CTA Update: Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Red Line North

The Chicago Transit Authority held two public open house meetings, one in Evanston, and one in Edgewater at the Broadway Armory this past Tuesday evening, to update the public on plans to rehabilitate and reconstruct the north branch of the Red Line and the Purple Line.

There are four alternatives under discussion: Reconstruction and consolidation of some stations; reconstruction without consolidation; minimal rehabilitation; and no rehabilitation, with only minimal repairs.

Reconstruction will involve completely rebuilding the Purple Line except at stations where the roadbed has been replaced already, and the Red Line north of Addison. The plan calls for a new elevated structure with four tracks, the replacement of several stations with new ADA-compliant stations with 24'-wide platforms, elevators, and escalator; rebuilding the Wilson and Loyola stations as transfer points on the Purple Line; and the possible elimination of the Lawrence, Thorndale, and Jarvis stops on the Red Line, and the Foster and South Blvd stations on the Purple. Red Line platforms would be extended to accommodate 10-car trains and Purple Line Stations would be extended to berth 8-car trains.

It's hard to think of a more critical issue for the city than the rehabilitation and expansion of our century-old rapid transit system, which has been allowed to become extremely degraded while ridership has grown rapidly in the past decade. Ridership of CTA trains in the city has boomed, and in 2010, ridership on the Red Line reached the level of 1927, it's previous peak, hauling nearly a quarter-million people per day, for 38.5 million riders in 2010, surpassing that of the previous peak in 1927.This increase has mostly been on the north branch of the line. The three major north side lines- the north branch of the Red, the Brown Line, and the O'Hare branch of the Blue line, together haul 59% of the CTA rail system's passengers.

The boom in ridership is no doubt due to the sharp uptick in fuel prices in the past decade, with the promise of many more increases and possibly shortages to come, as the peaking of liquid fuels gains traction and car ownership becomes an unbearable burden for urban denizens. This development is likely to be permanent, and the next decade will most likely see steeply reduced rates of auto ownership along with swelling demand for public transportation. Cities will need improved public transportation in order to remain competitive. Therefore, it is imperative that any major overhaul and reconstruction of the system be planned to allow for the addition of new lines and greatly increased population density in Chicago as people abandon their car-dependent lifestyles in the auto suburbs of the 20th century and return to cities and towns where they have access to public transportation and can live within walking distance of services and jobs.

The plans made so far do not project increased ridership greatly increased over current levels, and what is being planned at this time is the replacement of the line between Addison and Howard. The rebuild would merely replace the existing decrepit structure with a greatly improved line, and while it will permit longer trains and feature greatly improved comfort and safety by building wider platforms and larger stations with improved egress, it will not permit more trains than can currently be safely run, and most of all it is "closed" in that no provisions are being made for new lines to connect to it, such as a connecting line that runs over Touhy Ave between the Cumberland or Rosemont stations on the Blue Line and the Howard station on the Red;  or- dare we dream- crosstown lines over Belmont and Lawrence to bypass the nightmarish congestion on these narrow, heavily traveled throughways. Another timely addition would be a spur on the Brown Line into West Rogers Park, another high-density neighborhood, to run from the Lincoln/Western station up Western to Howard. This would relieve overcrowding on the Red Line, and it might be that a whole new line is justified here. Yet more rail lines, including a another "loop" track to handle extra lines into the downtown area, should be figured into any plans we make now, even if it is another two decades or more before we actually build them. Failure to allow for upgrades and additional service means greater costs down the road, as we can see from the newly built stations at Belmont and Fullerton- will these stations need further expensive expansions to accommodate 10-car trains, which CTA has never run before? If planners had allowed for greater train lengths when designing these two stations, this rebuild would be a little cheaper.

The reconstruction of the Red Line is a once-in-a-century opportunity to plan for demand that does not exist yet but that could materialize very quickly given the trajectory of energy supplies and prices, which foretell an epic economic shift that will likely reverse the social and economic trends of the past 60 years. This shift will most likely bring more people into the city, for much greater population density than exists at this time. The planning process should allow for more retail/transit/mulitfamily housing hubs, where mixed use retail/commercial/mulitfamily housing could be built around rail stops and adjacent bus plazas.

