Metra is Fun, but Mediocre

 Visiting Chicago, I took the opportunity to do something I'd only done a few times in my entire life, despite living in Hyde Park for five years: taking the Metra north to downtown Chicago.

Now, I've actually done that a lot of times now that I live outside of Chicago (though not on the same line--the closest one to the Quad Cities is in Joliet, not the South Side of Chicago). But I did it very rarely when I lived in Chicago. And today I want to talk a bit about why.

Now, some of why is that I didn't take advantage of opportunities when I lived in Chicago. But while some of this can be placed on my shoulders, a lot of it is systemic, and not personal. And that is what I want to talk about today.

1. Lack of Fare Integration

The Metra Electric is, in theory, one of the best ways to get up to downtown Chicago from Hyde Park. It's relatively fast, because it's grade-separated, unlike the #6 bus that runs a similar route. It stops a lot less. And it's direct, basically just zipping up the lakeshore and dropping you off downtown (via McCormick Place, which is the rare place better served by Metra than other services).

But you can't use Ventra on it, even though Ventra is supposed to be the Chicago single card like London's Oyster or Seattle's ORCA. 

Well, you sort of can. You can buy Metra tickets in the Ventra app. But if you have a Ventra card, or a contactless card, you can't just tap your way into or onto the train. If you don't have a smartphone app, the two are fundamentally distinct. And that means CTA and Pace, the two regional systems that do use Ventra, are distinct from Metra. They are anyway, in terms of fares: the Metra fares are not part of any fare capping with either CTA or Pace, and so for anyone (like me when I lived in Hyde Park) using Ventra to use the CTA, the Metra is both an added expense and an added difficulty. 

It's fast and convenient, but not cost effective, and financially awkward.

2. Timing is Not Great

I said there that it's convenient, but that's partly a lie. It's convenient if you're going at certain times, on certain days. If there's a train, it's great.

But...there often isn't a train.

The reason I took the train this time from Hyde Park was that I couldn't actually manage to do the trip I wanted without driving all the way into Hyde Park from the Quad Cities. I couldn't stop in Joliet because if I did, then the train I wanted to take would actually not get me back in anything like a timely fashion--because it runs every two hours on the weekend. Well, on Saturday. Good luck on Sundays.

The Metra Electric was also running a reduced schedule, but not as much, so it was actually usable.

But the Metra as a whole is very much set up as a commuter set of lines, not an actual network. And because of the lack of fare integration (and its friend, schedule integration), it's not really made up for by the rest of Chicago's network of buses and subways. So I didn't use Metra because it wasn't actually as useful as it could be, because of when and how the trains run.

3. Stations Suck

The Metra also suffers from poor station design and management. They got rid of the ticket sellers in the stations (the human staff) and replaced them with additional ticket vending machines, but even so there is, for example, only a ticket vending machine at one end of the two end 51st/53rd St station. If you happen to enter at the busier end (53rd St) you have to walk the whole station to actually buy a ticket.

The stations themselves haven't had the best cleaning or maintenance over the years and are frequently dank, dark, and wet. 

And there isn't much cover (though there are some covered waiting areas) or many heaters (for cold Chicago winters) on the exposed, windy platforms.

I'm very much a believer that transit can work with minimal stations, but these are very much the absolute minimum. In terms of ticketing, they might be less than that. And in terms of accessibility for those who don't love stairs and long walks, even less.

The Metra is a great idea, and a great resource. But if Chicagoland wanted to get actually serious about using it as real public transportation, it would take a real overhaul--and some actual funding--to get it there.