Lake Forest / Hiawatha stop
 

Speaking of the Hiawatha..I didn't know that a stop a Lake Forest was being studied.'

^ Not a bad idea, especially since it would provide better airport access to Mitchell for north suburbanites - driving to the airport doesn't work for everyone. Unfortunately, the study focuses too much on parking capacity and not enough on regional transit connections or a walkable station environment. Lake Forest has neither, the station area is typical suburbia but with a a really nice manicure. Zero bus connections.

Driving doesn't work for everyone. It's not faster during rush hour, and it's not cheaper if you don't have ample parking at your destination.

Setting driving aside, this is still cheaper than Amtrak and offers some advantages as well, including access to downtown Racine. Metra is $9.75 from Kenosha to Chicago + $2.50 for the bus from Racine is only 12.50 total. Amtrak is twice that price at $24-26 from Sturtevant to Chicago, plus you've gotta get to Sturtevant.

Also, going this route opens up all the destinations on the North Shore, including Great Lakes and Northwestern, which aren't accessible from the Amtrak line without going through the Loop first. Carthage College is on the route too.

^ Access to downtown Racine? :haha:

What, so that you can get drunk, eat chicken wings, and bum Vicodins off the locals? Sounds like a huge advantage

it doesn't look like the weekend schedules line up at all.

the saturday morning metra train that takes you to kenosha leaves downtown chicago at 10:35 am and gets into kenosha at 12:30pm. the next northbound bus to downtown milwaukee doesn't leave kenosha metra station until 2:22pm and gets to milwaukee at 3:52pm. total elapsed time: nearly 5.5 hours!!!

alternatively, there's a saturday hiawatha train that leaves downtown chicago at 8:25am and gets into downtown milwaukee at 9:54am. total elapsed time: 1.5 hours.

so unless you want to waste your entire saturday just getting to milwaukee, it makes a million times more sense to pony up the extra cash and just take amtrak.

if you're on a tight budget, go greyhound/megabus.

I know you lived there, IMO it has a pretty nice art museum and some decent restaurants. Also Johnson Wax archi-tourism (they're running buses from Chicago now for the biennial, but the tours are given every weekend).

I don't know why you prefer an uber-suburban, park and ride operation over a transit service that actually connects walkable, urban places. Obviously I would prefer the original KRM rail proposal, especially if it was run jointly with Metra as a local-train lakefront counterpart to Hiawatha. But a decent bus service is the next best thing...

I don't understand why somebody wouldn't just take Megabus from Chicago to Milwaukee. It is about half the price, takes only 20 minutes longer, has easier onboarding/offboarding and is probably cleaner. (I say this with no stake or interest in Megabus or its operations.)

Why wouldn't you just drive?

because traffic.

megabus's schedule may say that it only takes 20 minutes longer than amtrak, but if the kennedy is a parking lot (which it often is), that 20 minutes longer can easily become an hour or more longer.

also, the train is FAR more comfortable than a bus.

but yes, if you're on a tight budget, greyhound/megabus is the way to go.

I used the Hiawatha to travel between Chicago & Milwaukee this past September. It worked out great. From downtown to downtown in 90 minutes with few (if any) slow downs and a smooth & spacious experience. I wish the L connected to the line on the north side rather than taking it the entire route to downtown Chicago (I was staying with a friend on the north side), but otherwise I liked the Hiawatha.

I'm one of those dufuses who tries to save the environment by not owning a car. I'll stick with it for as long as I can.

Cool. I'm a little low on funds, so when I visit Milwaukee for the first time, I'll probably take Megabus. But, when I get more money, I'll try the Hiawatha.

Does anyone know the logic behind each loop-bound train's path around the Loop? For example, why is the brown line counterclockwise while the pink is clockwise?

All trains originally circled the Loop anticlockwise, some on the Inner Loop and others on the Outer Loop. The 1969 through-routing of Lake–Dan Ryan prompted a change to bidirectional operation.

As for which lines go which way, it's been worked out through the decades to minimize delays at Tower 18 (Lake & Wells), and to a lesser extent, Tower 12 (Wabash & Van Buren). Brown has the most trains, and its routing means it makes no "left turns" at the busy Tower 18. Green Line's through-routing means it uses the Wabash & Lake legs only, so there was the most room for Orange and Purple—and much later, Pink—on the Inner Loop. During Brown Line reconstruction in 2007-08, the Purple Line (making all stops south of Belmont) was routed the same way as Brown because both Brown and Purple lines were operating with fewer trains, so the joint identical operation encouraged passengers to take whichever train came first.

I kid of course, and downtown Racine is certainly decent and I am glad it survived the fallout of countless other medium sized cities’ downtowns.

Although I found Racine a rather boring place to live, it will always mean something to me since it is the town of birth on my two sons’ birth certificates. Being born in small midwestern towns runs in the family—I was born in Jamestown, North Dakota!

Seems to me the new Coach bus is geared for those living in Racine that take Metra to Chicago for work. . . not an alternative to the Hiawatha line between Milwaukee and Chicago. . .

. . .

Bottom line is, the new bus service reinforces the walkable nature of in-town Racine and (slightly) makes it a better place to live vis-a-vis the surrounding suburbs.

I'll raise a Spotted Cow to that small victory!

Also: I have to imagine most of the reason downtown Racine didn't crumble away like Waukegan is because of Johnson Wax, a major global company that had to recruit talented folks. They could either pack up and leave like many small-town companies did, or re-invest back in the city of Racine to maintain a good quality of life. I'm glad they chose the latter!

Lol, I guess I should of clarified why I'm excited for the new coach before I continue getting roasted. I live near the Rogers Park metra stop, so I'm usually annoyed about going all the way to downtown to catch a coach bus going up north to Milwaukee. Plus I'm cash-strapped and don't have a car, so a cheap alternative for getting to Milwaukee without going downtown is dope. The weekend schedule works out if you catch the 7am train, but I recognize that most people aren't early birds.

Building of from Tom in Chicago, this service would be a start for folks who would want to work for Foxconn but want to stay in the North Shore. I find it unlikely that people in Winnetka would want to work in the new factory, but I do see Waukegan as a potential candidate.

^Yeah, but Foxconn will be just off 94 at Highway KR, six miles west of where the KRM bus will run. Currently no buses run there, although I assume Racine will extend a city bus line to the new plant as they did for SC Johnson's Waxdale facility. I doubt Illinoisans will want to take a train to a bus to a second bus.

Except fora handful of people living in Racine, I doubt any Foxconn workers will take transit at all. Factory shifts often don't line up with AM/PM rush hours when transit options are most plentiful and traffic is the worst, which means factory workers face shitty transit and wide-open roads.

I think the economic multiplier numbers used by Wisconsin assume that every Foxconn worker will be hiring a private driver.

I always thought it made sense as well because the trains have transfers at Fullerton and Belmont to the Red Line. The Red Line serves the east side of the loop, so in my head it also made sense to have the Brown Line serve the west side of the loop first to logically spread out the crush of people coming from the north side.

I always just flipped from train to train at Fullerton or Belmont based on which side of downtown I was trying to access.