Whatever we do here, it is imperative to seize the moment to make cohesive plans that will enable Chicago to handle higher population densities and supply housing, transit, and services for many more people than we have at the present.

Prominent Energy and Financial Analyst Nicole "Stoneleigh" Foss of the Automatic Earth to Appear in Rogers Park

JANUARY 19, 2011, 7:00 PM
 UNITED CHURCH OF ROGERS PARK
1545 W. MORSE AVE.
Free parking at the southwest corner of Morse & Ashland

Suggested Donation: $20 (no one will be turned away)


Many, many thanks to Christine Wellman, Pam and Lan Richart and the other great people of Transition Rogers Park, The Eco-Justice Collaborative, Midwest Permaculture, and many others for their efforts in bringing the eminent energy and financial analyst Nicole Foss to speak in Rogers Park.

Foss, who writes under the name "Stoneleigh" and who contributes to the Oil Drum and writes The Automatic Earth blog with her husband, "Ilargi", will discuss how the convergence of resource scarcity, global warming, and the failing economy is creating the "perfect storm" that could cause our fragile economies to collapse.

After the presentation, Foss will answer questions and make recommendations on how to weather the most massive shift in fundamental economic conditions in over a century.

Can We Afford the 49th Ward RIF: Financing Chicago in the Post-Peak Oil Era

Mega-cities such as Chicago will confront major challenges in the Post Peak Oil era. The core problem facing our largest and most densely populated cities will be economic: we will have to meet rapidly increasing costs in day-to-day operation of our critical systems for transportation, water treatment, emergency response, sewage and waste treatment and disposal, law enforcement, and the maintenance of critical infrastructure necessary to deliver these services, in a climate of rapid and geometric increases in costs due to the draw-down of liquid fuels, production of which is projected to drop 5% a year or more from 2012 forward. 

Is it wise to divert future tax revenues to subsidies for private purposes, no matter what their merits may be, when Chicago currently is struggling financially and is unprepared for the post-Peak Oil era? At this time, the city's systems and infrastructure are in need of substantial repair and upgrading, and any further diversion, present or future, of public money to private purposes could further impair our ability to maintain a safe, orderly civil environment.

TIF and RIF financing mean the diversion of future tax increases (the "increment") from general revenues to private purposes, in this case the rehabilitation and winterization of rental properties in the 49th Ward. The amount of money involved is often substantial; in the case of the proposed 49th Ward RIF, up to $54 M will be diverted from general revenues in an era of steeply increased costs of operating the city in an era of steep reduction in available energy and vastly increased operating costs.

Additionally, other wards will also demand RIFs for similar purposes, which means that the amount of future property tax revenues diverted could be multiplied by 50, since many of the the south side and west side wards are burdened with much more rental housing stock in much worse physical condition than that of the 49th Ward. This could mean that, ultimately, up to $2.5 Billion could be diverted from general revenues to the purpose of rehabilitating rental properties, over the next 25 years,in addition to other subsidies for other private purposes, to the detriment of the City's ability to fund daily operations and make necessary investment in the upgrading and expansion of critical infrastructure to keep the city minimally safe and sanitary in an era of crippling shortages and rapidly escalating cost s for nearly all services and goods.

Given that Chicago's water and sewer infrastructure is decrepit and outdated, and will need substantial repair and upgrading to continue to meet current needs, and that its public transportation system is also in poor condition and ill-equipped to handle a steep and rapid increase in ridership that could occur if the cost of auto ownership were to become too expensive for low and medium income residents due to rapid escalation in fuel costs. Considering all of the foregoing, Chicago and the surrounding Cook County suburbs are currently ill prepared for the vicissitudes of Peak Oil and the terminal decline in oil and other fossil fuel production.

While the costs of running our city in such a manner as to ensure basic safety and sanitation will rise steeply and rapidly, tax revenues could well be in free fall due to declining incomes of residents and in business activity, as declines in fuel supplies will raise the costs of all business activities in proportion. Many businesses will fail and nearly all will face major challenges, while employment opportunities will wither. Property taxes, sales taxes, and all other taxes and fees will most likely have to be increased steeply to meet daily operational expenses and perform "patch" repairs in critical transportation, water, and sewer infrastructure, and expansion and improvement of these systems will quickly become prohibitive. The capital necessary for expansion simply will not be there because of the debt overhang from the early 2000s that has absorbed all the capital that otherwise might be available to invest in replacing aged infrastructure and expanding our utilities and public transportation. Yet this investment will be necessary if the city is to maintain services at their current level for the current population of approximately 2.9 million and surrounding suburbs that rely upon our water treatment and sewer systems. Additionally, massive investment in the regional public transportation system will be necessary for the system to accommodate new riders as driving becomes prohibitively expensive for tens of thousands more local residents than currently use the system.

