How the CTA and Metra Impact Chicago

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When you encounter a city such as Chicago, it is practically impossible to avoid CTA and Metra trains. From short store errands to long journeys home, the CTA is there as your personal downtown car. If you do not have enough money to put into owning a car or simply do not want to put up with trying to find parking in the congested city, the CTA is there for you. Where more people to use the CTA, the amount of gas polluting the earth would significantly decrease the pollution levels in Chicago. Since there aren't as many cars on the road, it not only decreases the carbon monoxide leaking from cars but the amount of cars on the road, which also decreases the amount of people on the road. Numerous laws state how using the CTA could benefit people in Chicago overall. These are just some of the reasons Metra and the CTA has impacted everything from population to economics and even political and environmental issues. Throughout the history of Chicago, trains have always played a big role in its development. In the early years of Chicago's booming economy, trains would bring cattle into the slaughter yards, where they would be slain and butchered for meat and then shipped elsewhere. This region near the south side, became known as the stock yards. Another neighborhood started right beyond it, known as the back of the yards. This neighborhood grew from people who moved into the region to work in the yards. Coming off of this fact, we see that in Chicago's early history, it had a great population boom due to its extremely prosperous economy. Many immigrants came over the years looking for political stability and personal freedoms in America along with other migrants looking for work which all were readily available to them within Chicag... ... middle of paper ... ...g I can use for my final paper when I include evidence about the environmental impacts of the trains on the city. I also liked this source because of how it talks about these organizations competing to bring more money into the city, which shows that they are positively impacting Chicago's economy. Hampp, Andrew. "Advertising Boosts Transit Budgets." Advertising Age 79.40 (2008): 8. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. Hampp describes how cities such as New York and Chicago are facing financial issues within their public transit systems. They are beginning to rely on the funding from advertisements in order to keep the fares low for riders because of costs to maintain equipment and pay employees are rising. I would prefer this source to be more recent, seeing that this is from 2009 but I do feel like the information I used fits in perfectly for my topic.

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