CHICAGO — Only about 2,400 people rode Metra’s shuttle service between O’Hare International Airport and Chicago Union Station during the special service operated in August during the Democratic National Convention, the commuter operator says. That’s only about 120 per day during the Aug. 11-30 operation.
Still, Metra would like to make the service permanent.
Metra spokesman Michael Gillis told the Chicago Sun-Times the O’Hare operation was “sort of gutted” by bus service for the approximately 50,000 delegates. In an email to the newspaper, he said the operator wants a permanent version of the O’Hare shuttle service “because we are trying to develop new markets to build ridership, and it would be beneficial to Metra and the region to have fast, frequent connectons between the region’s two largest job centers (O’Hare and downtown).”
Metra has previously discussed the O’Hare concept with Trains [see “On the radar: Metra service to O’Hare airport,” Trains.com, Dec. 18, 2023]. Making the operation permanent would require operating agreements with CPKC and Canadian National, which either own or dispatch the majority of the route. While they agreed to the operation during the convention, significant infrastructure improvements would likely be required before the freight operators would agree to a full-time service with trains every 20 to 30 minutes, which Metra CEO/Executive Director Jim Derwinski has said is ideal.
Metra has received some funding to address issues with its current O’Hare Transfer station, located behind the building that houses the airport’s rental-car facilities, as well as long-term parking and the terminal for the people mover to the airport. The commuter operator has received a $750,000 grant to explore ways to improve the station, as well as funding to improve the pedestrian connection from the station to the people mover. Currently, it’s about a 1,000-foot outdoor walk from the station to enter the rental-car building near escalators and stairs to the people-mover platform. That wasn’t a big problem in August, but in January, it can be a different story.
OK To properly understand this we need to know in what way “O’Hare operation was “sort of gutted” by bus service ”
How far WERE the hotels/venues frim CUS?
Did many/any conventioners use CTA’s L service which has multiple stops and runs into the O’Hare Terminal?
The DNC had pre-booked a large number of rooms at hotels downtown for the delegates and attendees. As part of that pre-booking, they chartered several bus lines to take delegates directly from the pick up line on the lower deck directly to their hotel using I-94 (JFK Expressway). This included someone to load their luggage at O’Hare, and someone at their assigned hotel to take it into check in for them.
Now compare that to using Metra-O’Hare Service.
You whistle a cab from your State Street or Michigan Avenue Hotel to go to CUS. Then after carrying your own luggage from the cab, down the escalator to the ticket machine to vend a Ventra card for you. You board your Metra gallery car and have to pick up and carry your luggage to either your seat or if it isn’t occupied, park it the wheelchair zone.
Once you arrive at the O’Hare stop you reverse and get your luggage off yourself and wheel it down to the turnabout where a Terminal Shuttle picks you up. Or if you feel really daring you wheel your luggage about 500 yards over to the escalator that takes you up to the O’Hare Recirculator. Then and only then do you finally get to your terminal.
Now lets ask the Metra spokesperson again after that brief comparison, why would anyone use the Metra option?
The walk from the train station to the people mover is shorter for Metra riders than for those who park in the remote lots. The lowest cost remote lot users even have to ride a bus to get to the people mover!
The real challenge is the Metra schedule. If your plane is delayed, you’ll have to wait an hour or four, etc. But I would still like to see Metra options – and wish there was a better way to get there from suburbs not on the former WC line. Parking is growing problem at O’Hare, with lots filling up during busy times.
If Metra came up with a “OHare Express” with 30m intervals and easy access from the terminals, places to put luggage on board, then perhaps you might get some attention. It would still be better than using the CTA with the myriad of stops and no where to place luggage without blocking a seat or the aisle.
That is what I experience at Heathrow and the Heathrow Express to London. Chicago could do the same.
But OHare is a City of Chicago organ, Metra is a State of Illinois organ and the two rarely meet in the middle.
I wonder how many of these democrats’ rented SUVs for their trips downtown and around the Chicago area. Always complaining that we should be riding the trains but when it comes to their own travel, they’re on the roads.
“Restrictions are for thee. Not for me!” -Our Ruling Elites
Couldn’t agree more, Democrats are elitists. But this is about transportation, not politics.
Lesson No. 1: Trains for special events don’t work out all that well. Takes time to build ridership. And you don’t build ridership by a service which is going to be yanked away next week.
Lesson No. 2: Democrats choosing not to grab the train are just exactly like anyone else choosing not to ride a train. It’s about convenience, reliability and frequency. A Democrat delegate gets off the airplane at O’Hare, she finds the people mover to the parking garage, from the parking garage she tries to find the rail platform, she waits for the train … assuming Union Station is where he wants to go. Chances are at Union Station she’s going to grab a cab anyway, might as well grab the cab at the airport terminal (quite possibly sharing a cab with her co-delegates from her state) and save all the other stuff.
News flash: Union Station isn’t a hotel nor was it the event venue for the convention. Why all the bother just to get to Union Station.
Twenty-one years since the start of Metra North Central, there is still no Saturday – Sunday – Holiday service. Could be that’s what this corridor most needs.