I assume like many small cities, the good stuff is spread out and difficult to access by car. Quad Cities even more so since, well, it's four separate cities in two different states. Amtrak will only serve Moline.

I will say the John Deere HQ is an architectural masterpiece though...

My brother-in-law played basketball in college in Dubuque. I went a few times. Solid little town. If you're forced to spend a weekend there, as I was, there's some well maintained old homes, a downtown that's coherent and has some bars and shops. Pleasant enough for 36 hours. I wouldn't call it "worth a visit" though.

Now north of there, starting in Galena and into the Mississippi bluffs and up into the Driftless Area, there are tons of incredibly charming little towns surrounded by natural beauty. Absolutely worth a four day mini-vacation and a very underrated part of the country for touring.

The highlight of Dubuque, for me, is this: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pr...8A0LSY7dY=s0-d

^ Dubuque is 75 miles away from the Quad Cities...

What!? Beloit, Dubuque, Davenport, Joliet. The Quad Cities.

Honestly, I get Davenport and Dubuque mixed up, I guess.

Knippels Religious Gifts. I'd have to agree.

^ Strangely it's only open 12-4 pm M-Th. Who the hell can actually shop there? I guess priests and retirees?

Really infuriating with all the needs and upgrades both Metra and CTA needs there is any talk about extending further into sprawlville. Hopefully, this somehow gets killed.

If Metra expands outside the service region it should go to Dekalb a few times a day, where it would actually get some use!

Rockford?

Worth noting that the Kendall Area Transit express bus from Oswego to Aurora BNSF terminal died for lack of patronage. For a BNSF extension to Kendall County, Metra estimates the cost per new trip as $63.50.

Similar story for the express bus from NIU to Elburn UP-W terminal, discontinued a decade ago.

There is no good financial case for any Metra extension that I'm aware of. Fundamentally the agency still thinks that it's the 90s and exurban expansion is going to come back in a big way instead of the clear trend to urbanization we've seen.

I'd rather spend hundreds of millions on improving service to the inner ring suburbs that are seeing rejuvenation and more city stops/service. Or maybe start electrifying lines.

I imagine there might be some bidirectional demand for NIU if the Metra extension existed, but maybe not enough to justify it. It's really more of an intercity type rail than a commuter rail so It might work better as a twice-a-day Amtrak route Chicago-Geneva-Dekalb-Rochelle-Dixon-Sterling-Clinton-Cedar Rapids if Iowa ever feels like paying for rail.

Elsewhere on the Metra site I'd an analysis of stations facing closure with less than 100/day ridership. Crazy to add expense and operating overhead when system has long list of needed upgrades and enhancements. Mainly O'Hare service. A-2, A-5, Rock Island upgrades.

Metra is, I think, in a bit of a political trap. Biggest gains in ridership would probably come from increasing service to city and close-in suburbs. But Metra's governance and funding is focused on the collar counties. Remember that Metra gets not one dollar of tax support from the city. Only the suburban sales tax goes to Metra.

Nonetheless, Metra's operational leadership is focused on state of good repair, new equipment (mainly locomotives), and vital infrastructure like A-2. I was surprised at a recent Sandhouse Gang presentation how much they focused on things like new and rebuilt in-city stations, and O'Hare.

It would be great if a new mayor and a new governor could rethink the devil's bargain struck in 1982, and once again give us a Regional Transportation Authority.

In most other countries, commuter rail and intercity rail are provided by the same nationalized rail service so there's a continuum of different service types on offer. This is really where Chicago's problem lies with expanding the rail network into the hinterland - Amtrak is not equipped to operate a dense network of rail service and Metra is limited to operating in the six-county RTA service area.

Really there's no reason Metra couldn't extend 2 or 3 UP-W runs a day to DeKalb, they just need a siding to hold the trains for layover. Looks like UP still owns the DeKalb stationhouse; they could just build a platform there for less than $1M and leave the stationhouse as-is.

^And DeKalb County (or Sycamore & DeKalb & NIU) could just step up and fund the extension by paying UP directly. No need to involve Metra with a county not in the RTA service area.

Has anyone heard anything recently about the State / Lake station renovation? Last articles I've seen are from late 2017 / early 2018..

https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/10/1...a-station-loop

^ nothing recent but I’m sure we’ll see some movement with the new state capital bill.

I agree, ideally this is funded like the Kenosha service.