Chicago will therefore have to find a way to finance vastly more expensive daily operations and maintain and expand as needed the utility and transportation infrastructure needed to ensure that the city will remain safe and livable with steeply reduced energy imputs from that point forward. There is at this time no substitute for oil and other fossil fuels that will meet all energy needs,, and plans for alternative energy, such as expanded nuclear capacity, will take at least a decade and most likely two decades to be fully implemented. Expansion of our power generating capacity will also be problematic because of the shortage of capital.

In short, the city will have great difficulty in funding its daily operations and in finding the capital to invest in necessary infrastructure repairs and upgrades, with the revenues that will be available for the purpose. It will most likely be necessary to raise taxes substantially just to maintain services at their current levels and make emergency repairs on critical infrastructure. Investment in expansion and upgrades of that infrastructure to meet the needs of an expanding population of ex-suburbanites and immigrants from other cities and towns, in an economy that is shrinking in response to steeply higher fuel costs, will require massive capital outlays that will be possible only if tax revenues increase steeply.

Any further diversion of tax revenues from public purposes to private purposes, by means of a TIF, RIF, tax abatement, or any other direct or indirect public subsidy, will mean that less money is available to prepare the City of Chicago's systems and infrastructure, which are already somewhat underfunded and have critical deficiencies, and that the city could end up in a financial bind impossible to negotiate as costs increase 25% or more and it becomes impossible to operate on the revenues available. This could mean steep reduction of necessary services, such as sanitation, emergency response, and law enforcement; and cascading failures in critical systems such as water and sewage treatment, and transportation infrastructure, greatly endangering the health and lives of 2.9 million (and possibly many more) city residents; and rendering the city much less attractive as a place to do business.

Our most important task in preparing for the post-peak era is rendering our community more resilient and self-reliant in a context where government subsidies and services may be steeply reduced, or non-existent. In the future that is almost upon us, our governments will be increasingly unable to function as they have for the past century, and will be unable to provide funding and assistance for any but the basic functions of a local government, and surely will not have the means to provide subsidies to individuals for private purposes, no matter how worthy.

For these reasons, any further diversions of tax revenues, present or future, for private purposes, would mean putting our basic services at risk and would endanger the health and lives of Chicago's 2.9 Million residents, and possibly many more in Cook County that are dependent upon the same systems for essential services. As it is, large diversions of revenues from the public till to private purposes have crippled Chicago financially, and retarded the city's progress in upgrading its critical infrastructure and funding daily operations.Therefore, the proposed 49th Ward RIF,  should be tabled, and no future TIF or RIF financing should be considered. 

Additionally, extant TIFs and other subsidies to business entities should be reviewed and re-considered in light of their true benefits, if any, and the negative offsets to those benefits, with the aim of reducing as much as possible the drain on public finances, and building reserves for the expenditures we will need to make to keep our city and its environs livable and economically viable.

We Will Kill for Oil

Honesty is so distasteful.

We'd so much rather see WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER, even if this sweet homily seems sort of hollow when affixed to the back end of something that weighs 6,000 pounds and gets 12MPG. Do these people think that there is no connection whatsoever between the 20% of our oil we import from various hot spots in the Middle East and Africa, and our 65-year-involvement and multiple wars there?

Was there ever any other reason for our cozy relationship with major human rights violator Saudi Arabia?  Or for our presence in Iraq, which is expected to displace Saudi Arabia as the largest producer and exporter of oil over the next decade? Or Afghanistan, of great strategic importance in accessing and securing the estimated $12 Trillion in oil reserves projected to reside in the Caspian Sea.

