Affordable Yacht Vacations: Group Charters Make Luxe Travel Accessible
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
A group trip to a mediocre resort with the same old offerings can set you back thousands of dollars. New trends suggest there is a way to get a more unique, upscale bang for your buck: yacht travel. And more people than ever are taking advantage.
A 2024 report by Mastercard found that travelers were spending more time away from home than they did pre-COVID. The company also said that spending on experiences and nightlife accounts for 12 percent of tourism sales, its highest point in a half-decade.
"We're seeing the same mindset that draws people to quality-first brands like Loro Piana and The Row shaping how they travel: with discernment, intention and an appreciation for value," Eric Monkaba, the founder of TripScaper, told Newsweek. "Whether it's gaining after-hours access to the Giza pyramids or renting a private ski chalet in Lech, bringing together friends or family isn't just smart economics—it also transforms these once-in-a-lifetime moments into meaningful, shared experiences."
Captains know where to take tourists, but they also know the hidden local gems that are often missed.
Captains know where to take tourists, but they also know the hidden local gems that are often missed.
Mercedes-Benz
Luxury travel, especially by boat, has emerged as an increasingly popular way for families and friends to enjoy a tailored, highly experiential and unique getaway. The cost of living the yacht life is around the same as resort travel these days, but the experience is more customizable.
Yacht travel dipped due to COVID-19 but has been steadily recovering in the years since. According to Yachtfolio.com, bookings were up 70 percent from 2021 to 2024. Last year saw further market stability with bookings up 3.7 percent on the previous year.
Carving out just the right experience can be done with the help of a travel arrangements professional, someone that goes above and beyond the services of AAA or your local travel agent. Social media is becoming increasingly important as users bookmark and save posts from influencers and friends to help them plan their itineraries.
Yachts like Ella can sleep multiple guests, allowing the cost to be split.
Yachts like Ella can sleep multiple guests, allowing the cost to be split.
Mercedes-Benz
"Boat experiences are consistently a highlight for our travelers—no matter how you slice it. We've chartered a catamaran in the Greek isles, hired a yacht to sail down the Bosphorus in Istanbul and toasted on a Champagne cruise along the Seine at sunset (to name a few). We're even privatizing a boat to sail along the Nile for an unforgettable few days exploring Egypt," Whitney Haldeman, founder of Atlas Adventures, told Newsweek.
"Our post-trip surveys consistently rank these experiences as a highlight of the trip. While our guests are seeking experiences that feel special and exclusive, they're often out of reach financially to do solo. That's the beauty of luxury group travel—there's power in numbers. Our trips allow guests to enjoy the perks of private yacht charters, luxury hotels, bespoke itineraries and high-touch service, all while sharing the cost with like-minded travelers who may start as strangers but quickly feel like longtime friends. It's a smart, connected way to travel and it's shaping the future of how luxury is accessed," Haldeman added.
Popular yacht rental locations include: Greece, the French Riviera, Italy, Thailand, Australia, Sardinia, Croatia, Spain, the Bahamas, St. Barts, Turkey, the Virgin Islands and Antigua. The surrounding seas are dotted with islands of all sizes, each inviting stopovers and allowing yachters to explore their settings in a unique, intimate way.
Popular yacht rental locations are in seas dotted with islands of all sizes, each inviting stopovers and allowing yachters to explore their settings in a unique, intimate way.
Popular yacht rental locations are in seas dotted with islands of all sizes, each inviting stopovers and allowing yachters to explore their settings in a unique, intimate way.
Daniel Balda
While warm weather destinations are popular, yachts can also be rented in cooler climates like the Great Lakes, Newport, Rhode Island and Norway. In these destinations, sailing charters are popular, owing themselves to a luxury experience with a historic twist, but often with modern amenities like satellite-based Wi-Fi and gourmet meals.
Groups of guests can tender a private charter for their holiday and a more personalized experience. When split between the group, costs can be similar to what you would pay to stay at a premium or luxury resort for a week.
