(The following article by Virginia Groark was posted on the Chicago Tribune website on June 8.)
CHICAGO — As a special treat, Yvonne Martin took her 3-year-old niece for a ride on Metra’s Electric Line to the South Loop last week. But when she left the train at the line’s Roosevelt Road station, the South Shore resident was surprised at what she found.
“I’ve been in Chicago all my life. How come everything else is modern but this?” she asked, gazing at the shabby wooden station where paint chips hang from the ceiling, a wooden bridge sags and rust dapples the hand railings.
The station, which resembles a run-down fishing shack, stands in sharp contrast to the manicured lawns and colorful gardens that sit just east of the tracks along a foot path that takes visitors to the popular Museum Campus. Metra had hoped a new depot that would better fit its environs would be built by this year, but the project stalled after the state failed to give the agency grant money it had approved in 2004.
“We agree today, and we agreed in 2003, that the station absolutely needs to be replaced,” said Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet, referring to the year the agency submitted its grant application.
Illinois Department of Transportation spokesman Mike Claffey said this week that the $2.8 million grant would be given to Metra in the next few months. He attributed the delay to a lack of money for major infrastructure projects.
“There’s been a number of very worthy projects that have had to be delayed, and this was one of those,” he said.
But Pardonnet said Metra officials have been told several times that the money would arrive “in a week,” yet the agency still has not received the funds. Even if the commuter railroad gets the money in the next few months, the earliest it could start the work would be next year, she said.
“We would never be able to bid the contract and do the engineering to get the work done in time for this construction season,” she said, noting that track work must be done in warm weather.
Under the plan, Metra would use the money to move the railroad tracks so the city could build a new station at the 11th Street pedestrian bridge. The $8.7 million Chicago Department of Transportation project also calls for constructing new platforms and two elevators between the bridge and the platforms, making them accessible to the handicapped, said Brian Steele, a city Transportation Department spokesman.
The city was prepared to start construction last year, but Metra asked city officials to wait because the commuter railroad had not received the state funds, Steele said.
In the meantime, Metra engineers have examined the station and connecting bridges and determined they are structurally sound, even if they’re “not very pretty,” Pardonnet said.
The station, which has long served commuter trains, is near the site of the former Illinois Central Station, or 12th Street Station, which was built in 1892 for the World’s Columbian Exposition. That station used to handle trains that came from as far as Florida. But Amtrak moved the intercity train service to Union Station in 1972, and the 12th Street Station was demolished in 1974.
All that remains of the once-bustling railroad hub is the rickety Roosevelt Road station, which these days is one of the final stops on the Electric and South Shore Lines for inbound trains. In addition to serving the South Loop, the station has become a popular destination for Chicago Bears fans going to Soldier Field, and it’s a gateway for visitors to the Museum Campus. During peak summer months, about 800 people board Electric Line and South Shore Line trains there each day, officials said.
But the station’s shoddy condition has prompted complaints from people who question why it hasn’t been upgraded, especially when the surrounding area has been renovated and made attractive.
“It looks like a treehouse,” said Hammond resident Ramiro Meza as he waited for a South Shore train on a recent weekday morning.
South Holland resident Vern Boerman, who has a lifetime membership to the Field Museum, said it’s puzzling that the station hasn’t been rebuilt, especially because it’s the first thing people see when they disembark from a train en route to the city’s tourist sites.
“Our triple museum lakeside campus is surely one of the great tourist spots on Earth,” Boerman said. “But what do foreign visitors think when they disembark at the shabbiest Metra station in the entire Chicagoland area? That Roosevelt Road station is an ugly disgrace.”