And how many people here want to reckon with the consequences of a sudden, drastic reduction in available oil supplies? So far, there is no indication that our local leaders even consider the possibility, let alone how it would cascade through our systems to produce critical shortages and major system failures. Chicago has no emergency plans in place, and instead of making the improvements necessary to our critical transportation and utility infrastructure necessary to keep the city intact and functioning with decent levels of safety and sanitation in the event of a prolonged emergency, are searching for more paths by which to divert tax revenues from essential public needs to the back pockets of corporate cronies while starving our increasingly decrepit and inadequate public transportation. To date, I have not once heard the term "peak oil" pass the lips of Obama , who prefers to talk about "reducing our dependence on foreign oil", as though there were any other kind, especially since it has become glaringly evident that offshore drilling is not likely to offset the fading production of the super giants, and neither are the tar sands of Calgary,which require staggering quantities of fresh water and natural gas to work, which means that the oil from the sands is not only partially subsidized by Canadian taxpayers and would have a negative EROEI without that subsidy, but comes at the expense of natural gas supplies, which are subject to rapid and irreversible depletion just as oil is.

Iraq and Afghanistan were Bush's Wars, then became Obama's Wars, but they're really our wars, and they probably will not end until every last drop of oil has been extracted from every last well, or at least until the cost of extraction is a barrel in for a barrel out. That time may come sooner than we think as it is. Obama's promise to end these conflicts, so quickly reneged on, is being flung in his face by foes and former supporters alike and will no doubt be used as a major wedge in the 2012 election by the next pandering con artist who runs on promises to accomplish the impossible, but anyone who believes that we'll withdraw from these conflicts anytime soon is probably someone who believes in perpetually self-renewing abiotic oil, or that we can run our economy on wind turbines, used restaurant grease and corn liquor.

It is probably useless to consider that our resource wars are only hastening resource depletion, or that all combatants will eventually lose, for the oil will deplete remorselessly no matter who controls it. But in the meantime, we probably have no choice but to soldier on, since we are still in stone denial concerning our extreme dependence on petroleum and are in no way prepared to make the adjustments and arrangements that would enable us to withdraw from the Middle East and lose access to the bounty of Iraq, or the Caspian sea. Nor is the rest of the western world, which relies upon the U.S. to do the dirty work of securing the oil supplies for other western nations, and any political aspirant who suggests that we confront the inevitability of resource depletion and consider these wars already lost, and learn to live with much less energy, is committing career suicide.

So what it all means is that we will continue to kill and be killed for the oil in the Middle East, and Africa, too,  just as we have for decades now, because the alternative, a rapid withdrawal with the possible sudden loss of 20% of our usual supply, would mean incredible chaos and violence, and random death on a mass scale,within our borders, as the systems we rely on to deliver electricity and clean municpal water and vaccines and medication and cheap, abundant food, all start to wobble and fail for lack of the necessary energy imputs to run them. It's an alternative that I'm personally not willing to accept if there is any way around it, and I'm sure you aren't, either, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for our leadership and general public to embrace the only alternative to "the war that will not end in our lifetimes", as Cheney  put it, which is to downscale and rearrange our systems and our lives to enable us provide for ourselves at a decent level of modern comfort and amenity in the absence of copious quantities of oil.

Skewed Priorities

SEND MONEY!!!

That's the overriding message from the northwest corner of Iowa, where the Lake Dehli Dam breached and drained the recreational lake behind it this weekend. There was no loss of life and no one was seriously injured, thankfully, but the resulting deluge pretty well gutted the value of the area to the vacationers who own the 900 or so homes that fronted the lake...  which was all most of the folks there could think about.

Nobody, not one person, said, Thank God there were no fatalities or injuries, which is the first thought you have when something like this happens.  There didn't seem to be a lot of sympathy or concern for the people downriver whose businesses and permanent homes were wrecked by the torrent, and a local official said in passing that his town would of course apply for funds for cleanup, which is going to be a big job. But that seemed to be a peripheral concern to most of the people interviewed.

What most people talked about first and the most was how they hoped the Feds would step in with the money to rebuild the dam, because otherwise their vacation homes-  mostly second homes worth from $50,000 to $500,000- will be almost worthless without the lake it created.

Like the rest of the taxpayers in this country have nothing better to do with $200 million or so than to rebuild a  small dam solely to restore a recreational lake,  to rectify the economic losses of a handful of second-home owners.

