Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra is scheduled to drop in Thursday afternoon at the Bensenville Village Hall for his first talk in months about airport issues with some 30 suburban mayors from communities around O’Hare International Airport.
Kustra is Gov. Jim Edgar’s point man on aviation matters in the O’Hare area, and the Bensenville meeting is significant as the lieutenant governor’s first get-together with the mayors since Edgar last week jump-started the planning for a third regional airport near Peotone.
It’s also the first meeting of Kustra and the mayors since the Clinton administration last September refused to release $2 million in funds for the Peotone airport study.
In his State of the State speech last week, an impatient Edgar said he would tap state funds to start the feasibility study for the proposed south suburban airfield.
“Now that the governor’s moving ahead with the study, it’s a good time to get back together (with the mayors) to talk about issues that interest them,” said Mary Galligan, spokeswoman for Kustra.
These issues, Galligan said, include “reducing noise pollution and congestion at O’Hare and developing a consensus on what should happen at O’Hare.”
The “what should happen” part of the closed-door meeting is expected to deal with such things as the “ironclad guarantee” that any new runway at O’Hare to ease flight delays-which may be offered to Chicago in return for the city’s support for Peotone-not be accompanied by an increase in air traffic.
Everybody’s doin’ the locomotion: Seven aging “F40C” diesel locomotives of the Metra Milwaukee West line are in the shop for a $1.3 million electrical overhaul-work intended to speed maintenance, reduce downtime and ensure that the big engines last their full 25-year service lives, until around the turn of the century.
They’re from a fleet of 15 diesels that work the Elgin-to-Chicago Milwaukee West line. Thirteen are owned by the Northwest Suburban Mass Transit District, and eight had similar electrical work done last year.
Metra rebuilt all 15 just five years ago, but that was before revolutionary “modular” electrical components were available from the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors-yes, these are GM products, just like your father’s Oldsmobile-for retrofit to the locomotives, said Metra spokesman Chris Knapton.
“Now if something blows, you just slide out the broken (electrical) unit and slide in a new one, so you won’t lose the locomotive for several days while an electrician rewires it,” Knapton explained.
Metra is expected to borrow power from other lines or its surplus pool to maintain train schedules while the F40Cs are out of service.
Rail fans can rest assured: The latest refurbishing is strictly on the insides, and the distinctive, fluted, stainless-steel side panels of the F40C locomotives-which Knapton admits serve no useful purpose except to distinguish them from their freight-hauling counterparts-will remain.
Park ’em here: Speaking of Metra, the commuter rail agency has announced more than $7 million in 1994 parking lot projects for the suburbs.
These include completing 393 parking spaces this year in Schaumburg on the Milwaukee West line and 210 spaces in Cary on the Chicago & North Western Northwest line.
Metra also OKd spending to buy land for an eventual 200 new spaces in Palatine and 30 in Crystal Lake on the C&NW.
Park ’em there: Right now it’s just a big hole in the ground, but by year’s end Pace expects its Northwest Transportation Center in Schaumburg to be a model for suburban mass transit.
The $5.7 million facility will have 10 bus turn-in slots-sort of like diagonal parking for elephants-plus a canopied passenger waiting area, information kiosk, 16 “kiss-and-ride” drop-off lanes and commuter parking for 120 cars.
The center, at Kimberly Drive and Martingale Road, is behind the One Schaumburg Place shopping center and a quarter mile south of Woodfield Mall. It will replace Pace’s current bus transfer at the upper-level entrance to J.C. Penney’s at Woodfield.
The center will handle 173 buses a day from Pace Routes 209, 605, 606, 696, 699 and 757-which would continue to also stop at Woodfield-plus the Woodfield shopper’s shuttle and Dial-a-Ride and paratransit vehicles. It also could be a vanpool pickup and staging point.
One thing architects designed for but which the transportation center won’t have, at least for the foreseeable future, will be a Personal Rapid Transit station. The Regional Transportation Authority last year picked Rosemont over Schaumburg to be the host community for the PRT.
