This is a project that everybody can support, says Metra. It`s a wonderful idea, says Nortran. We love it, say residents of five northwestern suburbs.
But who is willing to ante up nearly $50 million to pay for the project, which would bring commuter train service to those suburbs?
Not Metra, the commuter-rail division of the Regional Transportation Authority. Metra board members told a meeting of suburban officials and concerned residents last week that the division`s annual capital budget of $100 million is needed just to maintain existing commuter service.
Not Nortran, the agency that runs north and northwest suburban bus service. Although Nortran organized the meeting and has strongly advocated the addition of rail service between Des Plaines and Mundelein on what is currently a freight line, it is in the bus business, not the train business.
Hello, taxpayers.
The legislature is considering a six-county, 3-cent-a-gallon gas-tax increase that would finance area transportation projects. That increase is probably the best bet for funding the new rolling stock, stations and track improvements necessary to start service on the 17.2-mile route, says Metra board member Donald Udstuen.
”It`s got to be new money,” Udstuen said after last week`s meeting, which was held in Buffalo Grove, roughly the midpoint of the corridor under consideration for new commuter service. ”We haven`t got enough money now to supply the equipment.”
According to a Metra study, equipment would be the biggest expense in starting the service, which would fill a gap between the commuter services on the Chicago & North Western northwest line and the north line on the old Milwaukee Road tracks.
To operate three trains a day in each direction between Mundelein and the Loop would require 4 locomotives (total cost: $7.4 million) and 20 passenger cars (total cost: $27.7 million).
Next, the line would require $7.1 million for construction of stations and parking lots; the Soo Line was sold in October to the Wisconsin Central Railroad, which runs four freight trains a day on the tracks. The study recommends that stations be built in Prospect Heights, Wheeling, Buffalo Grove, Vernon Hills and Mundelein.
Metra board members hinted strongly that the communities should pay for most or all those construction costs. ”It means a lot to have their financial support and not just their verbal support,” Udstuen said. ”It would get us closer.”
Buffalo Grove Village President Verna Clayton said the village already had an option on land for a station. ”We want to help you make this a reality,” she told the Metra board members.
More than $1.5 million would be needed to pay for the cost of connecting the Wisconsin Central tracks with the North Western tracks where they intersect northwest of the Des Plaines commuter station. The sophisticated interlocking switches required for the connection are very expensive, said Metra board member W. Warren Nugent.
The balance of the cost of the service-about $930,000-would pay for track improvements and the adaptation of a railyard to hold the new rolling stock.
If service were instituted, the Metra study says, it would be so well-used that it would come close to breaking even. The study projects an annual ridership of 1.4 million passengers, of whom two-thirds would be current riders of the existing Milwaukee and North Western line who would find the new stations more convenient.
But just counting the new riders would yield an annual revenue of $2.1 million, Nugent said. Annual expenses would be $2.4 million, but the biggest uncertainty about expenses is that no one can guess how much the Wisconsin Central will demand in track-usage fees.
