Now Emanuel has decided to use new state money to expand early education. That’s a good election-year move, and it’s a noble goal, though we should recall that preschool enrollment actually declined following Emanuel’s previous early education initiatives. But the money Emanuel wants to use, based on a new state funding formula he supported last year, is intended to bring CPS up to adequate funding levels in its elementary and high schools – schools that have faced deep cuts under Emanuel and have a long way to go to reach “adequacy.” (Cuts to social workers and nurses may have contributed to the district’s failure to address sexual abuse.) And future years’ funding is not assured. Don’t expect the school board to ask any questions about that.
But never mind all that – here’s a shiny new object to catch your eye: billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to build at tunnel to O’Hare at no cost to taxpayers. But even this highlights Emanuel’s top-down, unaccountable, and politically-driven style of governance. And far from being truly “visionary,” the project is quite arguably short-sighted.
There are plenty of questions about the project. Musk’s claims about his new tunneling technology are unproven and questioned by experts. A test tunnel in California has been held up by Musk’s attempt to skip over environmental reviews. Crediting the project’s economic viability – both projected costs and revenues – requires a huge leap of faith. So does the assertion that taxpayers won’t ultimately be on the hook. The record of such promises for privately-financed public projects – from Millennium Park to Toronto’s airport express – has always ended in taxpayer bailouts.
Emanuel’s response: “It’s easy to be a critic or cynic.” He will make all the big decisions, all by himself.
Transportation experts are scratching their heads. The tunnel will give Chicago no competitive advantage; the Blue and Orange Lines already give the city a more efficient transit link to its airports than almost any other large U.S. city. According to the Coalition for a Modern Metra Electric, it makes more sense to link Metra’s north and south lines to give the South Side and the south suburbs (not to mention McCormick Place) direct access to the job-rich O’Hare area. The first step toward that could be converting Metra’s South Chicago branch to serve the Far South Side – a much cheaper and quicker solution than extending the Red Line.