Millennium for Straphangers

No city in the U.S. has a more rattletrap public transportation system than Chicago. Its streetcars, owned by four different companies (all bankrupt) and operated by a fifth, are mostly high-riding "antediluvian arks." Wooden coaches of the McKinley era still clatter around the Loop's rickety elevated lines (also operated by a bankrupt company). On streetcars and El trains alike, lurching is continual, overcrowding chronic and wrecks frequent.

For years, hapless straphangers have protested in vain. Chicago's traction troubles are rooted in corrupt politics and civic inertia. But last week Chicagoans were no less amazed than if they had suddenly seen the Wrigley Building afloat in Lake Michigan. The "traction problem" was apparently solved at last.

Thumbs Down. In 1938, Big Ed Kelly, then mayor, had wangled an $18 million federal appropriation to help Chicago build its first small rabbit-run of subway. He got it on condition that all the city's transportation facilities be unified--and improved. His city councilmen dutifully passed a unification plan. The plan was approved by voters in a referendum, by surface and elevated line bondholders, and by the federal court which had jurisdiction over the bankrupt operating companies. But in 1943 the Illinois Commerce Commission rejected Kelly's proposals as "unsound."

Hounded by State Street merchants, by the newspapers and by the electorate, Ed Kelly started all over again. This time he called in Phil Harrington, a crack city traction engineer, and asked him to help figure out a new plan. Harrington suggested the establishment of a Chicago Transit Authority which, with private capital, would buy up all the facilities and operate them as an independent agency.

Ed Kelly did not intend to be thwarted again by the Commerce Commission. He went to Springfield and talked bipartisan turkey with Governor Dwight Green. Soon afterwards, in 1945, the state legislature passed a law setting up the Transit Authority. In another referendum, Chicago voters approved it.

La Salle Street Help. Only one hurdle remained: selling $105 million worth of bonds. Underwriters were wary; big institutional buyers might shy away from the issue because the Transit Authority, having no taxing powers, would have to rely solely on earnings to meet its obligations. But finally, hoping to do a big business with small investors, a syndicate headed by the La Salle Street firm of Harris, Hall & Co. took on the job. On Aug. 6, the issue went on sale. By last week, it was entirely sold out.

Planner Harrington, now chairman of the Transit Authority's seven-man board, was as jubilant as Chicago's straphangers. He announced that he would start administering first aid to the surface and El lines as soon as the Authority takes them over, Oct. 1. After laying out $87 million to buy the lines, he would have $18 million left to work with.

Harrington also had a long-range program that made Chicagoans bug-eyed. By upping streetcar and bus fares from 9-c- to 10-c- (El fares would remain at 12-c-), he hoped to boost the operational earnings of the combined lines, now taxexempt, to about $14 million a year (last year's earnings: $8,000,000 before taxes). With this money coming in to meet depreciation and debt charges, he planned to spend $150 million on modernization. By 1955, if all went well, Chicago would get 2,900 new buses, 600 new streetcars, 1,000 new El coaches.

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