The [Thursday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

Breaking: Redmoon Theater to set #Cubs on fire to re-enact playoff collapse.

— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) October 22, 2015

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Hey, CTA, Call Me Sometime When You Have No World Class
“Counting on help from the state, the CTA is proposing a $1.47 billion operating budget for 2016 that maintains fare prices for the third straight year, pays for two new rush-hour express bus routes and projects a paper-thin growth in ridership,” the Tribune reports.
“But the fiscal blueprint, which CTA officials said would help keep Chicago on the path toward creating a world-class transit system, hinges in large measure on the state. The governor and lawmakers in Springfield have not agreed on a 2016 budget and the state still owes the CTA $221 million in capital-improvement funding that was expected in 2015, transit officials said.”
Emphasis mine because why in 2015 is America’s third-largest city and a noted transportation hub merely (and supposedly) on a path to creating a world-class transit system instead of already there? Also, CTA officials are admitting that we don’t have a world-class transit system.
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Where the CTA is going, they don’t need no roads.
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“In addition, the CTA 2016 spending plan assumes the Rauner administration will roll back a recent 50 percent cut in transit subsidies that help make up some of the cost of providing free and reduced-fare rides to disabled and low-income commuters.”
Which the Rauner administration is totally willing to do in exchange for tort reform.
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“Despite all the potential financial roadblocks, CTA president Dorval Carter Jr. on Wednesday characterized the agency’s 2016 spending plan as ‘a realistic budget, realizing there are some unknowns here that we cannot control.'”
Like the budget part.
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“In the new budget year, the CTA projects state and federal funds totaling $2.3 billion for capital improvements ranging from constructing new stations and other facilities, modernizing aging infrastructure and buying new trains and buses in fiscal 2016 through 2020. The plans are based on Congress finally passing a multiyear transportation spending bill to replace legislation that expired in 2014 and has been temporarily extended.”
Huh. I wonder how that’s going.
“The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to markup a bipartisan bill to spend up to $325 billion on transportation projects over the next six years on Thursday, as Congress scrambles to prevent an interruption in the nation’s infrastructure spending at the end of the month,” the Hill reports.
“The measure would spend $261 billion on highways, $55 billion on transit and approximately $9 billion on safety programs, but only if Congress can come up with a way to pay for the final three years.”
Reading the news reports, that’s a big “only if.”
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I will say this: You can’t say Dorval Carter doesn’t have – at least on paper – the experience for the job.
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TrackNotes: Keeneland > Wrigley
“The hallowed Keeneland racecourse in Lexington, Kentucky [is] a venue that will out-mecca Wrigley any day, especially now that the Ricketts’ have their mitts on the ‘ballpark,'” writes our man on the rail Tom Chambers.
Fantasy Fix: Best Defenses
“Eight team defenses scored TDs in Week 6,” our man in fantasyland Dan O’Shea notes. “Also, eight defenses – seven of which were among the TD scorers – finished the week with more than 10 fantasy points.”
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BeachBook

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The Beachwood Tip Line: Where no roads go.

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Posted on October 22, 2015