Pace, the suburban bus division of the Regional Transportation Authority, sometimes has been considered a stepchild of other transportation agencies-but it could be the key to solving the gridlock nightmare, said Abner Ganet, Du Page County`s representative on the Pace board.
But adding more feeder lines to the train stations, developing new inter- suburban routes and creating tailor-made subscription services won`t be enough, Ganet said. A big part of the battle will be breaking down the deeply rooted automobile mentality of the suburbs.
”First we have to educate the public to accept the fact that riding a bus is not a social stigma,” Ganet said.
Ganet, a former mayor of Elmhurst, wants to see feeder routes to existing train stations expanded, taking the current vehicle traffic caused by mass-transit commuters off the roads. He says Metra should stop adding new parking lots at the rail sites so that people would be encouraged to take a bus to the train station.
”If people can park for 50 cents, why pay 75 cents to ride the bus?”
Ganet asked.
”Hopefully Metra will discontinue building parking lots that take up good, valuable property,” Ganet said. ”When you put in a parking lot you take that land off the tax rolls.”
The feeder routes in Naperville are the fastest growing in the county. Ganet said that ridership on the buses there has increased 5 percent a month during the last 6 months-thanks, in part, to the fact that riders don`t have parking space available.
Ganet said that the ultimate solution to gridlock in Du Page is to provide north-south transportation. Such a plan calls for high-occupancy vehicle lanes, strictly for buses, on the Tri-State and Du Page Tollways and on Ill. Hwys. 83, 59 and 53.
”It used to be that all the traffic went into Chicago, but now they are going from Elk Grove to Oak Brook and from Schaumburg to the Fermilab,” Ganet said.
Pace and others also have proposed experiments with small, flexible bus routes throughout the county. In September Pace is likely to begin a program with routes throughout Oak Brook. Small vanlike buses, which are supposed to run every 10 minutes, will go along Commerce Drive, Jorie Boulevard, Enterprise Drive, Windsor/Swift Drive and into Oakbrook Terrace.
Ganet said that the Oak Brook project will cost about $1.2 million a year. Pace also envisions such systems for other heavily occupied areas such as Schaumburg in the northwest suburbs and Orland Park in the southwest.
