For seven years southwest-siders have been trying to persuade CTA officials to restore weekend and late-night service on the Douglas branch of the Blue Line. But until recently only one of the four local aldermen was willing to speak up on their behalf. Now, embarrassed by Congressman Luis Gutierrez, they’re all suddenly talking tough–at least for the moment.
In the aftermath of the cuts, activists, social service groups, block clubs, and chambers of commerce formed the Blue Line Transit Taskforce. They held meetings, organized rallies, gathered petitions, pestered officials, and produced studies of their own. They also persuaded Gutierrez to take their side.
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“I talked to [CTA president Frank] Kruesi about how important the Blue Line was to these communities,” says Gutierrez. Kruesi responded in a letter dated February 6, 1998. “The Douglas Branch situation is further complicated by the pressing need for major reconstruction of the line, which was built at the turn of the century,” he wrote. “That means we need you to bring home $336 million in Federal funds for this project. I do not minimize the difficulty of the challenge, but at the same time I am confident you can do for your constituents what your colleague Congressman [William] Lipinski was able to achieve in funding and constructing the Orange Line.”
Nope. The CTA said it couldn’t commit to restoring service until it finished a ridership survey to see if locals really wanted to use the line.
“We thought it was important to get Danny on board because he’s so close to the mayor,” says Ibanez. They invited Solis to a major meeting they held in March, but he didn’t attend. So in April they marched to his house, where they were greeted by his chief of staff. “It was a rainy night–we were getting drenched,” says Ibanez. “The aide said, ‘Danny can’t come out. He’s putting his son to bed.’”
According to Ibanez, Gutierrez openly confronted Kruesi. “He kept calling him Frank,” she says. “He said, ‘Frank, you told me you’d reopen the service.’ ‘Frank, you promised me.’ ‘Frank, you said, “Be like the big boys.” Well, I hung with the big boys. I was like Lipinski. You said, “Get me the money, Luis, and I’ll take care of the rest.” Well, I got you the money, Frank.’ It got really quiet. You should have seen Danny. He was sitting there so quiet. Kruesi was kind of smiling, trying to look calm even though Gutierrez was taking some serious shots. Then Gutierrez said, ‘How can I go back to Congress and say I got all this money and you’re not even providing full service for my district?’”
Yet despite all the aldermanic tough talk, Kruesi still won’t promise to completely restore the cut service. He says the CTA is facing yet another budget crisis, and unless the state changes the formula that funds public transportation to bring in more money for the CTA, the agency will have to make massive across-the-board service cuts. “We’re creating two budgets,” says Noelle Gaffney, a CTA spokeswoman. “We have a good-news budget that continues to build on the programs we’ve seen in recent years and a bad-news budget, in case the funding is not changed.”
