Pace Suburban Bus service is asking riders and non-riders to weigh in on potential express service along highways that run through the western and northwest suburbs.
The study is looking at the section of Interstate 290 between west-suburban Forest Park and northwest-suburban Schaumburg, as well as the section of I-88 that branches off I-290 in Hillside and goes southwest to Lisle. The Illinois Department of Transportation received funding to make the highways more transit-friendly by improving the shoulders allow Pace bus operators to drive on them to bypass traffic congestion during rush hours.
Pace already provides Bus-on-Shoulder service on I-55/Stevenson Expressway and I-94 /Edens Expressway. Bus drivers can only use the shoulder when general traffic slows to less than 35 mph, and they can not travel faster than 35 mph on the shoulder, or drive more than 15 mph faster than general traffic.
The study is still in the early stages – the steering committee held its first meeting on March 14, and community meetings haven’t been scheduled. And just because the study is completed doesn’t mean anything will come of it, at least in the near term. Streetsblog readers may recall me reporting in February 2022 about a similar study of the I-294/Tri-State Tollway corridor between south-suburban Harvey and the area around O’Hare Airport. The study was quietly finished in July 2022, but Pace is yet to implement its recommendations.
I-290/I-88 Corridor Study
Pace currently operates limited-stop express services on two corridors, mostly serving suburbs that have little to no Metra service. These use nicer buses (with luggage racks, more comfortable seats and sometimes USB chargers) that can provide Bus-on-Shoulder service.
The four I-55/Stevenson Expressway routes operate as commuter expresses, picking up riders in the suburbs and taking them to Chicago in the morning, and bringing them back them in the evening, and riders pay higher premium fares. The four I-90/Jane Addams Memorial Tollway routes are more like regular routes, operating in both directions during rush hour and off-peak Monday-Saturday, and they charge regular fares.
Express service in the I-290 corridor isn’t unprecedented. Pace Route 757 used to provide suburb-to-suburb reverse-commuter service between Oak Park, Forest Park and the northwestern suburbs, taking the highway between Forest Park and Bensenville. Like other suburb-to-suburb express routes, it was a casualty of the pandemic.
According to Pace, the new service would be some kind of limited stop express that would serve "key destinations such as the CTA Forest Park Blue Line Transit Center, the Oak Brook Center/Cermak-Butterfield corridor, and the Schaumburg/Woodfield region." Notably, Pace emphasizes the importance of transfers to Metra and the 'L'. The Forest Park Transit Center seems like a given. There may also be opportunities to transfer to Metra's Milwaukee District West Line's Itasca station via the Pace route's I-290 stretch, and to the BNSF Line’s Lisle stop at end of the I-88 section. The service would presumably stop at Northwest Transportation Center near Woodfield Mall, where riders would be able to transfer to I-90 routes.
IDOT’s 2025-2030 capital budget allocates $11.74 million for Bus-on-Shoulder improvements for the I-290 section, with work expected to start in 2026 at the earliest. There is currently no timeline for when the study might be completed.
Tri-State Tollway study update
The final study of proposed Tri-State Tollway express service isn’t significantly different from what Streetsblog already covered. In short, the report identified ten potential routes that would mostly use the corridor, veering off of it to pick up and drop off riders at destinations such as the Northwest Transportation Center, Oak Brook Shopping Center, the Burr Ridge Park-n-Ride (currently used by I-55 routes), the Bridgeview Park-n-Ride (next to SeatGeek Stadium), the Orange Line's Midway station, and the Blue Line's Rosemont stop.
The study recommends three intermediate stations on the tollway itself. One of these would be at Cermak Toll Plaza near the office park in west-suburban Oak Brook. One would be on the site of the demolished O’Hare Oasis in Schiller Park, which is located near hotels, warehouses and the airport’s freight facilities. And One would be in southwest-suburban Chicago Ridge, near the corner of 103rd Street and Harlem Avenue.
The report estimated that the stations alone would cost "an excess of $100 million." It added, "Pace has tentatively identified $35 million in Rebuild Illinois funds."
The study also discussed the possibility of covering the rest of the cost through federal grants (bear in mind that this was in 2022), as well as tax increment financing and cost-sharing with the municipalities. And it recommended that Pace try to build the Cermak and O’Hare stations first, since there would be more space and fewer infrastructure hurdles.
Take the I-290/I-88 survey here.
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