CTA transit fare strike.

i don't know how effective this would be can't think that it would be but theres more on it here: http://www.midwestunrest.net/farestrike/ RIDERS DON'T PAY! WORKERS DON'T COLLECT! The CTA has slated January 2nd 2005 as Doomsday. This is the day services are to be cut by 20%, 1250 jobs are to be terminated and paratransit fares will be increased by 100%. While CTA officials claim the only solution would be extra money from the state, we have been holding CTA president Frank Kruesi and his board responsible. It is the CTA who has known this crisis was coming and has made the decision to dump it on the backs of workers and riders. They are the ones who ignored it as they built their new $119 million Lake Street office. It is also Kruesi and his buddy mayor Daley who are still talking about spending almost 2 billion dollars on a new Circle line, just so rich folks can get from their neighborhoods to the airport a little bit quicker. If there is money for such luxury, there is no excuse for cutting our service, terminating our jobs and raising our fares! In response, Midwest Unrest has called for a fare strike starting December 15th. If no final decision to scrap these cuts, job terminations and fare increases has been announced by then, we are calling on all CTA riders to ride their routes like they do everyday but without paying. The CTA depends on us paying and collecting fares. This is where our power to pressure them lies. This tactic has been successful before, in San Francisco, Italy, France and elsewhere. In Chicago, there is widespread support for a fare strike among bus operators, many of whom have already received pink slips. They've said time and again, "It's not our job to collect the fares." So starting December 15th, politely state that you are on fare strike when you board your buses and take your seat without paying. Until then start spreading the word. Talk to your bus operators and other riders. Download flyers from our website and pass them out. Together we can make this a success! WHAT'S UP? The Chicago Transit Authority is planning a drastic attack on poor and working people all over the city. This will include: 20% overall service cuts 30 bus routes being completely eliminated, hundreds of others coming less often, having shorter routes, having night or weekend service eliminated (complete list) 11% cut in operating hours of the Â"LÂ" 1000 job losses, most of which are firings, not layoffs doubling the fee for paratransit vans for disabled riders increasing the fee for student passes by $.10 a day WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Frank Kreusi and the CTA board say that they have a budget crisis, that they are $70-some million dollars short. They say they need more money from Springfield—and with their public hearings and add campaigns they are trying to direct all our anger into lobbying our representatives. We donÂ't buy it. In 1999, they got money from the state to restore the 1997 service cuts, but the service cuts were never restored. They just built a new office at 567 W. Lake St. that cost about $119 million. They have already started work on the new Circle Line to connect the suburbs, which will cost as much as $2 billion. The CTA board recently voted to increase their own pensions. They are planning new express Â"LÂ" trains that will run every 15 minutes between downtown and OÂ'Hare airport, so yuppie tourists donÂ't have to mix with the local riff-raff. They always have enough money for security cameras and GPS clever boxes to spy on the driversÂ… not to mention grafitti clean-up. So the problem is not only that the CTA has a budget crisis, but that they have chosen to dump their crisis off on us—the people who depend most on public transit and who can least afford to pay more. WHAT CAN WE DO? The point is not to offer up different management strategies for the CTA. Lots of community groups have done this, and they have been ignored. The CTA listens to big business, not riders and drivers. The only way they will respond to our needs, is if we can put real pressure on them—if we can disrupt business as usual. We have the power to do this. Half of CTAÂ's budget comes from fares. They depend on us as riders to pay fares, and as workers to collect fares. When riders refuse to pay, and workers refuse to collect, that will really hit them where it hurts. We can get where we need to go, have a free ride, and put pressure on them at the same time. If this happened on a large scale, they would move very quickly to restore services, reverse job losses and stop the fare hikes. PEOPLE WOULD NEVER DO THAT Not true. Fare evasion happens every day. ItÂ's such a big problem for transit bureaucrats that transit authorities in almost every major city in the world have issued long reports condemning it. Whenever they introduce new technology into ticket-taking it is explained as a way to cut down on fare evasion. Even though they try to make consequences for fare evasion, riders continue to do it all the time. It just needs to be pushed farther. Organized fare strikes are a common tactic: In Italy in 1974, fare strikes were widespread, and were successful in stopping fare increases all over the country. In some cities in France, organized fare evasion became so common, that it was more expensive to pay for police to watch all the metros and busses than to just make the transport free, which is what happened in a number of cities. In San Francisco in 1993 a fare evasion campaign helped increase the pressure on the city to bring back transfers, which they did. In Dublin a fare-free day was called in the summer of 2003 by bus-drivers unions as part of the ongoing fight against the privatization of the cityÂ's bus system. There are ongoing and successful fare evasion campaigns in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Helsinki. The Bus Riders Union in Vancouver has called for a fare strike in early 2005 if a proposed fare increase goes ahead.>