(The following story by Guy Tridgell appeared on the Southtown Star website on September 22.)
CHICAGO — Judy Fisher, despite promises made to her in the past, still can’t count on a bathroom waiting for her when she steps on Metra’s Electric Line.
“Most people who take the Electric Line have learned to stop drinking liquids,” the Flossmoor woman and longtime Metra commuter said. “And if you’re pregnant, good luck.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Five years ago, under heavy pressure from its customers, Metra agreed to make several upgrades to the Electric Line.
Stations were spruced up.
Gone was a dreaded turnstile system for collecting fares – a system that was found nowhere else on Metra.
But riders were flush with anticipation about the addition of the one feature that’s available on Metra’s 10 other lines to and from the suburbs: onboard lavatories.
Today, the bathrooms exist on a few trains that run on the Electric Line.
While riders on the University Park-to-Chicago route wait with fingers – and legs – crossed for the day when all of their trains have bathrooms, bad feelings between Metra and some of its customers fester.
“Metra has totally written off the Electric Line,” Fisher said. “It’s discrimination. We are supposed to be an equal part of Metra, but we’re not.”
What happened?
Metra did spend $84 million for 26 new cars outfitted with bathrooms, adding them to the fleet in 2005.
But because the new cars were built with modern propulsion systems different from those on the older cars, the two types of cars are not compatible. The new cars have to run by themselves, meaning most of the Electric Line’s 170 daily trains are composed of cars without bathrooms.
Samuel Holden, a Park Forest rider, said a trip on one of the newer cars is rare.
“They are few and far between. We are still faced with the same problem,” Holden said. “You learn to hold it.”
Metra’s goal by now was to round out the Electric Line fleet of 165 cars with all new cars, ensuring a bathroom on about every other car per train.
But the cars – and the promise of a bathroom on every train – never arrived.
Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said the General Assembly and the governor’s failure to pass a new capital program is to blame.
The last capital program, Illinois FIRST, expired in 2004. Metra relied heavily on Illinois FIRST to revitalize its rolling stock – to the tune of $416 million for new cars systemwide.
Pardonnet said Metra continues to prepare budgets that include the Electric Line cars under the assumption that state’s squabbling leaders will figured out how to pass a new capital plan.
Lawmakers will make a new attempt this fall with a proposal based on leasing the state lottery. Given the acrimony in Springfield, there are no guarantees.
Pardonnet said getting bathrooms on the Electric Line is Metra’s No. 1 priority, but the lack of a capital plan makes them impossible.
“It is unfortunate,” she said. “We would love to purchase the remaining fleet for the Electric Line, but we simply do not have the money.”
In the meantime
Metra continues to make station upgrades, including the construction of a new 80th Avenue stop on the Rock Island District Line in Tinley Park, because the expense can be spread throughout the life of the projects. But new cars must be paid in full on delivery.
On the Electric Line, the price of progress grows with the delay. Metra initially expected to spend $3 million for each of the 140 or so new cars needed to round out the fleet.
Bought today they would cost $3.5 million each.
“They would come in handy, especially for the ladies with young children,” Matteson nurse Mary Taylor said.
Taylor’s job sends her to hospitals as far away as Barrington and Waukegan.
The big difference between those stations and ones on the Electric Line? Riders can find relief when they need it.
“You can smell it,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the urine stench inside Matteson’s Main Street Station.
With ridership higher than ever on Metra, the commuter railroad will be eliminating some bathrooms on its other lines in favor of more seats. When the retrofitting is complete, 50 percent of cars will have bathrooms.
For Electric Line riders, that would be a luxury.
“It sucks,” said Denetria Stephens, a Richton Park commuter waiting for an Electric Line train in Matteson. “One day there was a girl here who kept saying, “I need to get to the bathroom.’ I just told her, ‘There is none.’
“That’s not good. That’s a problem.”