Going a step further, travelers can ensure a unique experience by being the captain of their own ship. Rental sites like Boataround allow travelers to tender a boat they pilot themselves (a sailing license is often required) for a few days or a week. Some smaller boats with two cabins are available for around $2,000 per week before the cost of fuel, taxes and extras are considered.
Many hotels will hold larger luggage for a few days if you plan to return to their accommodation once back on dry land.
Many hotels will hold larger luggage for a few days if you plan to return to their accommodation once back on dry land.
Mercedes-Benz
Prices for larger tenders that fit even more people can range from a couple of thousand dollars per day to over one million dollars per week. Some are available with a captain, and some require one. Crews that work the ship are also available and the extent of services onboard is often negotiable.
While each rental is different, many larger boats can come with water sports equipment, snorkeling gear, paddleboarding equipment and a slide. Dinghies and hotel suite-like kitchen space is common. When a full week of yachting isn't in the budget, groups can enjoy a few days at sea paired with a resort stay. Many hotels will hold larger luggage for a few days if you plan to return to their accommodation once back on dry land.
Transferring to your charter for a stay at sea is akin to arriving at a private hangar. Often your car transfer service will pull up to the dock and your luggage is brought onboard by the crew while you sip Champagne and watch the goings-on on other yachts in the harbor. The crew will give a tour of the boat to guests, pointing out important things like which button to press to open the sliding glass door, and instructing what to do in the event of an emergency. Once travel is underway, the fun begins. Itineraries are often negotiated at booking or days before setting off, and more stops can drive up the cost of a trip.
Aerial top view of luxury yachts in Puerto Banus marina, Marbella, Spain.
Aerial top view of luxury yachts in Puerto Banus marina, Marbella, Spain.
Daria Kulkova/Getty
Taking into account recommendations from the crew is a surefire way to enhance your experience. Captains know where to take tourists, but they also know the hidden local gems that are often missed, like the intimate and romantic Taverna San Vigilio on Lake Garda and celebrity hangouts Toula's Seaside (Corfu) and Basil's Bar (Mustique).
The best captains and staff will know how to get you a last-minute reservation at highly sought after locales like Le Plongeoir in Nice, France. For those who want the boat-life experience but don't require a private charter, there is the option of river boating or small-boat cruising. A growing number of travel influencers are chartering entire vessels to host their followers, taking them on bespoke excursions inspired by experiences they've previously chronicled online.
"When it comes to trends, I'm seeing a growing emphasis on attainable luxury. I think it's more accessible than ever before because there's so much more competition among hotels, Airbnbs, experiences and more. Travelers are prioritizing meaningful experiences over material splurges, and boats and yachts are a big part of that," Helene Sula from the Helene in Between travel site told Newsweek.
While each rental is different, many larger boats can come with water sports equipment, snorkeling gear, paddleboarding equipment and a slide.
While each rental is different, many larger boats can come with water sports equipment, snorkeling gear, paddleboarding equipment and a slide.
Carol Yepes/Getty
"I'm noticing a rise in group and curated travel experiences. By traveling with small groups—whether it's family, friends or curated group tours—people are able to split costs and access otherwise expensive rentals, making luxury feel more attainable. It's less about flashy displays and more about creating lasting memories in incredible settings," she said.
Last year, Sula hosted multiple groups of travelers aboard European river cruise boats during the holiday season. Offshore excursions to the region's famed Christmas markets were part of the curated itinerary, but travelers were able to customize their trip to fit their desires. Sula visited and vetted each destination and tour ahead of the trip, sharing on her website and social media platforms.
"I'm especially passionate about how inclusive small-ship cruising has become. We've been on dozens of river cruises and love the style of travel but wanted to create an experience that was fully all-inclusive while also offering travelers more time at each destination. We also provide multiple excursions per day—and unlike many trips where you have to choose just one, we design ours so you can do both if you'd like. We find that travelers often want to 'do it all,' and we make it possible," Sula said.
