In recent years, Chicagoans have been forced to endure more than our fair share of privatization deals gone awry.

In 2005, the city privatized a highly trafficked toll-bridge and now it’s the costliest stretch of road in the country. In 2008, city hall rammed through a deal that turned over Chicago’s parking meters for seventy-five years to a coterie of big-money investors lead by Morgan Stanley. The new private owners quadrupled parking rates weeks after the deal went through, and the city has to pay them for lost revenue whenever the streets are closed for parades or block parties. Then there’s the long-term project of shutting down the city’s public schools and turning them over to scandal-prone private operators who stand accused of using millions of public dollars for personal gain.

But while these privatization debacles have been hard to stomach, Ventra — the new, privatized fare collection system for transit in Chicago — has been nothing short of a complete disaster.