Metra

South Shore residents have launched a campaign to rescue their neighborhood's walkable retail core.

In a new report [PDF], the Regional Transportation Authority blames weak ridership growth from 2008 to 2012 primarily on economic factors, glossing over the impact of fare hikes and service cuts.

The Metra board recently confirmed Don Orseno as the permanent executive director following his stint as interim chief after Alex Clifford resigned last year. After the confirmation, the Tribune reported that Orseno, a decades-long railroad and Metra employee who lives in Manhattan, a far southwest suburb, said that he has to drive to work because the "SouthWest Service Line schedule doesn't get him to the office early enough, or home late enough."

After the fatal Metro-North commuter rail crash in the Bronx this weekend, yesterday the Chicago Tribune published an informative article about Positive Train Control for Metra. PTC is a technology that can slow or stop a train when the engineer is incapable of operating it, not paying attention, or when something else goes wrong.

While intercity and long-distance train travel is on the rise in the United States, Amtrak could still do a lot more to improve the customer experience and boost ridership further.

After Streetsblog reported on Leopardo Construction's poor pedestrian accommodations during construction on Lawrence Avenue next to the Ravenswood station, where the contractor is building a Mariano's grocery store, a company representative wrote to say that building a temporary walkway in the road wasn't feasible. Soon after, however, a temporary walkway was added.

Yesterday, 11 members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization policy committee, including Metra and Pace, voted to add the Illiana Tollway to the GO TO 2040 regional plan. This enables the Illinois DOT and Indiana DOT to move forward with the project approvals necessary to receive federal funds.

Funding for major Chicagoland transit projects will be at stake tomorrow, when regional representatives convened by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning vote on whether to move forward with the Illiana Tollway. Even though approving the Illiana will jeopardize CTA and Metra improvements by adding competition for the same pot of funds, all four Chicagoland transit agencies – and the Chicago Department of Transportation – either voted for the project or abstained in an advisory vote earlier this month.