Our mission at The Yard Social Club is to Support Sustainable Suburbia, and we primarily do that through all our train crawl resources: if we make it fun and easy to spend a day exploring the suburbs using only Metra, we’re breaking down barriers and smoothing the learning curve required for occasional riders to take transit in the hopes that they’ll choose transit more often.
But sometimes it’s the transit agencies that need a little nudge, not the potential riders. So we launched STAR:LINE Chicago, a transit advocacy group focusing on improving suburban transit and other transportation opportunities as well as advocating for other innovative changes to make the suburbs more sustainable. We advocate through direct outreach to transit and transportation providers where possible, and through our Diverging Approach blog postings.
STAR:LINE is an acronym for Supportive Transit for All Riders: Leisure, Infrequent, New, and Experienced, which represents our diverse focus on advocating for everyone who can choose to use public transit, not just regular commuters. It also intentionally refers to Metra’s once-proposed STAR Line, which promised to offer suburb-to-suburb rail transit connections but never came to pass. (The east-west portion of the STAR Line now forms the backbone of Pace’s enhanced Interstate 90 service, but north-south transit connectivity through the suburbs is still sorely lacking.)
If you want to get wise about suburban transit, check out some of our interactive advocate resources including maps to help you find your Metra board member, our PABST Station Report, the Diverging Approach Metra Trip Log, and more to come throughout 2020.
And while data is great, we’re social too! We’re also active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We also occasionally host meetups to talk all things suburban (generally over a few drinks). If you’re interested in becoming an active (or casual) part of our group, reach out to us on social media for more details. Join us as we fight to make the suburbs more livable!