(The following story by David Gialanella appeared on the Courier News website on December 18.)
ELGIN, Ill. — Susan Bauernfeind isn’t entirely sure why she’s seeing more faces on the Metra commuter train as she rides to her job at a downtown Chicago insurance company. At least more train commuting is better for the environment, she said, even if it’s an inconvenience sometimes.
“I have always been using it, but I have noticed more people on the train,” Bauernfeind, 60, of Elgin, said recently as she cleared snow off her car at the National Street station. “I have noticed because they’re taking my seat!”
Metra is furnishing more rides to area residents than ever before, according to agency statistics. Systemwide ridership is up 4.8 percent for January 2008 through October 2008 compared with the same time period last year,
On Metra’s Milwaukee District West Line, which includes Elgin’s three station stops, the increase was even more dramatic: there was a 6.5 percent ridership spike for the same 10-month time span.
“Most of what we’ve seen is because gas prices went so very high,” said Meg Thomas-Reile, a Metra spokeswoman. “It was easy to correlate that.”
This year so far has turned out to be a collection of record-breaking months. Systemwide, October was the fifth-busiest month in Metra history, with July being the busiest, Thomas-Reile said. Each of the agency’s top five busiest months occurred this year, the numbers showed.
There is a lag time in retrieving those numbers, and ridership could end up dropping off again for November and December, when pump prices plummeted. A suffering job economy also could contribute to a ridership decline, Thomas-Reile said.
“The economy is more historically a major driver of ridership,” she said. “Our primary market is still the work commute. If we start to see a decline in employment in downtown Chicago, likely we’re going to have a drop-off in ridership.”
On the other hand, ridership could remain high for November and December as more residents use Metra to get to Chicago for weekend entertainment as opposed to driving, Thomas-Reile said. Also, more people opt to commute by train on bad weather days, she said, of which there’s been shortage recently.