CHICAGO: Transit Developments

[SolarWind]

July 3, 2023

[Randomguy34]

Metra to Rockford is happening!

Gov. Pritzker will be in Rockford tomorrow to announce a new "Metra intercity rail project," per his schedule. $275 million was set aside in the Rebuild Illinois capital program to reestablish passenger rail between the city and Chicago. Sounds like Metra will be named operator.

https://twitter.com/brendenmoore13/s...05031209709569

[nomarandlee]

A total waste of resources and just another method of promoting sprawl.

[SIGSEGV]

Why? This is mostly intercity service, which is a nice alternative to the bus. But inexplicably, it fails to stop at the Illinois Railroad Museum.

[sammyg]

This is great news. Rockford has revitalized their downtown so this will help add more density to the urban core. A stop in Belvidere makes it really useful to people in the Rockford area, too.

[Busy Bee]

I completely fail to see how this would "promote sprawl" as someone suggests. Development, to the extent it's happening out towards Rockford, would occur regardless and like someone else said this will obviously provide needed and useful intercity service to a corridor with no option besides car and bus. This is great. There are no negatives here. It should have been done decades ago.

[Steely Dan]

Cool.

What's next?

Metra to restore service to the quad cities and Peoria on the old rock island tracks?

Let's be greedy.

[VKChaz]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

I completely fail to see how this would "promote sprawl" as someone suggests. Development, to the extent it's happening out towards Rockford, would occur regardless and like someone else said this will obviously provide needed and useful intercity service to a corridor with no option besides car and bus. This is great. There are no negatives here. It should have been done decades ago.

If anything, this kind of thing should reduce sprawl by encouraging investment in already established areas that include potential redevelopment and brownfield sites.

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Cool.

What's next?

Metra to restore service to the quad cities and Peoria on the old rock island tracks?

Let's be greedy.

Considering the state pegged a corridor renewal and Amtrak operated Peoria service on the old CRI&P at close to 2 billion I'm not sure I'd hold my breath. That's an "eff off its not happenin" state press release.

[Randomguy34]

Now we just need to restore the UP-N's former route to Milwaukee so Metra would cover all the major cities in our vicinity. That would provide a significant ridership boost, seeing as Metra desperately needs it

Originally Posted by nomarandlee

A total waste of resources and just another method of promoting sprawl.

Rockford has about 150k people and is a little closer to us than South Bend, IN. Makes sense that we should have a Metra line go there, especially when the travel time is expected to be 95 minutes.

[twister244]

If we are getting greedy, I would love to see Metra increase service along it's routes it already has. During the weekends the UP-NW is every two hours, which is frustrating when I'm trying to go get drunk on my cousin's boat out on the Fox River......

[brian_b]

Originally Posted by VKChaz

If anything, this kind of thing should reduce sprawl by encouraging investment in already established areas that include potential redevelopment and brownfield sites.

All three stations are going to be in their respective downtowns without massive parking lots. It will be fantastic for those cities.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Cool.

What's next?

Metra to restore service to the quad cities and Peoria on the old rock island tracks?

Let's be greedy.

At least to Lasalle/Peru...

[Mr Downtown]

Call me an apostate, but if a private company already runs buses from Rockford to Chicago Union Station 12 times a day—without any subsidy—why is it important for the state to spend all this money to go into competition with them twice a day?

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Why? This is mostly intercity service, which is a nice alternative to the bus. But inexplicably, it fails to stop at the Illinois Railroad Museum.

I'm not too worried about this one. Union is too small of a hamlet for the state to fund a station, but the IRM has access to plenty of volunteer labor to build a no-frills platform next to their property.

Or they could extend their excursion track to one of the new stations in Huntley or Marengo. The Huntley station is (for some idiotic reason) planned for the middle of a cornfield at Coyne Station Rd, almost 2 miles from the center of Huntley. But it's only 1 mile from the current end of IRM's excursion track.

What IRM is *not* able to do is pay the very high, annual ongoing cost to operate several daily Metra trains. Now that the state is willing to pay for this, they'll find a way to get Metra riders to IRM.

[Busy Bee]

That would be so ideal. I didnt realize the Huntley stop would be that close. You could purchase your tickets right there and ride into the museum. I hope it happens. A rail museum not reachable by rail is so wrong.

[sammyg]

IRM could run a shuttle train that matches the Metra schedule like Princeton's "Dinky Line".

That's a fun way to get into the railroad spirit.

A dream project would be to get Wisconsin to co-build a Madison-Rockford line,

[Busy Bee]

Yep... "Timed transfers"

[twister244]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Call me an apostate, but if a private company already runs buses from Rockford to Chicago Union Station 12 times a day—without any subsidy—why is it important for the state to spend all this money to go into competition with them twice a day?

Well, according to:

https://chicagoyimby.com/2023/07/sta...-rockford.html

Currently the quickest option between the downtown of the two cities is a combination of a Coach USA bus and a local bus taking nearly three-hours, the new service would take roughly 95-minutes with two-more new stops in Belvidere and Huntley.

[ardecila]

It is true that the Van Galder buses do not serve Rockford's downtown. They stop at a bus terminal next to I-90, since many of them continue on to Madison WI. But most riders aren't looking to go to downtown Rockford (which has a pretty bad reputation) in order to get to Chicago. Maybe the train service can help clean it up and spur downtown development eventually, but if we're talking about rider convenience, they already have a good option in the existing bus service.

As for the travel time - doesn't seem like the train has a clear advantage. The scheduled bus travel time from Rockford to Chicago Union Station is 2h10m (130min) for all runs, but that likely includes a lot of cushion for traffic and the bus is probably very early into Union Station on certain runs. By the time the train opens in 2028, the construction work on the Kennedy should also be completed. I also think the train time of 95 minutes is optimistic.

That being said, I don't think the train will kill the bus. Less than 1/3 of the bus runs actually serve the Rockford-Downtown Chicago market. The other runs mostly are focused on connecting travelers to O'Hare, and quite a few of them skip Rockford entirely to give a faster trip to Wisconsin passengers.