“Here we go again” was pretty much the take by rertired Waukegan New-Sun reporter Charles Selle in his column about the newest plan to consolidate mass transit agencies in the Chicago metropolitan area.

State Rep. Jeff Keicher, who was redistricted into a Grafton Township part southeastern Crystal Lake by Democratic State Rep. Sue Ness to County County Board member Carolyn Schoefield would no longer be in her district, expressed a parallel opinion in the Daily News:

“I have a horrible amount of concern that we will be putting our suburban transit in jeopardy because folding Metra into the CTA will subject it to the same struggles CTA found itself unable to get out of,” Republican state Rep. Jeff Keicher of Sycamore said.

Selle began his column with this sentence:

“The recent offering by some state lawmakers to merge the region’s transit agencies proves, once again, what German statesman Otto von Bismarck opined: ‘What we learn from history is that no one learns from history.’”

He continues,

“That sounds familiar to what taxpayers and transit commuters were told back in 1974 when the Regional Transportation Agency was formed. And again in 1983 when the RTA — the umbrella agency for rail and bus services in Lake, Cook, DuPage, Kane, McHenry and Will counties — was ‘reorganized.’”

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Keicher has good instincts.