(The following article by Robyn Singleton was posted on the Kankakee Daily Journal’s website on June 25.)
CHICAGO — Barb Ortiz hadn’t even hit the highway Monday morning when she heard a radio report that a Metra bridge fire had braked all Metra electric train service from University Park.
She turned her car around and called in to claim a vacation day. No way was she driving into downtown Chicago.
With key streets closed to prepare for Taste of Chicago this weekend, and downtown parking rates topping $20 per day? Gas? Wear and tear on the nerves?
“No thanks!” she said.
Ortiz, from Watseka, is one of a hosts of area commuters who woke up Monday to find they had no way to work. A thousand commuters who regularly board at the University Park Metra station were left standing at the station after a major railroad bridge fire, reported late Sunday evening, destroyed a trestle, overhead wires and communication lines at 137th Street and Perry Rd. in Chicago. Some 12,000 commuters were affected by the closing of the line between University Park and the Kensington Station at 115th Street in Chicago.
Ortiz is not a happy commuter.
“They’ve always treated us very shabbily,” she said about Metra. “If this had happened on the North or Northwest side, they would have had alternate plans in place very quickly.”
Darlene Boggs of Bourbonnais didn’t make it to work Monday either. She heard the bad news on the radio right after she got out of bed. She never left the house.
“It’s a big, big hassle,” she said.
Boggs could have driven a half-hour further to one of the alternate stations Metra representatives suggested when she called. She could go to Kensington or Oak Forest. What stymied her was what she was going to do with her car once she got there. Already, Metra is adding 1,000 parking spots at the University Park Station to handle growing ridership at that stop.
“I doubt if I’d even find a parking space,” she said. “You can’t fit 12,000 extra cars into one parking lot.”
JoAnna Armstrong of Bourbonnais found that out. When she heard about the fire, she drove the extra 20 minutes to catch the Rock Island Line train to downtown from Oak Forest. She got there about ten minutes before seven. It was only in the third parking lot she tried — one about a block away from the station — that she found an empty spot.
“You cannot build parking lots for a crisis like this,” Metra executive Phil Pagano told the Chicago Tribune.
Once at the LaSalle Street Station, Metra did have shuttles to take workers to Randolph and Michigan street stations. But riders had to wait until each vehicle filled with passengers. Tired of waiting, Armstrong made the 15-minute walk to the law firm where she works instead. She was late.
“I’ll be leaving earlier tomorrow,” she said.
Monday afternoon, Metra officials could not say what the parking situation at the alternate stations was, said spokesperson Audrey Renteria.
Renteria was having a hectic day. Two on-duty media specialists had not put the phone down since dawn. Yes, the train would be out for “at least a week.” No, she couldn’t say for sure if Metra was considering shuttle buses to convey riders from closed stations to running lines.
“It’s just too early to say,” she said.
The shuttles are the key concession local commuters say they want from Metra to make the bridge fire fallout a little easier to bear.
“If they’d just get shuttles running, they could let us feel we are as important to them as passengers on other lines,” Ortiz said. “They should have a contingency plan in place.”