Friends or families can enjoy a tailored, highly experiential and unique sailing getaway.
Friends or families can enjoy a tailored, highly experiential and unique sailing getaway.
Noel Uroz/Getty
Booking in on a sailboat can ease a trip's environmental impact, as can not changing bedroom linens every day and minimizing food waste. And traveling via battery-powered, green energy-charged ferries instead of by plane can enhance the local feel of a by-water experience without indulging fully in a cruise or boat charter.
In today's world, travelers are conscious about sustainability—and it's becoming more important to them. In a 2024 survey by Booking.com, 83 percent of 31,000 travelers questioned acknowledged the importance of sustainable travel. But research from the same company found that 49 percent thought more sustainable travel was too expensive.
"I'm seeing more companies focusing on local immersion, sustainability and personalization—all while maintaining a luxury feel," added Sula. "These small-ship trips offer the intimacy and elegance of private travel without the hefty private charter price tag, making them a standout example of attainable luxury."
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Wall Street Journal
10 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Remote Work Is Convenient for Employees…and North Korean Scammers - Tech News Briefing
Jobs that allow employees to work from home have allowed for more flexibility. But in the quest to achieve a better work-life balance, we've helped open the door for hackers looking to capitalize on America's workforce. Bob McMillan covers computer security, hackers, and privacy for the Wall Street Journal. He joins host Victoria Craig to discuss how laptop farms have allowed North Korean scammers to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars to the sanctioned country. Full Transcript This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Victoria Craig: Hey, TNB listeners, before we get started, heads up, we're going to be asking you a question at the top of each show for the next few weeks. Our goal here at Tech News Briefing is to keep you updated with the latest headlines and trends on all things tech. Now, we want to know more about you, what you like about the show, and what more you'd like to hear from us. So our question this week is how often do you want new episodes and how long do you want them to be? Do you want shorter shows more often or longer shows less frequently? If you're listening on Spotify, look for our poll under the episode description, or you can send us an email to tnb@ Now onto the show. Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, May 30th. I'm Victoria Craig for the Wall Street Journal. Remote jobs have become common for workers in industries across America. They make the work-life balance easier for employees, but they've also allowed countries like North Korea to infiltrate US companies with the help of everyday Americans. Today we're taking a deep dive into an intricate scam involving illegal paychecks and stolen data. A scam that the FBI says involves thousands of North Korean workers, has brought hundreds of millions of dollars a year into the country. It's a place where international sanctions have frozen the flow of funds, so the country has gotten creative in its quest for cash. And it's capitalized on some of America's remote work opportunities to start laptop farms in states across the US. Bob McMillan covers computer security hackers and privacy for the Wall Street Journal. Bob, I'm going to guess that the phrase "laptop farm" is not a familiar one for most of our listeners. So what is it and what kind of person typically runs one? Bob McMillan: Yeah, it's a new gig economy job that's popped up since the COVID epidemic and the advent of massive remote work. That's not something you'll find advertised, but basically you get a request, maybe via LinkedIn or some kind of gig work site that asks if you want to help a foreign company with a US representation. And the next thing you know, you're getting laptops shipped to your house and you're turning them on and you're operating them, but they're shipped to fake workers who have got jobs at these companies and who need a US address to pretend to be working out of. So laptop farmer receives the computers for the fake workers, turns them on, connects them, and then adds remote software so these people offshore can connect to these laptops. And then doing things like tech jobs, Python development and stuff like that. Here's the kicker though. The remote workers are actually North Koreans and they're trying to, in a very illegal way, make money for the heavily sanctioned regime there. Victoria Craig: Tell us about Christina Chapman because she was one of the people in America who