MTA to slash the budget

Here, Cracker Boy, I'll post the full text for everybody's reading pleasure:

(Crain’s) — The Chicago Transit Authority moved on Friday to impose “devastating” cuts in service and yet another fare hike effective Jan. 6, unveiling a so-called Doomsday budget for 2008 that fully lives up to its name.

Unless it gets more help from Springfield, the agency said it will have to eliminate an additional 43 bus routes, three of eight bus garages, lay off 1,800 more people, and raise fares at least 25 cents a ride.

Combined with other cuts that are due to take effect Nov. 4, the CTA will have eliminated roughly 20% of all service and 53% of all bus routes, leaving most areas of the city as much as a half a mile away from the nearest bus.

Among the 1,800 additional layoffs are those of 168 administrative workers.

The cuts will particularly impact the North Side lakefront, where many people commute daily downtown and rarely use automobiles now.

The new cuts combined with the November cuts will eliminate every single express bus on North Lake Shore Drive and every express bus from the commuter train stations to the East Loop and North Michigan Avenue. All this will occur at the same time that the CTA has closed one of the four tracks on its trunk Red Line for renovation of the adjoining Brown Line.

On Wednesday, Mayor Richard M. Daley proposed to raise city taxes, fees and fines nearly $300 million, including a $108-million increase in property taxes.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=26727

Sounds tragic for the North Side lakefront.

It's not going to be upscale anymore!

Chicago's transit nightmare makes NYC look not so bad.

You keep posting, Rufus, and yet some dude commited suicide on Friday via a live Internet feed. Isn't that your cue? I mean, can't you follow his lead? It's the holidays, your uncle molested you when you were 6, and you're unemployed. With that said, isn't it time you said goodbye?

Perhaps the below link will be of some help.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/world/americas/21tijuana.html?scp=7&sq=Suicide%20Mexico&st=cse

You make a really good point, Patrick_Bateman, and your heart is in the right place.

But Cracker Boy is waiting until he can jump off the top of Chicago Spire. Unfortunately, that will mean a natural life-time of self-torment and misery, because that building will never be completed. Ever.