Posted by Michelle Manchir at 2:05 p.m.; last updated at 3:11 p.m.
SPRINGFIELD — Free local bus and train rides would be restricted to low-income senior citizens under a measure a House panel approved today to help bring in more money for transit agencies reeling from financial woes.
Applying means testing to the free ride program would generate between $37 million and $50 million, said sponsoring Rep. Suzanne Bassi, R-Palatine.
"The bottom line is that there’s no free ride if there’s no bus," said Bassi, who lost her re-election bid in the primary last week.
Under the bill, senior citizens 65 and older would keep riding for free if they qualify for the state’s circuit breaker program. A one-person household with an income of $27,610 would be eligible
under the guidelines. A two-person household could have
a maximum income of $34,635. The circuit breaker program is used to set
income guidelines to give seniors property tax relief and aid to buy
prescription drugs.
State Rep. Julie Hamos, who chairs the House Mass Transit Committee, said she does not know if the measure has enough support to pass the full House, but she vowed to work on getting it through both chambers.
"To me, this is about fiscal responsibility," said Hamos, D-Wilmette.
Hamos added that the measure represents a "fair fare policy."
Seniors with higher incomes would ride at half price on the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra and Pace. That’s the same discount seniors got before then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich demanded the free ride program in return for signing off on a sales tax increase to bail out the bus and rail agencies two years ago.
The proposal is a "well-balanced solution to reform" the free ride program, said Jim Reilly, who chairs the board of the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the transit agencies.
The Chicago Transit Authority estimates that the free rides will cost the agency well in excess of $30 million this year in lost revenue. The CTA provided about 73 million free rides in 2009, the agency said, although the total included seniors, active military personnel, disabled veterans and people covered under the state’s low-income Circuit Breaker Program. The CTA provided about 22 million total free rides in 2008.
More than 402,000 senior citizens are registered to ride for free, according to the Regional Transportation Authority. That’s up from about 150,000 seniors enrolled before the free-ride program.
The proposal, approved by the House Mass Transit Committee 19-4, now goes before the full House.