RTA Universal Pass Roll-Out Time

My family kids me about how my little computer work space looks like the office of the hero in the movie “A Beautiful Mind.”

Well, it’s time to take down one of those notes.

That little article published on December 18, 2005, in the Chicago Tribune stimulates this post.

Its headline:

One card for Metra, Pace, CTA? They’re working on it

Sure…

Just like in 1974, when the RTA Citizens Committee for Better Transporation (Really. That's what the proponents' committee was called) made this false promise boldly, although not often:

Public transportation, when and where you need it, thoughout the region.

What an outrageous promise!

Then.

And, in December, Steve Schlickman, RTA Executive Director, said the RTA’s “goal” is to have the “universal fare card available to Metra riders in six months.”

The RTA's six months is up.

A footnote:

Steve’s father, State Rep. Gene Schlickman (R-Arlington Heights), and I were on Milt Rosenberg’s Extension 720 the Friday before the primary election RTA referendum in 1974.

As we sat at a hotel bar that is now near the last CTA station before O’Hare after taking the negative side of the question to WGN radio’s 50,000 watt listeners, I asked,

Are you more conservative than you before this campaign started?

He agreed that he was.

Both of us would have been labeled moderate Republicans at the time.

The opposition committee was know as "kNOw RTA." We arrived at this title at a meeting in State Rep. Don Totten's basement shopping center office in Schaumburg. Since the opponents had those like Don and me who thought government had no business in subsidizing trains and buses, plus mass transit proponents like State Reps. Gene Schlickman and Don Deuster, we had to reach some compromise that would fit us all.

We decided that using a combination of the words "NO" and "know," would allow fit us all. While the mass transit proponents among us were in favor of the public's subsidizing train and bus travel, they believe that if people knew enough about the actual RTA plan that they would vote "No."

Hence, the small "k" and "w" in the final "kNOw RTA" button design. What you see here is the prototype. Above is the cover of the pamphlet, 188,000 of which were printed in my father's office at the tip of the "V" of the Crystal Lake Plaza, plus the cost and benefit analysis on the first inside page.

If you want to read the rest of the opposition pamphlet, including a larger view of the McHenry County pitch, click here.

McHenry County voted 93-7% against creating the Regional Transporation Authority. the paper ballot RTA referendum passed by less than 13,000 votes and no recount was allowed, even though there was obvious vote fraud in Chicago.

Also posted on McHenry County Blog.