Chicago is still in great need of funding for public transit. The Illinois House of Representatives voted on bill SB307 on 11/28/2007, but didn’t pass it. This bill would have used primarily gas tax to fund the needed four billion dollars needed per year.
The news reports that it’s an issue with the downstate Reps who won’t pass bill, because they want a comprehensive plan for all of Illinois. (Hello, get it done then, we are in crisis mode having missed two deadlines with doomsday plans, and now we face HALF THE BUS LINES BEING ELIMINATED THIS JANUARY). Now it’s true that the downstate people don’t care about Chicago, apparently neither does the northwestern suburbs of Chicago.
You’d think with the Metra going providing thousands of suburban commuters with a clean environmentally friendly ride every day, you’d have the reps in those areas be more than glad to help public transit.
No. Check out this map and see how the reps who have train stops in their district voted. More details on who the reps are will come in tomorrow’s blog post.
this is more upsetting than the writers strike.
wow matt, awesome map! not that i’m trying to make more work for you, but were the southsiders all in favor?
Thanks cat! I just haven’t gotten around to the south-siders, and believe me they are important too! I grew up on da south side and I take the Rock Island to my parents on the south side all the time! The lines on the south tended to be a bit more in favor of the funding, I focused on the NW and N burbs, cuz they tend to have more silly republicans as Reps. But eventually I’d like to research all the lines. (When I look this stuff up, the addresses of the stations often don’t work for Rep searches on votesmart.org, so I take the address of the station, plunk it into google maps, find the nearest business, take that business’s address, plunk that into USPS Zip Code +4 search, so I can get a zip code plus those four extra numbers. Then I take that and plunk it into votesmart.org. Then I copy the rep’s district and paste it into my excel document that has the voting records of the Reps. llol. Phew! It takes me about half an hour to do each line now that I have the process streamlined).
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