participated in this scheme. Bob McMillan: Christina Chapman's case was interesting because you had the court record that had all these allegations of what she was doing. And then she left a very long TikTok trail of just all kinds of political TikToks, personal TikToks, TikToks about Japanese boy bands. But embedded in that were a few comments on her work and her situation in life. Christina Chapman: And I did not make my own breakfast this morning. My clients are going crazy, so I just got a smoothie bowl. It's an acai smoothie bowl and it has bananas, strawberries. Bob McMillan: But coincidentally in the background, you can see I counted at least 10 laptops there. They've got Post-it notes on them that apparently say the name of the worker and the company they're supposed to be working for. And you hear them just whirring away in her apartment. Victoria Craig: And what made Chapman a target for this kind of scam? Bob McMillan: Her story is probably, in many ways, very typical of these people. They are gig workers who reach a point in their life where they're desperate. And that's what happened with Christina Chapman. She was basically living in a trailer in Minnesota. She didn't have any heat. She was showering at her local gym. She really was at a dead end in her life. And this offer came in through LinkedIn saying, "Hey, do you want to be our US representative?" It became clear pretty quickly that some of the stuff she was doing was illegal. It's at least fraudulent, right? But she was desperate, and it really did turn her life around. I mean, she ended up having a much better quality of life as a result of this job. The problem is it's completely illegal. Victoria Craig: So the question about whether these people who are acting on behalf essentially of the North Koreans, whether they know what they're doing is illegal. Christina Chapman may not have known the nationality of the people she was working with, but you're right that she did acknowledge that she could "go to federal prison for falsifying federal documents." Bob McMillan: Yeah, it's pretty hard to do this gig without realizing you're doing something illegal, right? Because quite often you have to forge signatures. You have to facilitate the presentation of fake credentials. But if you look at the court records, she's basically saying, "Hey, what you're asking me to do is illegal," all the time. And the thing is that if you do fraud, that's one thing, but if you do fraud in support of the North Koreans, that's way worse. Victoria Craig: Coming up, a look at the corporate side of this scheme, who the scammers are targeting and what they want after the break. To make a laptop farming scam successful tech specialists usually trained in North Korea's technical education programs need to first find a back door into corporate America. We're back with WSJ reporter, Bob McMillan, who's been reporting on this. Bob, you write that. Christina Chapman, the so-called laptop farmer, who we about earlier helped North Koreans who got jobs at big companies like at a top five national television network here, a premier Silicon Valley tech company, an aerospace and defense manufacturer. And the list goes on. How exactly does this process work? How do they effectively trick the companies into hiring people who are really based in North Korea, China, or even Russia as you report? Bob McMillan: They basically operate a complete shadow economy. They have LinkedIn profiles, they have GitHub repositories where they store source code. They even have fake companies that they can use as references. So they build this sort of simulation of a legitimate, usually a tech worker profile. And then they just are so good at bombarding people with job requests. Companies have different levels of diligence they do around making sure the people they're hiring for remote work are real. A lot of them require that you come in, but some don't. And so with the people who can just straight up be hired by a staffing agency, for example, and never even have to show up, that's an easy one for them. But even if a company requires a face-to-face meeting, the North Koreans have a way around that. For a while, they were doing virtual face-to-face meetings with AI-driven avatars. So there're these fake faces that they would show up on Zoom meetings. And when people started figuring out how to get around that, if you ask the AI avatar to wave their hand in front of them, then the software doesn't work. And so you can tell it's a fake person. So they got around that though. They started hiring people who legitimately had tech skills to pass these interviews. Victoria Craig: And what do the North Koreans ultimately want from these workers? Bob McMillan: There are three things they want. First and foremost, they want money. Their regime is