This post originated as a (buzzed) thread on @StarLineChicago‘s Twitter account. It is mildly edited. Follow us on Twitter for more suburban transportation content and critiques.
First and foremost: it’s a long weekend. Stay safe, party responsibly, and remember that Metra Weekend Passes are good Saturday, Sunday, AND Monday this weekend. Give your car a break and ride the train!
Since it’s a long weekend, Metra also rolled out “early release” schedules for those of us who had to work on Friday. Unfortunately there is no default “early release” schedule system-wide, which seems like a missed opportunity to make the system more rider-friendly, but I digress.
I’m writing this onboard the BNSF 7:00 local to Downers Grove, which was “packed” with inbound riders when it arrived at Union Station. (“Packed” was in quotations due to the artificial scarcity Metra routinely uses where additional coaches don’t open up until the train is almost at standing-room-only passenger levels. I understand it makes life harder for the conductors to deal with a full consist with only a handful of people on board, but still, opening up an extra car or two would greatly improve the customer experience if you can find a seat without sharing or if your group can sit together when the train is at 50% capacity.) But that’s not terribly important (even though there was one afternoon inbound delay due to “passenger loading”), and there was also an inbound train that had to express due to freight train interference, and BNSF threw on an extra train to accommodate (according to Twitter, at least).
All this brings up a useful conversation on a holiday weekend: kudos to Metra for adding service for commuters quitting work early, but what about suburbanites heading downtown for the holiday weekend? People in the suburbs like going downtown. Especially on Friday nights. Especially on holiday weekends. And especially especially when the weather is decent. Metra knows their bread and butter is people from the burbs heading downtown and taking the train back home when they’re done, and they usually focus on the work commuter rush. Which is fine and will always be Metra’s core constituency. But the leisure rider component can’t be overlooked. On weekend nights, suburbanites like going downtown to have fun, and if they take Metra downtown they’ll take Metra home.
Metra needs to run more frequent outbound evening trains on weekends. Ask any suburbanite about trips to the city, and the refrain is overwhelmingly common: “I want to take the train, but I don’t want to wait two hours if I miss my train home.” So they drive.
On Fridays, the opposite is true: there are generally plenty of trains to get home, but getting downtown requires a little more strategy. (And it’s more expensive because Metra doesn’t start their Weekend Passes on Friday nights, which they should.)
So for holiday weekends when demand is high – or maybe every summer Friday – here’s an easy fix for Metra: open up the deadheads. When Metra adds afternoon service to trains leaving downtown, that train ends up empty somewhere down the line. Then that train closes up and runs express back downtown to make the next outbound run. (That empty trip is a “deadhead”.) This means Metra is running more inbound trains on Friday afternoons before long weekends, and generally (because it’s a special “early release” schedule) there’s more flexibility in the schedule itself to add some time to make a few more inbound stops.
Open up the trains and advertise that Metra is offering additional/express service to the city in advance of the holiday weekend. It costs Metra nothing extra, since that train and that crew is deadheading anyway. Even if it only picks up 30 riders on that inbound train, whatever, that’s 30 new riders who are going to also take Metra back home at the end of the night. If Metra is going to alter service for a holiday weekend, leverage that opportunity to get more people from the burbs downtown instead of focusing almost exclusively on getting commuters home.
From a financial perspective, the early release service for regular commuters largely serves the monthly pass or 10-Ride crowd, whereas additional inbound afternoon service serves the one-way crowd, which means Metra can earn higher per-passenger fares for those Friday leisure trips. We encourage Metra to accommodate those riders heading downtown for fun: an underutilized market to tap in an era of declining ridership. Open up the deadheads and see what happens.
Have a safe Memorial Day weekend, and we’ll see you on the train!