Could the QC be done car free? Hmmm.... Would you bring a bike, or use uber?
The downtowns are spread out. Rock Island and Davenport are right across each other, it is possible to walk across the bridge. Downtown Moline is a few miles east. There are busses. To be honest, there's nothing worth seeing in Bettendorf.

All the good stuff is clustered in the downtowns along the river. There's a new 4000 seat music venue in East Moline, the Rust Belt (https://www.rustbeltil.com/), bus goes there too.

I was at a wedding in downtown Moline few years ago where we walked everywhere.
If you wanted to go to Davenport for the Bix Jazz festival and the Bix 7 running race, you can walk to everything once you get over there. Davenport has a couple good museums that are downtown and walkable.

I mentioned the bike because personally, the riverfront bike path in Moline and East Moline is something that every bike enthusiast should ride.

Okay, enough OT. PM me if you want to discuss the QC more.

I hadn't seen one of these Battery Electric busses in the wild yet. Anyone ridden on one yet? I imagine they're much more pleasant and quiet from the sidewalk too.

https://www.transitchicago.com/cta-e...ric-bus-fleet/

I find that hard to believe and what I've observed, with all the TOD around Metra stations that wasn't there in 1980. At stations like Palatine, Arlington Heights, I see tons of people getting off the trains in the evenings and they go fanning out all over walking home, not just heading for the parking deck.
Maybe the number of commuters has held constant, but there is definitely more housing in walking distance than there was.

It's deceptive, I think; many of those towns always had a stream of commuters fanning off the train in the evenings, even when it was all single-family houses. I looked up the numbers for Arlington Heights specifically a few years ago, and amazingly the ridership there is essentially flat over the past 30 years despite them densifying their downtown. If you look at that website, the clear trend is that the only stations with growing ridership are the ones who are expanding their parking lots.

You're correct about the housing growth, but that's limited to only certain towns, and usually the pro-growth towns are also building tons of additional downtown parking in multi-story garages. Lots of towns are not seeing that growth, though, even now - Mt Prospect still hasn't completed any TOD development in their downtown, although one is underway. Go to Barrington, or Riverside, or Hinsdale, and their downtowns are essentially frozen in amber except for minor development projects that are basically just beautification. It's not that there's no demand, its that these towns are still enthralled with the suburban model of development and hate the idea of big, new buildings in their quaint, little downtowns.

Lastly, I think it's a mistake to assume that housing in suburban downtowns will automatically get filled with Metra commuters. We live in a big metropolitan area, and for folks who want an walkable lifestyle and work in downtown Chicago, the default choice will usually be to live in the city itself. Many of those suburban apartments are probably occupied by seniors or middle-aged people who want still convenient access to amenities, shopping and dining, but don't necessarily work in downtown Chicago or have a reason to ride Metra every day.

^Exactly. Looks to me like the demographic trends are swamping the (modest) development trends. Those condos by the train station are full of people who don't ride the train any more, if they ever did. Lots of widows, some empty nesters, a few singles and young marrieds who drive to work in nearby towns. Meanwhile, all those subdivisions for miles around the station are also full of retirees who don't ride the train any more. Maybe twice a year to some downtown museum with the grandkids.

Metra station trends
 

The fellow behind the Star:Line blog and Twitter account made this rather impressive comparison tool (just using Google Sheets!) for looking at the performance of various Metra stations:

Pabst Blue Ribbon Station Report

Almost all stations, it seems, are seeing declining boardings.

Does anyone know where to find updates on the 75th Corridor Improvement Project? The official site and the CREATE site are always out of date and don't have much information.

Doesn't seem that surprising considering the demographic trends of many suburbs. I'm not sure what Illinois and many municipalities can do to stop the decline though.

Spread the word that Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and the Carolinas all cause cancer.

How can we account for the work from home trends? If 25% of employees are working from home one day a week it would result in a sizable decrease in boarding. Working from home has been growing perk for 2 decades.

Wouldn’t declining Metra boardings have something to do with all of those apartments and condos being built around downtown?

I mean, in 1980 living in the city was just not even a consideration for the professional middle class. Now it’s viable and, for many, preferred.

So in 1980 NO middle class professionals lived in the city? Ok, got it.

The other side of the stick is the huge rush of corporations back to the loop from the suburbs. Of course not all those employees would move to the city with them - I would have thought Metra would see an uptick from more suburban works who have to make the trek into downtown where their jobs are now setting up shop.

Maybe it's the difference between the two.

