‘SWAT team’ to give facelifts to 100 CTA rail stations
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com September 20, 2011 10:38AM
The Loyola CTA Station. | John H. White~Sun-Times.
Updated: November 10, 2011 2:24PM
Coordinated “SWAT teams” will descend on 100 CTA stations to give them an “extreme makeover” — everything from painting, new lighting and signs to power washing and landscaping —thanks to a $25 million overhaul unveiled Tuesday.
The 12-month overhaul will be paid for, in part, with savings generated by a previously authorized 10 percent cut in the CTA bureaucracy that eliminated 54 mostly vacant jobs to save $18 million.
The rest will come from what CTA President Forrest Claypool likes to call the “SWAT team approach” to repairs.
Instead of making “helter-skelter” improvements that have virtually no impact on the rider experience, the CTA is using a blitzkrieg approach.
“Take disparate trades that used to operate independently here and there, supplement private contractors, specialized trades, put them all in a SWAT team,” Claypool told a news conference at the Blue Line’s Logan Square station, the first to benefit from the CTA’s “Renew Crew.”
“Come in, hammer out every repair, deep clean, make every improvement and amenity that needs to be done at a station all at once so it has an impact, so it can be seen, so the public gets the benefit of all of that at once,” he said.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the “extreme makeover” at the Logan Square has made a “night and day” difference for riders like local Ald. Rey Colon (35th).
“He got on the platform. It wasn’t wet from water dripping through. It was well-lit. You had information about where the train was, what time. . . . You have cameras there for safety. It’s a totally different experience,” the mayor said.
Turning to Claypool, Emanuel said, “He has made cuts and reforms in the central bureaucracy and used those resources to improve where commuters experience CTA. They do not experience the CTA in the central office. They experience it at the station — either downtown or in their neighborhood.”
The $25 million makeover comes at a time when Metra is mulling a 30 percent fare increase — and even steeper increases for its Chicago commuters — that could send more commuters to the CTA.
“Making this experience different will improve ridership, increase traffic, make our lives — all of us who use public transportation — better,” said the mayor, an occasional CTA rider who rode the Blue Line back to City Hall from Logan Square.
As for the CTA’s own budget crisis, Claypool refused to comment on the prospect of a fare hike in 2012.
He would only reiterate that the CTA has “borrowed $554 million in the last four years just to pay the bills” and there is “no one left to borrow from.”
Emanuel, who promised to hold the line on CTA fares, said Claypool will “deal with his budget in about a month. Today, what we’re talking about is the investments we’re making from the savings we’ve had in the central office and putting ’em where commuters first experience public transportation.”
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