Protesters marched outside CTA headquarters downtown today as the transit agency put the finishing touches on a major downsizing of bus and rail service.
A crowd of fewer than 100 people consisted mostly of CTA unionized employees. One protester of the service cuts was ejected from the agency’s boardroom after he disrupted the monthly CTA meeting by throwing papers into the air.
More than 1,000 CTA employees will be laid off on Feb. 7 if planned service cuts go through to help eliminate a projected $300 million budget deficit.
“You literally are restructuring the lives of thousands of people … I think the people of this city deserve better,” Darrell Jefferson, president of the bus drivers and bus mechanics union, Local 241 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, told CTA board members.
Jefferson and others urged the board to rescind the service cuts.
The service reductions will eliminate nine express bus routes and increase waiting times for passengers on more than 100 other bus routes as well as rail lines, officials said.
Buses and trains are expected to be much more crowded too.
CTA bus service will be reduced 18 percent, leading to shortened hours of operation on 41 bus routes, and rail service will be cut by 9 percent, resulting in longer waits between trains, officials said.
The unions have refused to go along with salary freezes and unpaid furlough days that non-union CTA employees are being forced to take as a way to reduce the $300 million budget deficit caused in large measure by a dropoff in sales tax revenue and real estate transfer taxes.
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