(The following story by Mary Wisniewski appeared on the Chicago Sun-Times website on April 12.)
CHICAGO — With the Edens Expressway a 14-mile-long parking lot and no recommended alternates, the Illinois Department of Transportation has been urging commuters to take the train.
Now some commuters on Metra trains from the northern suburbs are reporting standing-room-only conditions during the morning rush hour.
But there’s not much Metra can do other than tell customers to “grin and bear it for a while,” according to Metra executive director Philip Pagano.
“We don’t have extra cars we can put onto trains given that our ridership across the board is increasing,” said Pagano. Ridership is up in recent months due to high gas costs and the harsh winter weather.
Metra lines parallel to the Edens are the Milwaukee District Line to Fox Lake and the Union Pacific/North Line to Kenosha. Though it didn’t have precise numbers yet, Metra said ridership has increased on the Kenosha line since Edens’ lane closures last week.
Pagano also noted that construction work on the CTA is luring more Metra riders.
Pagano said as commuters start taking summer vacations, the numbers will drop on rush-hour trains.
Metra also may be able to add extra cars or an extra train or two on the weekend, particularly for routes along the Edens corridor.
That’s little relief for riders.
“There’s no room to move,” said Ahsan Chaudhri of Rogers Park. “But it’s still my best way of getting downtown.”
Metra can’t add much capacity without a capital bill, Pagano said, and even if it gets that, it will take time to get the equipment purchased and on the system.
The Dan Ryan construction project also brought customers to Metra, but Pagano said there was a “little more capacity” on the electric lines and the Rock Island line going into the south suburbs.
It could have been be worse. Omaha-based Union Pacific, which operates the North line to Kenosha for Metra, arranged for 14 more “train starts” or train departures in 2007 in anticipation of the Edens construction, according to spokesman Mark Davis. “It sounds like we did the right thing,” said Davis.