sanctioned. They have a hard time trading with anyone in the West, and they need cash. They need cash for their weapons program, for example. And the FBI estimates that they are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year just from paychecks, from companies hiring these North Koreans, who by all accounts, some are terrible workers and some are not bad, some last months or even years at these companies. And so they found sort of a hack of our remote work situation right now. So that's the first thing they want is money. The second thing, they want more money. So quite often they'll exfiltrate data, they'll steal your corporate secrets, your source code, customer information, and then they will threaten to dump it once you fire them. And so they'll extort you. So that's number two. And then the third case is murky, but the FBI suspects that they're also conducting espionage. So they've hit aerospace companies. There are certain types of companies that might have secrets that the North Korean regime would be interested in. So those are the three things they're doing. Victoria Craig: And how widespread is this? Bob McMillan: The FBI thinks there are thousands of these workers out there. And what's fascinating to me is I heard about this scam a couple of years ago. And where it started was in the cryptocurrency world. The crypto companies were getting with these fake workers all the time. And I didn't realize until I wrote this story how incredibly widespread it is. It feels like anybody who is hiring a remote worker has to worry about this. Victoria Craig: And is there anything the companies can do once they find out that this has happened to them? Bob McMillan: Since the story published, there's been a lot of debate over this. I actually asked Amazon's CSO about this problem, and he was aware of it. And I said, "What can you do about it?" And he said, "Well, you could have your employees come in five days a week." Victoria Craig: So just to close the loop on Christina for us, what ended up happening to her once she was found out, essentially? Bob McMillan: The FBI raided her house in October of 2023. She was charged the next year, and she struck a plea deal. So she's pled guilty, and she's due to be sentenced on July 16. According to the terms of her plea deal, she could be facing just a little bit more than nine years in prison for this. Victoria Craig: Wow. Wow. But her financial situation didn't turn out any better. She essentially wound up almost back where she was before. Isn't that right? Bob McMillan: It was worse, really. I mean, she's living in a homeless shelter now. She attempted to do a variety of things after the raid. The North Koreans didn't pay her for her final month of services. And she tried to do a GoFundMe. She tried to sell coloring books on Amazon. She did DoorDash one night and made $7.25 doing it. She struggled when this gig went away, and she eventually lost her home. And she's, yeah, living in a homeless shelter now. Victoria Craig: That was WSJ reporter, Bob McMillan there. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show is produced by Julie Chang. I'm your host, Victoria Craig. Jessica Fenton, and Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Melony Roy. Our development producer is Aisha Al-Muslim. Scott Saloway and Chris Zinsli are the deputy editors. And Philana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.
San Francisco Chronicle
3 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Chicago risks severe cuts to transit. Its poorest suburbs could be hit even harder
HARVEY, Ill. (AP) — Winfred Wilson was struggling to make ends meet on less than $700 a month, so he moved in with his daughter, gave up his car and started relying exclusively on public transit to take him wherever he needed to go across Chicago's southern suburbs. As he waited for a bus connection in his hometown of Harvey on a recent trip to the grocery store, Wilson waved at familiar travelers who regularly pass through the key transportation hub serving one of the region's poorest areas. Many, he said, encounter little resistance from drivers when they board without paying. 'People in affluent neighborhoods, they have cars and personal transportation, but they don't want to get caught up in the rush hour,' so they use transit, Wilson said. 