Metra proposes four more stations in McHenry County

Written by jrood

A proposed $500-million project to improve commuter train service in Chicago and its suburbs includes adding four stops in McHenry County, the Chicago Tribune reports. Prairie Grove and Johnsburg would get train depots. Those communities are along a branch line off the Metra UP Northwest Line that veers north near Crystal lake, Ill., to the city of McHenry. The other proposed stops would be about 1.5 miles apart along tracks that run parallel to U.S. Highway 14. Those stops would be between existing downtown depots in Crystal Lake and Woodstock.

The project could take from
three to six years to build if Metra gets federal funding — and if all the
pieces fall into place, said Phil Pagano, executive director of Metra. Pagano
addressed a recent meeting of the Crystal Lake Planning and Zoning Commission,
telling it about Metra’s plans to buy more than 17 acres at Country Club Road
and Prairie Drive in unincorporated Ridgefield near McHenry County College.

Metra plans to buy the land
for $1.5 million and build a "typical" Metra depot with two warming
shelters and a parking lot with 857 spaces. The land would be annexed into Crystal
Lake and built meeting the city’s watershed code.

"Land is land,"
Pagano told the commissioners. "It goes away if you don’t buy it."

The train depot in
Woodstock would be near a minor-league baseball stadium, the building of which
was delayed until next year because of wetland issues, a Woodstock city
official said.

That parcel for the
Woodstock train station is being donated to Metra. Addressing the nearness of
the two proposed stops, Pagano said Metra would readjust its schedules to
ensure trains wouldn’t make every stop. But he said the station near the
baseball stadium wouldn’t be built without the Ridgefield station and is part
of Metra’s overall plan to improve the rail system.

Metra’s Union Pacific
Northwest line runs 71 miles from the Ogilvie Transportation Center in Chicago
to Harvard in northern McHenry County.

Commission members Dave
Goss and James Batastini were concerned about the traffic the new train stops
would generate. But Pagano said the new stations would reduce the number of
commuters driving into downtown Crystal Lake to catch a train.

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