Ridership on Metra increased an average of 171,000 trips per month in the first seven months of 1994 compared with the same period in 1993 due partly to increased highway congestion, Metra officials said Tuesday.
The greatest growth in commuter train use has been on the three west lines that serve western Cook, DuPage, and Kane Counties as far west as Aurora, Geneva, and Elgin, Metra officials said.
“One factor, I believe, is that the expressway system is not working particularly well,” said Gary Foyle, Metra’s director of planning and analysis. Foyle said the Eisenhower Expressway appears overloaded as a result of construction on both the Kennedy and Stevenson expressways.
“Increased highway congestion, increased cost of parking in downtown Chicago . . . good marketing, and a credible product,” were the reasons cited by Metra spokesman Chris Knapton.
Knapton also pointed to Metra’s 95.3 percent on-time rate for July. June’s was 96 percent.
“Our timetables are non-fiction . . . 95 percent of the time,” Knapton said. “You get in an automobile in Naperville and you haven’t the faintest idea how long it’s going to take you to get downtown.”
The total increase in Metra ridership for the first seven months of 1994 was 1.2 million trips, to 43.6 million from 42.4 million trips, a 2.8 percent increase over the same period in 1993, according to figures presented to the Metra board Tuesday.
Metra is aiming within a few years to exceed the number of passengers carried by Chicago-area commuter railroads in 1980, when ridership peaked at 81.3 million trips per year, Knapton said.
Following that peak, passengers fled the commuter railroads in droves after the Regional Transportation Authority instituted four fare increases in 1981, doubling ticket prices, Knapton said. Ridership bottomed out at 58 million in 1983, Knapton said.
Ridership has been steadily increasing since then and reached 73.8 million in the last 12 months ending July 31, according to Metra figures.
The latest figures show Metra and the CTA trading passengers in two areas. At the Oak Park and River Forest stations on the Chicago & North Western West Line, especially at the Oak Park station, Metra ridership is up 25 percent because the CTA has shut down the Green Line (the Lake Street elevated) for two years of repairs.
However, at the close-in stations on the Heritage and SouthWest lines, Metra patronage appears to be declining a little since the CTA opened its Orange Line to Midway Airport in late 1993.
