Midway through a mind-numbing morning rush hour, Marianne Hechmann remembered why she signed up for the shuttle service that normally whisks her from the train station to her Deerfield job.
“One day this week I drove, and I cursed myself the whole way,” said Hechmann, who lives in far north suburban Ingleside and works at Baxter Healthcare Corp.
The white van she boards almost every morning and evening allows her to take the train and has cut her total travel time to 35 minutes. Driving usually takes well over an hour.
“That right there makes it worthwhile,” she said.
Getting most commuters out of their cars and onto public transportation can be a tough sell, but the Transportation Management Association of Lake Cook thinks it may have the answer with its Shuttle Bug.
With a grant of a little more than $1 million from the federal government, the TMA and the Villages of Deerfield and Northbrook established a shuttle bus service in March 1996 at Metra’s Lake-Cook Road station on the Milwaukee District North line. Federal funds were also used to build sidewalks to improve access to the station.
A year later, eight passenger vans leased from Pace shuttle about 150 people to 14 area employers from the station in the morning and back in the evening. The shuttle covers six routes and is free to employees.
The riders are split almost evenly among commuters coming from Chicago and those traveling in from distant suburbs. The shuttles run for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening.
“I used to drive, but the traffic from Forest Park is horrendous,” said Baxter employee Paula Carter. “I can read a book, study, and then I’m not frustrated when I get to work.”
William Baltutis, executive director of the Lake Cook TMA, an association of employers along the Lake-Cook Road corridor formed to address transportation issues, believes the group is onto something.
“This is a real prototype to address suburb-to-suburb travel as well as the reverse commute” from the city, he said. “There are not a lot of success stories in transit out in the suburbs.”
Participating companies include Baxter, Walgreen Co., Motorola Inc. and Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. The employers pick up 20 percent of the $300,000 annual operating cost.
Walgreens spokesman Michael Polzin said his company has been involved in the program since its inception. Walgreens’ corporate headquarters is at 200 Wilmot Rd., Deerfield.
“We’ve seen over the last year a real steady increase in ridership,” Polzin said. “It’s very, very convenient for our employees to have that.”
Barbara Grasso and Loretta Young take the train out from Chicago to their jobs at William M. Mercer Inc., Deerfield. Before, they had to take a cab from the train station to Mercer.
“It was about $6 each way,” Young said. “This is a gift. It’s heaven.”
Baltutis said overall daily ridership increased from about 55 to 150 in the last year. Almost 80 percent of the commuters are traveling more than 15 miles, and close to half are new to public transportation.
“We have established that there is a market for this type of thing,” he said. “We have proved it’s a success, and the next step is, how do we continue the service?”
Regional Transportation Authority spokesman Chris Robling said the RTA is enthusiastic about the program. He said it addresses changing commuting patterns as well as the shift of jobs to the suburbs.
“We hear only good things. We want to build on the success,” said Robling, whose agency is the funding parent of Pace, Metra and the Chicago Transit Authority.
The program runs through next spring, when officials will have to determine if it’s worth expanding.