Really. How do you explain Marina Towers (1968), Sandburg Village (1968), the emergence of Old Town as an alt hood, Lincoln Park, DePaul. All of these neighborhoods had 'urban pioneers' settling in what was then dicey low income hoods as early as the late 60's and through the 70's. The back to the city movement really started with Marina Towers and Sandburg which targeted young upwardly mobile professionals. Airline attendants and pilots, doctors and nurses, lawyers were primary residents of Sandburg Village. Rush street earned its reputation during this era.

The issue is how we explain declining Metra boardings in the past 30-40 years despite rising downtown job growth.

My answer is that it must have something to do with the exponential growth of the professional class in and around downtown in that same time period. Yes, such people lived in the city in 1980, but a hell of a lot more do today. Hence all of those apartment and condo buildings in every which direction. Those are people who mostly would've lived in the suburbs if it were 1980, but instead are living in and around downtown, and thus aren't Metra commuters.

That's just one hypothesis. Maybe it also has to do with sprawl, increased car commuting, etc?

^ Yeah, in the Chicago suburbs the idea of the "young professional-focused" apartment complex has largely died out, probably because everyone wants to be in the city. There are still a bunch of complexes from the 1970s and 80s, some of which retain a focus on young people (like Four Lakes in Lisle) but no developer in their right mind would build one now.

Even Mellody Farms in Vernon Hills, which has tried to be the coolest of the cool suburban developments (they even have one of those stupid "wings" murals), ended up targeting empty nesters for its apartment complex.

Do the Chicago suburbs have any of those faux-urban developments like Santana Row in San Jose or Kentlands in Gaithersburg MD?

You sort of get that with Streets of Woodfield

If I'm correct, I think Steely Dan is a huge fan of the place.

i'm there every other weekend.

LEGOLAND!!!!!

Our suburbs are littered with something like 100 historic downtowns along the rail lines (or sometimes off the rail lines). This satisfies suburbanites' desire for walkability, so unfortunately the parts of suburbia NOT along a rail line are auto-oriented to the max.

The Glen is really the only large-scale "New Urbanist" development, and even this is really just traditional suburbia with better landscaping and a somewhat walkable shopping area (the same as Kentlands, basically). Everything else is just a shopping mall where the covered mall has been replaced with a fake open-air street, and maybe a hotel or an apartment building is added for variety.

Streets of Woodfield is not even one of these, the site plan is exactly the same as a regular old suburban strip mall. It just has a more dining/entertainment focus and the buildings have a second story.

Other cities have done the "lifestyle center" thing much better, where they create a walkable grid of streets instead of just a single street surrounded by parking - Santana Row is good, Scottsdale Quarter in AZ, Easton in Columbus. DC is especially good at this, Kentlands notwithstanding - Reston Town Center, Rockville Town Center, etc

We've had a few attempts at a neotraditional new town center—Buffalo Grove Town Center, Burr Ridge Town Center, Wheaton Town Center, The Glen—but either the concept or the execution has always failed along the way. Burr Ridge and The Glen aren't laughably bad, but they're still entirely auto-oriented. A few suburbs have also done infill, primarily residential, neotraditional projects near their downtown rail stations: Libertyville School Street, a project near Skokie Oakton station, Park Ridge and LaGrange (both with Trader Joes as anchor).

We're pretty short on greenfield neotraditional subdivisions. Closest ones are some projects Bigelow Homes has done: Hometown Aurora and Hometown Oswego. There's also the "conservation community" Prairie Crossing near Libertyville. Coffee Creek in Chesterton, Ind., never amounted to very much.

In 2004, Zach Borders prepared a catalog of projects in the region that would be of interest to attendees of the Congress of the New Urbanism in Chicago. He cast his net pretty wide. (PM me if you'd be interested in a copy with minor damage.)

Chicago has something better - we have the real thing. Just take the Metra out to any of a number of communities - Riverside is great and not a long journey - walk around, and you'll experience the attempts to create such environments from whole cloth. Many of them are rather faded, including Riverside, but still a community.

I don't think anyone visits Riverside for its downtown. While the curving streets and parks testify to Olmsted's landscape vision, it's not an especially walkable place, nor does it have sufficient density to support local retail or transit.

Classic railroad suburbs are places like Western Springs, Downers Grove, Winnetka, Park Ridge, Glenview, or Homewood.

^ riverside's village center surrounding the metra stop may not be as substantial as some of those others, but it's not a total nothing burger either.

and it also has that unique water tower!

