Passage
HOW A CITY REBUILT ITS TRANSIT
(1)
For most of the twentieth century, the city's east side was served by a dense network of streetcars and rail 1 lines. Consequently, the thinly settled west side relied almost entirely on cars. This imbalance between the two districts eased in the postwar decades. When the metro area rebuilt its downtown in the 1960s, rapid growth followed, particularly on the west side. The older routes, 2 mostly the crosstown streetcar line, began to lose riders in these years, but the steady spread of the private automobile masked this decline until a sharp rise in operating costs and a shift in commuting habits 3 sent ridership into a period of prolonged decline.
(2)
[1] 4 While it was the 1980s and 1990s, the metro area's population center continued to 5 shift outward toward the western suburbs. [2] The early 1990s saw the transit agency facing a difficult period of structural adjustment caused by declining ridership, deteriorating equipment, and 6 neglecting routine maintenance. [3] Against this discouraging backdrop, in 1994, the newly appointed director's planning team drafted 7 an ambitious modernization program to reverse the ridership decline by rebuilding the reliability of the city's aging fleet through a modest fare increase. 8 [4] Consequently, the long slump of the early 1990s shook the agency to its core—ridership fell, operating costs increased, 9 passenger complaints were soaring, the on-time rate slipped below 60 percent, and the repair backlog, although partly offset by emergency city grants, 10 shrank. [5] Weekday ridership then recovered, rising from 2 percent in 1996 to a peak of 5 percent in 2001. [6] In 2003, the agency tied its weekend service to regional rail schedules, primarily through 11 closely coordinating its timetables. 12
(3)
Although the city was relatively prosperous, its transit agency spent beyond its income and deferred repairs for years. The agency reacted to the budget shortfalls of the 1990s with short-sighted measures: it postponed upgrades system-wide and propped up its oldest 13 corridors; the riverfront line, the downtown loop, the airport spur, and the university route; in order to keep the network running.
(4)
As a result, the agency's accumulated debt reached nearly 90 percent of its annual budget by the end of the 1990s. 14 However, thanks to a dedicated local sales-tax fund, the agency managed to cover the shortfall mainly from stable regional revenue. This minimized the damaging effects on the overall network. 15
