Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Metra

Englewood Flyover Now Smoothing Out South Side Metra Rides

By Steven Vance | Oct 14, 2014 | 33 Comments

The Englewood Flyover train bridge unofficially opened three weeks ago, carrying test trains along the Metra Rock Island District tracts. The mile-long flyover, near 63rd Street and Wentworth Avenue, is one of the largest projects within CREATE, a larger program to untangle railroad flows around Chicago. The $141 million project could eliminate 7,500 hours of Metra delays each year that […]

Illiana Forced Into CMAP Regional Plan By Springfield, Suburban Reps

By Steven Vance | Oct 9, 2014 | 15 Comments

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning’s MPO Policy committee today approved the Illiana Tollway, among other projects, as part of GO TO 2040, which the agency calls “the comprehensive regional plan… for sustainable prosperity through mid-century and beyond.” Committee members representing Chicago, Cook County, and McHenry County, which together are home to almost two-thirds of Chicago […]

Metra Says It Already Welcomes Ventra (No, Not Really)

By Steven Vance | Sep 25, 2014 | 48 Comments

Even though Metra never plans to accept Ventra transit cards for payment aboard its trains, the commuter railroad now claims that it has accepted Ventra all along – and thus already fulfilled a state mandate to adopt Ventra by 2015. Metra spokesperson Michael Gillis told Streetsblog that “we can already accept” Ventra cards, but only in the […]

Pullman Pouter: Konkol Gripes That His Neighborhood Is a Transit Desert

By John Greenfield | Sep 19, 2014 | 17 Comments

It’s always a chuckle to read DNAinfo.com columnist Mark Konkol’s misguided musings on transportation issues. When the city installed protected bike lanes on Kinzie, in front of the Sun-Times office where Konkol worked at the time, he wrote a series of articles blasting the PBLs as “bunk” that caused gridlock for drivers. “They’re a giant […]

Metra’s Strategic Plan: For Commuters, Or For The Railroad?

By Steven Vance | Aug 29, 2014 | 12 Comments

Two years after launching its first-ever strategic planning process with a series of public meetings, Metra is at last finalizing basic goals for the plan. Our preview last month showed that the draft plan focused as much on administrative matters as it did on customers and services. That split focus remains, but board members are now debating whether […]

The Metra-Politan Perimeter Ride: Pedaling to Every Metra Line Endpoint

By John Greenfield | Aug 20, 2014 | 12 Comments

[This article also appeared as a cover story in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.] I confess that I’m obsessed with pedaling the perimeters of things. For years, I led the Chicago Perimeter Ride, a hundred-mile bicycle tour of the rim of the city, stopping to admire goofy commercial architecture landmarks, from […]

Oil-Laden Freight Trains Delaying Amtrak, Commuter Trains Across U.S.

By Steven Vance and Payton Chung | Aug 14, 2014 | 52 Comments

Oil production is booming across North America, as new technologies make it possible to extract liquid crude oil from sources like the Bakken shale oil field in North Dakota and Montana, or Alberta’s tar sands. The ever-increasing volume of crude oil mined in remote Great Plains locations often finds its way to refineries via “rolling pipelines” – freight […]

Leave Traffic Behind With These 6 Car-Free, Carefree Beach Trips

By John Greenfield | Aug 13, 2014 | 24 Comments

If, like me, you optimistically view the summer as lasting until September 22, we’ve got more than five more weeks of beach season left. Still, time is running out for fun in the sun, so you should make a beeline for the shoreline as soon as possible. While people often gripe that Chicago has limited […]

Metra Can Follow Toronto’s Lead and Run All-Day, Frequent Service

By Steven Vance | Aug 1, 2014 | 38 Comments

Toronto’s suburban commuter rail service, GO Transit, used to run its trains on a schedule that would seem familiar to Metra riders — bringing commuters from the suburbs in by 9 a.m. and shuttling them from the city after 5 p.m. Last year, though, it launched a new schedule that doubled mid-day frequencies on its […]

Metra Ridership Rising Unevenly; Development Could Maximize Its Potential

By Daniel Hertz | Jul 24, 2014 | 78 Comments

Start with the good news: Ridership on Metra, Chicagoland’s main commuter rail service, has grown almost 14 percent over the last ten years. It remains near the all-time high it reached in 2008, just before the Great Recession. On any given weekday, Metra provides nearly 300,000 rides across its 11 lines, or roughly as many […]

CTA Should Take Cue from London With Automatic Day Passes

By Steven Vance | May 13, 2014 | 12 Comments

Transport for London, that city’s regional transit operator and planning agency, has had a “daily cap” on bus, tram, and train fares since 2005. The fare system stops charging pay-as-you-go riders for trips once they spend a certain amount, which depends on which services you use and zones you visit. This means that you’ll never spend more […]

Regional Transit Needs New Funding to Meet $20 Billion Backlog

By Steven Vance | Apr 2, 2014 | 3 Comments

Transit systems in Northeastern Illinois face a $20 billion maintenance backlog. Now the question is how to pay for it. Governor Pat Quinn’s Northeastern Illinois transit task force has shown some of the possibilities at the region’s disposal, but hasn’t staked out a position on how to secure the necessary revenue to keep Chicagoland’s track, […]

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