The CTA (Chicago Transit Association) has recently been questioned in their fairness in distributing funds for the different types of transportation used throughout Chicago. There are three main forms of public transportation by commuters in Chicago: CTA rail and bus or the Metra. The CTA forms of transportation are widely used by Chicago inhabitants, allowing them to travel within the city versus the Metra, which is a train for commuters from the usually white-dominant suburbs into the downtown business district.
Two commuters sued the state of Illinois, claiming that "
regional funding has systematically under-funded inner-city bus and L train service for the benefit of suburban train lines, therefore denying equal transportation access to the region’s minority populations and violating federal and state law." Looking at the Distribution of Total Expenditures Chart on the left, it's clear that CTA is much more widely used then Metra (4.5 million versus 1 million). Also, the large majority of the Metra riders are white, versus on the CTA who only has 31% of non-hispanic whites--the rest are minorities. This clear difference between the two types of transportation in racial makeup raises the question: is the funding for public transportation racist? Or is it just a coincidence that the racial minorities' transportation is underfunded?
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