I never appreciated Chicago as much as I did when I spent six months living in midsized cities in the South. The difference was not just culture. Oddly, I heard myself constantly bring up the lack of public transportation in cities such as Charlotte and Nashville. Until then, I never realized how something as rudimentary and unglamorous as a rail system could change the way we approach a city.

The El is distinctively Chicagoan. Of course, when I returned to Northwestern, I was reminded that political scuffles over funding are distinctively Chicagoan, too. In what seems to be an annual ritual, the CTA is threatening again to raise prices (this time to more than $3) and cut service unless it receives hundreds of millions in subsidies from the state budget.

Evanston state rep. Julie Hamos has introduced legislation that would raise sales taxes in our six-county region by a quarter of a percent to fund those demands. The good thing about using sales taxes is that they are a steady and increasing source of income, as long as the city continues to grow. And like microfinance, it adds up even if each person doesn’t appear to pay much. As the Sun-Times put it: It’s an extra penny of tax on a $4 Chicago hot dog. Better than an extra dollar every time you ride the El.

Raising taxes is never popular. The complaints go like this: Why should people pay for the CTA’s inefficiencies? Why can’t they seem to make a profit on their own? Well, it’s a fact that public transportation isn’t profitable if you charge what people are willing to pay. It’s better to subsidize transportation (and spread out the costs invisibly) than to set prices higher and discourage its use.

But why shouldn’t El riders bear the brunt of the cost instead of taxpayers who might not even benefit?

Public transportation alleviates congested roads, saving time and gas for people who don’t take the El. Compared to Los Angeles, which has a slightly larger but comparable population, the average traveler was delayed 26 fewer hours in 2005 and wasted 25 fewer gallons of gas, according to a report the Texas Transportation Institute released last month. Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t due to Los Angeles’ sprawl. Los Angeles is actually denser than Chicago, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000). Rather, a large part must be attributable to Chicago’s mass transit. The percentage of Chicagoans who commute to work on mass transit (12.5 percent) was almost double the percentage of people who do so in Los Angeles (6.6 percent).

And then there’s air quality. In 2004, Chicago had 16 “unhealthy days” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Compare that with 88 in L.A. (although heat and altitude are also factors here) and 53 in Houston, where only 3.3 percent of commuters use mass transit.

So why should taxpayers support mass transit? Because it benefits everyone.