Our pols and economists are sending the public a lot of mixed messages mixed with hope fastened to very doubtful metrics, but the message we most need to be trumpeted from the rooftops is already printed on our increasingly decrepit and dangerous infrastructure, our $13 Trillion in public and private debt, our gutted manufacturing sector, and our failing war efforts in the part of the world on which we depend for most of our liquid fuels; is that the party is over.  We can't even afford to repair the things whose catastrophic failure would cause thousands of deaths; at this time there are over 3500 large dams and 8000 bridges classified as dangerously deficient, and whose catastrophic failure would easily kill thousands of people, that we are dragging our feet on because we already spent the $16 Billion required for minimal remediation on things like highways to nowhere and mega-sports arenas, supporting the government-financed mortgage market, paying subsidies to farm owners to not grow food, and paying people to buy new cars and build ever more houses that nobody can afford to buy, among many other wasteful expenditures too numerous to list here. 

We have extended ourselves financially into the next century, well beyond our childrens' probable lifetimes, since the post WW2 era in order to finance things that not only are too big and too complex to maintain as we start down the other side of the fuel supply curve, but continue to squander massive amounts of our remaining wealth, or rather, our remaining borrowing power, on things that cannot be considered public purpose and are flatly extravagances that we never really could afford and that are now crowding out urgent public needs that we don't have much time to meet before energy costs place them beyond our reach forever.

The figure in the foregoing paragraph does not include private debt, which maybe doesn't mean anything anyway since so much of the public debt was incurred in backstopping the financial institutions against the losses they incurred from this private debt. Municipal shortfalls and state deficits are also not included, nor are future pension and entitlement program obligations.

Suffice it to say that recreational lakes in Iowa and 850-unit luxury condo towers in Chicago's laughably glutted north lake front condo market, among thousands of other costly private indulgences that come at public expense, are costly frills that benefit few, and that neither the country at large nor this city can accommodate any longer without making steep sacrifices in the things we need to live decently and safely. But the American middle classes, steeped in delusion and fantasy, and possessed of a swollen sense of entitlement, are the people least apt to get the message broadcast by the ever-increasing numbers of boil-water days, extended power outages, critical infrastructure failures, and the general decrepit and brittle condition of the country's systems, which is that we're at the end of our ability to pretend that we're still a wealthy country with unlimited resources and the competence to manage either our physical resources or finances so that we'll be able to keep the lights on and the trains running when energy supplies become critical.

Against Nature: Can Our Freedoms Survive Peak Oil?

Many observers in the Peak Oil community are baffled and disgusted by the angry denial of our dire fuel situation and its implications for our future, not only among the general public, but among our well-educated upper-middle class, including many prominent political leaders and intellectuals. The truculence of the general public is usually attributed to stupidity, ignorance, and "selfishness", and the unwillingness to make sacrifices to serve the "common good"; and the consensus among the aware is that we will have to become a more authoritarian and regimented society, perhaps even impose military law, in order to maintain civil order and assure the equitable distribution of remaining resources. "This country needs a good father," one commentator wrote, and commented approvingly on the regimentation and authoritarianism prevalent in the early 30s, remarking that we might have to impose these conditions again to make it through the hardship and upheaval of the massive shift that is upon us. Rationing is already under discussion, and various additional controls and government-imposed rules regulating use and distribution of resources, are also being discussed, some more seriously that others- and every single one, from the CAFE standards that the auto industry has resisted tooth and claw since their inception 30 years ago, to the government-mandated phase-out of incandescent light bulbs in favor of CFL bulbs and LEDs, is bitterly resented by the bulk of the citizenry, who feel the weight of over-reaching authority in every part of their lives.

That the authoritarianism of the environmentalist and peak oil believers, and their open contempt not only  for common 'merikuns' and their wasteful ways,but for the concept of rights and freedom, might be exactly what triggers denial on the part of so many people who ought to know better, doesn't seem to occur to the environmentalist pundits and policy makers.

It also doesn't enter the heads of the authoritarians that the trends of the past 60 years that have made this country the most wasteful consumer of resources in the world, notably the build out of suburbia, and the corresponding total dependence on autos and trucks by our population, owe not so much to "market forces" or to the democratization of auto and suburban home ownership, as to government policies created by people who thought they knew better than we do what is good for us.

