Today Chi Trib
By Richard Wronski
Tribune staff reporter
Published March 5, 2007, 9:25 PM CST
Like many people who live in Chicago and work in the suburbs, Eric Rinehart likes to take public transportation to his job in Waukegan but feels hamstrung by a train schedule that favors city-bound commuters.
Come April 2, a new Metra schedule will help alleviate the plight of reverse commuters like Rinehart.
An early-morning line, dubbed the Sunrise Express, is expected to carry hundreds of Chicagoans a day to Waukegan and other Lake County communities early enough to be at work by 7 a.m., Metra and government officials announced Monday.
The new train also will give inbound commuters on Metra's Union Pacific North line an earlier run to downtown Chicago.
The unusually early inbound schedule will make it possible for early risers to be at their desks downtown by 6 a.m., officials said.
The Sunrise Express will be among six new trains daily on the UP North line, providing more than 1,000 more seats for Metra commuters, officials said.
The UP North trains also will help relieve pressure on CTA riders facing service reductions on the Red, Brown and Purple elevated train lines, officials said.
On the Sunrise Express, reverse commuters can get to work an hour earlier than the current Metra schedule allows. The line also begins to address a growing need caused by the growth of jobs in the collar counties.
"It's definitely something I would take advantage of," said Rinehart, 30, an assistant Lake County public defender.
The need for more reverse commuting options on public transit has grown substantially in recent years, experts said. Gone are the days when suburb-bound drivers faced open roads while expressways into the city were clogged.
From 1990 to 2000, the number of daily work trips from Lake County to Cook County grew from 83,000 to 84,000. But work trips from Cook County to Lake County rose more than 50 percent, from 40,000 to 64,000, according to U.S. census data.
A coalition of Lake County business, government and transportation organizations and leaders worked for two years to create the Sunrise Express, said state Sen. Susan Garrett (D-Lake Forest).
The train's $500,000 startup cost will be covered by a $250,000 federal grant and matching state funds.
The train is scheduled to leave Waukegan at 4:20 a.m. and arrive at the Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago at 5:23 a.m., officials said.
It then will reverse direction, leaving Chicago at 5:40 a.m. and arriving in Waukegan about 6:48 a.m. Currently, the first weekday train arrives in Waukegan at 7:55 a.m.
Metra Executive Director Phil Pagano said the agency plans to add five additional weekday trains to the Union Pacific North line starting April 2 and insert new stops in North Side communities on five existing runs. Those schedules have not been announced.
The extra Metra trains will provide alternatives for CTA riders in April when work is scheduled to begin on the latest phase of the Brown Line reconstruction. The transit agency has warned of slower, more crowded conditions on Brown, Red and Purple Line Express trains through 2009 as it rebuilds the North Side elevated platforms between Belmont and Fullerton Avenues.
Pagano said that besides serving reverse commuters, the Sunrise Express would be Metra's answer to "the Wall Street scenario," with more Chicagoans in need of earlier transportation to get to their jobs in such professions as stock brokerage and commodities trading.
"We feel we're going to get a twofer out of this one train," Pagano said.
Stops will include Evanston, Highland Park and Lake Forest.
Besides downtown Waukegan, the seat of government for Lake County, major job centers include Lake Forest Hospital in Lake Forest, and Abbott Laboratories and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago, officials said.
Bill Baltutis, executive director of the Transportation Management Association of Lake-Cook, said 16,000 Lake County workers at 22 companies already rely on Metra trains and Pace shuttles to get to work.
Anywhere from 15 percent to 25 percent of these workers could benefit from the new train because of a trend toward an expanded workday, he said.
The Regional Transportation Authority's strategic plan calls for additional reverse-commute lines over the next several years on other Metra lines.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...l=chi-news-hed