'We couldn't live without it.' Public transit agencies across the U.S. have been grappling with a fiscal cliff spurred by declining ridership and the impending sunset of federal COVID-19 relief funding. The Chicago area faces particularly bleak service cuts that officials warn could be set in motion as early as Saturday if Illinois legislators adjourn without plugging a $770 million hole in the transportation budget. The big city's commuters would be hit hard, with the Chicago Transit Authority poised to shut down four of eight elevated train lines and 74 of 127 bus routes under the worst-case scenario. But perhaps no place illustrates the range of potential outcomes more vividly than Harvey, whose mayor, Christopher Clark — a lifelong resident — says was once 'the metropolis of the Southland' before plants and factories closed and disinvestment took hold. Suburb at a crossroads Already the busiest station for PACE, the region's suburban bus system that also serves paratransit customers, Harvey recently won state and federal grant money for a state-of-the-art facility that would put the buses under the same roof as the Metra commuter rail stop a block away. Plans eventually call for a high-speed bus line connecting the Harvey station to the Red Line L train that cuts through the downtown Chicago Loop. Such an upgrade could be an economic boon for Harvey, where now-vacant businesses are found on almost every downtown block and where more than 1 in 4 residents live below the poverty line. But even if the new station is built, ending or severely cutting the buses and trains that pass through could send the city reeling in the opposite direction. 'It would be chaos for us in the suburbs,' said Cheyane Felton, after finishing her shift at a coffee stand in the basement of Harvey's City Hall. 'It would cut us off.' Without additional state funding, PACE could be forced to halt buses in Harvey and elsewhere on weekends and after 8 p.m. on weekdays, executive director Melinda Metzger said. 'The downside for this is disastrous,' she said in an interview at the Harvey stop. 'You would be cutting back your service by at least 40%, not giving people viable rides. They might get to work, but they might have a late-night shift and can't get home, so ridership also would plummet to match the service cuts.' Transit's nationwide funding crunch Major public transportation agencies across the country have had varying degrees of success lobbying their legislatures for more support with the federal emergency funding set to expire at the end of the year. Perhaps no place mirrors Chicago's current situation more than Philadelphia, which faces a $213 million transportation budget deficit next year, even after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro authorized redirecting some of the state's highway money to mass transit. Absent more funding, riders could see a 20% spike in fares, a 9 p.m. curfew, and the elimination of 50 bus routes and five of eight regional rail lines, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has said. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bailout package in 2023 to help fund New York City's subway and buses. She also opened a major new source of transit revenue by implementing congestion pricing for drivers in Manhattan, but it remains to be seen whether the new tolls will survive threats from President Donald Trump's administration to shut them down. Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and numerous other transit-dependent cities have also been scrambling to avert major cuts. A moving deadline? 'No funding without reform' has been a common mantra among Illinois legislators working to hash out a solution for Chicago's transit crisis before leaving Springfield on Saturday at the end of their regular session. Technically, the money doesn't run out until the end of the year, and there will likely be a veto session that could provide another shot at an 11th-hour rescue. But transportation officials say they'll have to start laying out the specific cuts next week if the funding doesn't come through by then. 'It's not a light switch we can just turn on or off," said Leanne Redden, executive director of the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees planning and funding for the area's transit agencies. "Even if we find funding at a future point, it's a slow process to kind of unwind the unwinding.' So far, there have been no major breakthroughs on funding, although a compromise surfaced this week to create a new umbrella organization that, among other things, would ensure the various agencies work in unison rather than as competitors for the same customers. 'They should just be able to get on and go where they want to go, and that has not been happening with the governance that we've had up to now,' Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. Clark, the Harvey mayor, said he still envisions his community benefitting from the economic promise of a new transit facility rather than enduring disappointment once again. 'I guess some people want me to paint a picture that it's a nuclear Armageddon or something like that,' he said. 'I can't paint that picture because I have to remain ever hopeful that we will get what we need to get in due time. Government is a long game.'