And what our leaders thought was good for us in those days was government-subsidized home ownership, taxation policies that incentivized the formation of large families, and lavish incentives for auto ownership, notably  "free" highways to enable car ownership and facilitate the mass movement of the middle-income population out of the old cities to houses purchased with VA and FHA 3% down loans in new auto suburbs. Meanwhile, civic leaders across the country frantically cast about for ways to revitalize their rapidly emptying cities, and eagerly embraced the vision of urban planners and architects who wanted to demolish the unsightly slums around urban cores and warehouse the poor in high rise housing projects.

In short, it was our authoritarian welfare state that gave us the world's most wasteful and unsustainable built landscape next to Dubai, and is now shoveling the last of our wealth into sustaining and expanding it. This massive misinvestment is questioned by only a handful of our citizens, for our population was inducted by the corporatist nanny state into the passivity, consumerist ethos, and sense of entitlement that have made this country into a quagmire of towering debt and built an economy distorted by multiple layers of government subsidies and programs that reinforce the practices we need to discontinue, and disguise their true costs.

Therefore, we beg the question of just what a super-authoritarian, hyper-regimented Big Daddy regime can do for us that will produce any other outcome than further misallocation of resources in massively expensive boondoggles like the misbegotten high speed rail plan, multibillion dollar gifts to failing, obsolete industries like production home building in the far suburbs and our failing, obsolete domestic auto industry, and most of all, further intrusion into our private lives and restrictions on our personal and economic activities? Will erasing what few freedoms we have left to us and moving entire populations around like chessboard pieces according to the wisdom of a bunch of bureaucrats assure us of an orderly and peaceful transition to a lower energy regime and mollify the tens of millions of people whose expectations and hopes will be crushed but who will be expected to acquiesce to arbitrary authority in the most personal matters, with little or no explanation except for the usual crap about the "common good"?

Will the same government whose leaders have consistently lied to us for 50 years regarding the costs of the high-entropy economy its policies created and who, while knowing full well what the likely outcome would be, recklessly drove the creation of the worst financial debacle the world has ever seen, be able to lead us to any other end than the complete collapse of every system we depend upon for water, food, transportation, and every other necessity of life? And will these leaders be able to offer any other solution to the predicament of a country of 305 million people left with no resources, no means to make a living, and no way to procure food and housing and heat, but a military dictatorship with the complete cancellation of all our rights, vastly amplified state violence, and the death by mass slaughter or starvation of a substantial chunk of our population?

The coming difficult times of shortages, falling living standards, and failing systems will require all the fortitude, flexibility,skills and virtues individual citizens possess, in order to rebuild our communities into places that can sustain and shelter us and our civilized values. And the cornerstone civilized value is individual freedom, which is inseparable from personal responsibility.

Without the liberties, unprecedented in history, that we have secured at such a cost, we're headed straight back to the filth, brutality, and class tyrannies of the past, complete with the entire population enslaved in a neo-feudal society with draconian restrictions enforced by a brutal military.

And responsibility is the virtue that we have to painfully relearn, and in a large hurry, from the bottom of our society with its vast population of welfare entitlement junkies, prolific breeders, and criminal elements emboldened by our irrational justice system, through our middle classes with their passivity, complacence, sense of entitlement, and refusal to reckon costs and make necessary trade-offs, up to our financial elites that have been granted a license to steal trillions of dollars from the taxpayers, and have permitted to use their power to dictate legislation and policies that favor them, to turn this country into a low-wage cesspool, asset-strip the population by fraud and malfeasance, and sell our country to a nation ruled by a thug government ideologically opposed to the freedoms we have enjoyed and abused here.

After all, there is nothing "natural" about guaranteed personal liberty for every citizen regardless of class, color, ethnicity, or sex. The concepts of liberty and unalienable rights are the products of a highly evolved and literate civilization, which is also unnatural, a civilization with a high level of knowledge and technology, and with a broad and reasonably well-educated commonalty dedicated to preserving as much of it as possible, beginning with the philosophy that justified it and made it possible, that of freedom and rights and personal dignity. Without the will to preserve that, and the knowledge of its importance, we'll lose those values and everything that they made possible, including, most likely, our lives.