I am on my way back to Milwaukee again. To get home I have 2 choices (if I decide to go last minute.) There is the $12 (plus $0.50 processing fee) ‘MegaBus’ or the $21 Amtrak ‘Hiawatha’ train service. Both run about the same number of round trips daily. I know the Hiawatha runs 7 round-trips daily, with the early morning one (one leaves Chicago at 6:00 AM and the other one leaves Milwaukee at 6:15) not running on Sundays. That means that at any one time there is one train going to Chicago and one going to Milwaukee. The nice thing about the Hiawatha cars is the wide seats, ample legroom and power plugs at every seat. The nice thing about the MegaBus is that it costs $8.50 less per one way.
Today I took the Hiawatha.
I always wondered why the Hiawatha takes about the same time to get to Milwaukee as the MegaBus does. The Hiawatha runs a good chunk of its trip at 80 miles per hour, and rarely is there traffic on the rails (I believe that they have to yield to freight trains, but I’m not 100% sure.) So I opened up my cell phone and launched Google Maps. It turns out that the train goes out west before it goes east. Sort of like a < shape. It stops in Glenview, Illinois, which is significantly west of the lake.
It isn’t that there is a lack of track from the Amtrak station directly north. Union Pacific owns a line that goes right along the lake that they lease to Metra heavy-rail city-suburb service. And it isn’t that the Hiawatha cannot share Metra track, because for a good amount of the current Illinois Amtrak route already shares track with the Metra. In fact, the Glenview station is also a Metra station. To get to the Sturtevant, WI/Racine stop the train has to turn east again, towards the lake, to continue its route to Milwaukee. Who designed this damn thing?
I know that the line is paid for by funds from both the State of Wisconsin and the State of Illinois, but there are a ton of great stops near the lake in Illinois.
I am a little biased here as the near-lake track is somewhat close to Loyola, but putting that aside… what the hell happened here? You would reduce transit time and saves expensive fuel.
Add to that the fact that it takes freaking forever to get from Loyola to Union Station to pick up this train. Depending on the time of day it can take from an hour to two hours to get to and from Union Station to my apartment via public transit whereas it only takes 2 hours 30 minutes to get from Union Station to Milwaukee. 1/3rd of my entire transit time is getting from downtown to my apartment. Now I can take a cab it costs me $25, which takes a half hour to get to and from Union Station. Not to mention the cost for a cab from Loyola to Union Station is $25 with tip.
I solved this problem today… I think. I took one of the buses that runs ‘express’ down lakeshore drive. I take this bus from time-to-time to get down to Loyola’s water-tower campus as it takes less time to get downtown (even with stops) as it does to wait for a seat on a shuttle that runs every 15 minutes (and has to deal with the same traffic.) With my new solution I get to the water-tower campus (on the magnificent mile right in front of the John Hancock building,) I get off the bus, and flag a taxi. There are taxis all over where the first bus stop is, so flagging one down is super-easy. All of a sudden my transit time goes from an hour with one transfer to 40 minutes with a transfer from a bus to a cab. And costs about $12 less after you take into account the cost of the pass.
