The enclosed New York Times article should be a very important wake-up call to the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) before they proceed with a bid that has Mayor Richard Daley and the City of Chicago in control.
Transportation is CRITICAL to stage the Olympic Games anywhere. Chicago's system is crumbling and on the brink of serious crisis, but because of Daley leveraging the idea of having "compact venues" and "close proximity" to avoid as much as possible to share control or the Olympic Games with the metropolitan area, it makes the City of Chicago's transportation system that much more important to how an Olympic Games would function.
If the track record of the Daley regime is any indication, the CTA is a failure of economic, transport and practical proportions. Using the Olympic Games to lure federal funding to bailout the mismanagement of the Daley regime is a nice idea...IF we could be assured the control over the transit system would be removed from the City and instead given to a regional entity like the RTA.
There is legislation being propsed to do exactly that...unify the transporation agencies for the region, but that would mean less control by Daley's cronies. It would be foolish, if not irresponsible, to continue to allow the CTA to exist as a City of Chicago controlled entity. Not just for the Olympic Games, but unifying transportation agencies in a regional and metropolitan manner is a much smarter way to go considering approximately 8 million people will live in the Chicago area in 2016, not including the 2.5 million who live INSIDE the city limits or the potential visitors that would be spread all over.
SEE INSIDE FOR NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON THE CRUMBLING CHICAGO TRANSIT SYSTEM UNDER RICHARD DALEY
Other Resources:
>RTA
>State Auditor's Report on Transit
>CTA Tattler (blog)
Transportation is CRITICAL to stage the Olympic Games anywhere. Chicago's system is crumbling and on the brink of serious crisis, but because of Daley leveraging the idea of having "compact venues" and "close proximity" to avoid as much as possible to share control or the Olympic Games with the metropolitan area, it makes the City of Chicago's transportation system that much more important to how an Olympic Games would function.
If the track record of the Daley regime is any indication, the CTA is a failure of economic, transport and practical proportions. Using the Olympic Games to lure federal funding to bailout the mismanagement of the Daley regime is a nice idea...IF we could be assured the control over the transit system would be removed from the City and instead given to a regional entity like the RTA.
There is legislation being propsed to do exactly that...unify the transporation agencies for the region, but that would mean less control by Daley's cronies. It would be foolish, if not irresponsible, to continue to allow the CTA to exist as a City of Chicago controlled entity. Not just for the Olympic Games, but unifying transportation agencies in a regional and metropolitan manner is a much smarter way to go considering approximately 8 million people will live in the Chicago area in 2016, not including the 2.5 million who live INSIDE the city limits or the potential visitors that would be spread all over.
SEE INSIDE FOR NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE ON THE CRUMBLING CHICAGO TRANSIT SYSTEM UNDER RICHARD DALEY
Other Resources:
>RTA
>State Auditor's Report on Transit
>CTA Tattler (blog)