Metra takes step backward
As a recent editorial notes (“We’re sad to see Metra’s 10-ride pass go,” Jan. 5), effective Feb. 1, Metra is radically changing its ticketing options. As a Regional Transportation Authority board member, I voted against Metra’s 2024 budget at our December meeting because of my concerns over these changes.
First, Metra is eliminating altogether the popular and convenient 10-ride paper ticket. Second, Metra’s one-way tickets, currently valid for 14 days, will now be valid only on the day of purchase if bought through a ticket machine. Metra claims it is “replacing” the 10-ride ticket with a “five-pack” that can be used within 90 days. It will be available only to those who use the Ventra app on a smartphone.
The effect of these changes is that, for those riders who cannot or choose not to use a smartphone, the only way to travel on Metra will be to buy a one-way ticket on the day of travel. With ticket agents eliminated and ticket machines at a very few stations, the only way to buy such a one-way ticket, for most customers, will be to pay cash to the conductor on the train.
What groups of potential customers will not, or cannot, use a smartphone to travel? Tourists and other visitors, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, folks who choose not to carry a smartphone into the city and many, many occasional riders. This list includes groups that have been historically underserved by transit, yet who need convenient access to transit the most.
Both the RTA’s Strategic Plan and the Cook County Board’s Connecting Cook County plan advocate for easier and equitable access to transportation and for attracting, not burdening, the occasional rider.
Metra claims that these changes will ease the burdens on its train conductors. But forcing large numbers of customers to pay cash on the train will likely have the opposite effect.
The 10-ride Metra ticket was convenient and easy for both customers and conductors. At a time when we desperately need to cultivate more occasional riders and are trying to ease access for underserved groups, Metra’s changes are a step backward.
To Metra: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
Inspector General since 2015.
But the editorial board’s explanation of a “seemingly technical point” needs a correction.
Commercial property owners should know that the assessor’s office does take real estate taxes into account when determining the property’s assessed market value but in a way that differs from the Board of Review. Our methods, which we describe in detail on our website, account for the real estate taxes in the expense ratio. We do not factor these taxes into the capitalization rate because our approach more closely mirrors the commercial real estate market.
Accounting for taxes in a capitalization rate using historical tax rates is one method used in other parts of the country, but it’s more appropriate where tax rates are fixed. Cook County’s tax rates fluctuate, especially in reassessment years, so a different method is required. Otherwise, the potential exists for undervaluation of commercial properties and inequity in the larger assessment system.
We must do better than this. Readers should be aware that the county has formed a property tax reform group to create agreement among the property tax offices on this issue and others. While these concerns are obscure to many, a consensus on them will give property owners the transparency and certainty they seek — and create a fairer assessment and appeals system for all.
Considering plagiarism
Regarding the op-ed “Plagiarism, like Claudine Gay’s, is not a victimless offense” (Jan. 14): On one hand, Randall Balmer is correct. Plagiarism is a grave offense. On the other, Balmer is wrong to use former Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s case as an example. The fact is that there is a vast range of what could be called plagiarism.
The worst is to have one’s ideas stolen by someone who then passes them off as their own. I have experienced this, and it is indeed vicious. One of the reviewers of a grant application I submitted torpedoed my grant, but then described my ideas to a colleague who performed the experiments I had proposed and then tried to scoop my lab by publishing the results first.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is a point at which it is impossible to draw the line because simply using similar words or phrases may not qualify as plagiarism. In Gay’s case, the author she supposedly plagiarized has stated that he did not consider that her work plagiarized his. There are computer programs that compare every word in any document to a vast database and highlight similar phrases or sentences. Any manuscript subjected to such scrutiny reveals that 10% to 30% of the text has appeared previously, mostly in small chunks, and most often in the works of the authors themselves.
There is a limit to how many ways one can say something. Gay used phrases to describe her subject but drew her own conclusions. This is not plagiarism, and even if one defined it that way, it is trivial.
Wholesale academic theft is completely different. A parking violation and murder are both illegal but are of very different scales.
— William R. Coulson, member, Regional Transportation Authority board
— Fritz Kaegi, Cook County assessor