3 hours ago
Chicago risks severe cuts to transit. Its poorest suburbs could be hit even harder
HARVEY, Ill. -- Winfred Wilson was struggling to make ends meet on less than $700 a month, so he moved in with his daughter, gave up his car and started relying exclusively on public transit to take him wherever he needed to go across Chicago's southern suburbs. As he waited for a bus connection in his hometown of Harvey on a recent trip to the grocery store, Wilson waved at familiar travelers who regularly pass through the key transportation hub serving one of the region's poorest areas. Many, he said, encounter little resistance from drivers when they board without paying. 'People in affluent neighborhoods, they have cars and personal transportation, but they don't want to get caught up in the rush hour,' so they use transit, Wilson said. 'We couldn't live without it.' Public transit agencies across the U.S. have been grappling with a fiscal cliff spurred by declining ridership and the impending sunset of federal COVID-19 relief funding. The Chicago area faces particularly bleak service cuts that officials warn could be set in motion as early as Saturday if Illinois legislators adjourn without plugging a $770 million hole in the transportation budget. The big city's commuters would be hit hard, with the Chicago Transit Authority poised to shut down four of eight elevated train lines and 74 of 127 bus routes under the worst-case scenario. But perhaps no place illustrates the range of potential outcomes more vividly than Harvey, whose mayor, Christopher Clark — a lifelong resident — says was once 'the metropolis of the Southland' before plants and factories closed and disinvestment took hold. Already the busiest station for PACE, the region's suburban bus system that also serves paratransit customers, Harvey recently won state and federal grant money for a state-of-the-art facility that would put the buses under the same roof as the Metra commuter rail stop a block away. Plans eventually call for a high-speed bus line connecting the Harvey station to the Red Line L train that cuts through the downtown Chicago Loop. Such an upgrade could be an economic boon for Harvey, where now-vacant businesses are found on almost every downtown block and where more than 1 in 4 residents live below the poverty line. But even if the new station is built, ending or severely cutting the buses and trains that pass through could send the city reeling in the opposite direction. 'It would be chaos for us in the suburbs,' said Cheyane Felton, after finishing her shift at a coffee stand in the basement of Harvey's City Hall. 'It would cut us off.' Without additional state funding, PACE could be forced to halt buses in Harvey and elsewhere on weekends and after 8 p.m. on weekdays, executive director Melinda Metzger said. 'The downside for this is disastrous,' she said in an interview at the Harvey stop. 'You would be cutting back your service by at least 40%, not giving people viable rides. They might get to work, but they might have a late-night shift and can't get home, so ridership also would plummet to match the service cuts.' Major public transportation agencies across the country have had varying degrees of success lobbying their legislatures for more support with the federal emergency funding set to expire at the end of the year. Perhaps no place mirrors Chicago's current situation more than Philadelphia, which faces a $213 million transportation budget deficit next year, even after Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro authorized redirecting some of the state's highway money to mass transit. Absent more funding, riders could see a 20% spike in fares, a 9 p.m. curfew, and the elimination of 50 bus routes and five of eight regional rail lines, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has said. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a bailout package in 2023 to help fund New York City's subway and buses. She also opened a major new source of transit revenue by implementing congestion pricing for drivers in Manhattan, but it remains to be seen whether the new tolls will survive threats from President Donald Trump's administration to shut them down. Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and numerous other transit-dependent cities have also been scrambling to avert major cuts. 'No funding without reform' has been a common mantra among Illinois legislators working to hash out a solution for Chicago's transit crisis before leaving Springfield on Saturday at the end of their regular session. Technically, the money doesn't run out until the end of the year, and there will likely be a veto session that could provide another shot at an 11th-hour rescue. But transportation officials say they'll have to start laying out the specific cuts next week if the funding doesn't come through by then. 'It's not a light switch we can just turn on or off," said Leanne Redden, executive director of the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees planning and funding for the area's transit agencies. "Even if we find funding at a future point, it's a slow process to kind of unwind the unwinding.' So far, there have been no major breakthroughs on funding, although a compromise surfaced this week to create a new umbrella organization that, among other things, would ensure the various agencies work in unison rather than as competitors for the same customers. 'They should just be able to get on and go where they want to go, and that has not been happening with the governance that we've had up to now,' Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. Chicago's transit agencies argue they're more efficient than their peers in other states and get by with a smaller portion of state funding. Clark, the Harvey mayor, said he still envisions his community benefitting from the economic promise of a new transit facility rather than enduring disappointment once again. 'I guess some people want me to paint a picture that it's a nuclear Armageddon or something like that,' he said. 'I can't paint that picture because I have to remain ever hopeful that we will get what we need to get in due time. Government is a long game.'
