are far from alone in this problem.
The MTA's problems are genuine, and much more severe than SEPTA's, in the long run. However, the cause is quite different: the state has been starving the MTA for capital, but the MTA did not want to go back to deferring necessary maintenance and replacement of equipment like aging MU cars. So the MTA issued bonds to pay for the capital plan, and the debt service has to be paid out of the operating budget. So now the operating budget is way out of whack.