It’s getting harder and harder to get around the western suburbs.
DuPage County boasts at least 300,000 more residents than it did in 1980, filling up subdivisions–and traffic lanes–along once-rural highways such as Butterfield Road and Illinois Highway 59. In that same 20 years, the number of private-sector jobs in the county has skyrocketed to 460,000 from 191,000, bringing hundreds of commuters from neighboring areas onto DuPage’s roadway system.
“We certainly don’t have enough funds to build the additional roads needed to eliminate all the traffic congestion in DuPage County,” County Engineer Greg Tokarski said. “We have to work on reducing the number of vehicles using the highway system. Public transportation is the most effective way to do that.”
Though officials at all levels of government agree that a revolution in public transport is long overdue, they’re still struggling to map the route that revolution should take.
DuPage, Kane County, the DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference, and Pace, the Regional Transportation Authority’s suburban bus service, all are launching studies this spring on how best to lure convenience-happy drivers from behind their steering wheels at least part of the time. Anticipated completion dates for those studies range from three months to more than a year.
In the meantime, area governments are taking a new look at public-transportation options already in place, going ahead with a few improvement projects and brainstorming a few out-of-the-box solutions for the far future.
Metra has begun engineering an extension of its West Line from Geneva to Elburn, about six miles to the west. The multimillion-dollar project should be finished by 2004, said David Loveday, director of communications for the RTA.
“Not only are there a lot more people moving farther west who still want to commute to jobs in (Chicago), we’re seeing more and more reverse commuters from Chicago and the near suburbs who want to commute to jobs in the Fox Valley and beyond,” he said.
That six-mile railway extension will help ease growing congestion in eastern Kane County as well as attract industrial and residential growth to the Elburn area, said Tom Rickert, chief planner for the Kane County Department of Transportation.
Another project that Metra has on the drawing board could revolutionize the way people see commuter train travel throughout the western suburbs, said Frank Malone, Metra spokesman.
Called the Outer Circumferential Service, it would use the abandoned Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway freight line to run commuter trains from Waukegan to Gary, Ind., in an arc that would pass through Barrington, Elgin, West Chicago, Naperville, Plainfield, Joliet and Park Forest. It would be the first Metra train that does not ferry people from the suburbs to Chicago and back, Malone said.
“More and more suburbanites are commuting from one suburb to another rather than to downtown Chicago,” he said. “We need to provide a north-south route along the west edge of the greater metropolitan area, and this rail line is already in place to provide it.”
An initial study last year concluded that the project is economically feasible, but more in-depth research will be needed before work crews can start repairing and upgrading the EJ&E tracks, Malone said.
While Metra works to make train travel more convenient for suburban commuters, some communities are tailoring their development plans to make life easier for residents who take the train to work and back.
Elmhurst, for example, is using tax breaks and other incentives to lure townhouse and condominium developers to build within walking distance of its Metra station, as well as providing downtown boutiques, a grocery store and cultural attractions within reach of the station.
“It makes sense to bring residents and retail services together within reach of the train station,” Mayor Thomas Marcucci said. “People are far more likely to take the train to work instead of their cars if they can walk to the station from their homes, then do their shopping and their errands on the way back.”
Bensenville’s Community Development Committee uses potential commuter benefits as one of its criteria for evaluating downtown development proposals.
But Marcucci, who serves on Pace’s board of directors, said improved bus service is the real key to relieving traffic congestion.
“Sure, we have a few routes that a few people use, but they don’t serve the needs of the majority of the population,” he said. “We’re missing major east-west bus routes through DuPage County; we’re missing the level of service and flexibility that the bus system has in the city.”
To answer that need, Pace has launched two major studies, said Blaine Krage, Pace spokesman. One will define the typical bus rider, the other will update the agency’s comprehensive operating plan,
“1999 was the fourth straight year we experienced an increase in ridership, and we expect that trend to continue,” he said. “We have to make sure we’re ready for it.”
The most successful Pace routes in the western suburbs are those that pick up passengers at bus stops and bring them to Metra stations to connect with commuter trains, Krage said.
Dial-A-Ride programs, which are jointly sponsored by Pace and the communities in which they run, are becoming increasingly popular among the elderly and disabled. But buses that take people from residential neighborhoods to local retail districts have few or no passengers.
Pace officials addressed the suburb-to-suburb commute by starting its van-pool program, which works as a “do-it-yourself” bus line. Five to 15 people apply as a group for a Pace van to use as a car-pool vehicle.
So far Pace has set up 300 van pools in the six-county metropolitan area, with more applications coming in, Krage said.
Long-term proposals to improve bus service include building separate bus lanes paralleling major highways, providing express service and equipping buses with an electronic device that signals traffic lights to give them preferential treatment at intersections.
But most of those are still in the pie-in-the-sky stage, officials agree.