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8280...7i16384!8i8192

Hiawatha to increase to 10 rt/day Milw-Chi.
 

Amtrak Hiawatha increasing Milwaukee-Chicago round trips over the next 5 years.
Alexa Buechler, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Published 11:39 a.m. CT July 17, 2019 | Updated 6:32 p.m. CT July 17, 2019 Link here

Amtrak Hiawatha plans to increase the number of Milwaukee-Chicago round trips from seven to 10 in the next five years, officials announced Wednesday at a news conference at the Milwaukee Intermodal Station....

Plans call for the addition of one round trip in the next three years, followed by two more in the two years after that, according to Arun Rao, manager of passenger rail for the state Department of Transportation....

Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Association of Commerce, talked about how Amtrak Hiawatha aids Milwaukee's businesses.

“This is a critically important part of Milwaukee’s economy,” Sheehy said. “We’re part of Chicago’s mega-region, which is one of the 10 largest economic regions in the country, and to put it simply: Commerce is about connections.”

He also said the connection helps companies, such as Baird, Johnson Controls, MillerCoors and many others....

There are three Wisconsin railroad infrastructure projects that need to be completed in order to accommodate the additional trains.

Amtrak will add a second platform at the Milwaukee Mitchell Airport Rail Station. It is estimated to be a $10 million project. A $5 million federal grant has been awarded for that project.

The Milwaukee Intermodal Station will need to install new traffic control equipment, work that is estimated to cost $5 million. A federal grant of $2.7 million has been awarded for that work.

Amtrak also wants new cars and coaches, which would cost $39 million. Amtrak officials have submitted a federal grant application for this as well.

Excellent news. If they could speed up the train so it would take 1:15 or an hour that would be even better. Too bad Milwaukee doesn't have a regional rail system for connections...

It does have a new streetcar like connecting the train station and the core of downtown, with plans for further expansion to some of the nearby neighborhoods.

I can't believe this is finally moving forward... Kudos to Cook County Dept of Transportation for stepping forward to shepherd this and moving beyond just being a roads agency. In the past, it seemed like this kept failing because of a fundamental city-vs-suburb dynamic that was embedded in the structure of RTA and the three transit agencies. Cook County is the unique level of government that straddles the two. It will be an amazing irony if this ends up moving forward because of Toni Preckwinkle!

I guess this also explains plans to electrify Rock Island. With the Englewood Flyover being complete, RI also has full grade separation from other freight railroads except at 16th St next to The 78 site, is owned by Metra, and sees relatively little freight traffic... if it were electrified, it could be almost as robust a transit line as Metra Electric.

Funding for the subsidy and the capital improvements is yet to be identified, but if this can be substituted for all or part of the Red Line extension, that will be a far better use of that $2.3 billion.

Great news indeed. Hopefully, that will be the first step among others to integrating an RER style integrated transit system while also fending off the money pit that a far more expensive Red Line extension would cost.

I'd love to see Metra run a CTA-esque cost/services inside the city limits at least.

Well, I'm not sure that's likely. But it does give me a chance to post my RER/S-bahn fantasy for Chicago.
https://i.imgur.com/ulaSScR.jpg

Begin with 30-minute service on four lines, through-routed via the St. Charles Air Line and Union Station through tracks. This only requires three new turnouts. In Phase 2, an expensive new Munich-style tunnel under Clark and Chicago Ave. would give access to the heart of the Loop. Transfer stations (with timed meets) where the downtown routings cross give passengers their choice of Central Loop–River North or West Loop. O’Hare access is most expedient today via CP/NCS but may be more practical long-term via MD-W.

It would seem to me that you could electrify the Blue Island branch probably for about $200M, buy a few of the more recently rehabbed AEM-7s from Amtrak at about 300K a unit, plunk down some Ventra hardware and be in business in less than a year.

The Blue Island branch (of MED) is already electrified. Do you mean the Rock Island?

Either way, I don’t see a reason to buy electric locos. It’s not like Metra has a huge fleet of brand new railcars, they’re old and creaky. Also, the RID doesn’t have any tunnel segments, the only reason to electrify is for better performance (acceleration) and electric locos offer a tiny fraction of the advantage afforded by EMUs.

Of course, I can’t think of a ready source for cheap, low-floor, FRA-compliant EMUs.... but if Metra wants to electrify Rock Island, they should plan their rolling stock purchases around the eventual goal of a new EMU fleet for Rock Island. Seems tailor-made for Stadler, especially if their Caltrain EMUs are well-received.