The Metra commuter rail system is considering renaming lines to make the system easier to understand for new and occasional riders. To get feedback on the idea from customers, the agency is conducting an online survey and scheduled three public meetings at downtown terminals this week. On Tuesday, an open house was held at Chicago Union Station, on Wednesday, it was at Ogilvie Transportation Center, and today they're at Millennium Station and La Salle Street Station from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. All Metra routes
At the Union Station event yesterday, Streetsblog asked Metra spokesperson Michael Gillis why, in this digital age, the railroad decided to do in-person outreach instead of just relying on the survey. "Both efforts are effective in reaching different people," he replied. "We want to reach as many people as we can. We've had like 6,000 people take the survey already. Not everybody reads the paper, sees the news, so we want to try to catch people as they're getting on the trains."
According to Metra staffer Justin Modley, they did a survey back in December that they only promoted on social media without going to stations, and they only got 500 respondents. Modley said they want to get at least 10,000 responses this time, which will determine how long they have the survey up. It could last this week or go to early next week.
A Metra press release states that renaming its lines is partially motivated by the agency taking over operations of its Union Pacific North, Northwest, and West lines. "Union Pacific Railroad owns those lines and has historically operated them with its own employees, but UP no longer wants to run passenger trains," it explained. "Metra has been hiring many of UP's workers and this spring will begin to directly run the service, and 'Union Pacific' will be phased out of the line names."
One of the reasons for the renaming is that Metra is in the early stages of a systemwide signage and wayfinding project that will replace different wayfinding, identification, and information signage with redesigned signs that have a common appearance and language. The agency thought it made sense to consider changing the line names while they were at it.
"Metra has been around for 40 years," Gillis said. "There's probably 40 years of different signs across our system. There's just not a lot of consistency to it. And we might have a sign at one station that was put there in 1985, and another put in ten years later that's completely different. So we're trying to standardize our signs and make them consistent across the agency, just to make things clearer and easier. It's all about making the system easier to use, really. So [we want to] help people get to our station, help people understand how to park, help people understand how to pay their fares, all that sort of thing. We want to make it easier and consistent across the system."
As it stands, the names of different lines can be confusing, especially for people with limited English proficiency. According to the news release, "Many are named after freight railroads that used to or still operate the service, while some are named for directions, or how trains are powered, or their location in a historic corridor." Two different "Milwaukee District" lines were so named "because they were once part of the Milwaukee Road, but they do not go to that city," the release states. If that wasn't bad enough, each line uses a different color on maps, signs, and timetables.
Here are the options people can choose on the survey:
Retaining all the current names and colors except for the three UP lines.
Using a single color for all lines and labeling all lines with an "M" for Metra paired with a number. For example, M1, M2, M3, etc.
Using a single color for lines that share a downtown station, and labeling them with a letter to indicate the direction they go from downtown paired with a number.
Gillis estimates that it'll take Metra a few months to come to a decision about what to do after looking at the survey. He added that it would probably take years to fully transition to a new naming system, likely wrapping up by 2029.
Read Metra's press release about the initiative here.
Editor's Note
Please be aware that Cameron Bolton had nothing to do with the following (although he gave me the OK to include it in this post.)
As a fourth option for renaming the Metra routes, I'd like to propose (with tongue in cheek) that we use this opportunity to honor iconic Chicagoland musicians and bands with origins in our region by naming lines after them. This list is certainly open to debate, and I invite you to post your recommended edits in the comments section.
Curious about why these artists or acts are associated with these locations? Get more info from my Iconic Chicago Musicians Map, below.
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