LIB Newsletter, Winter 2015

By Gin Kilgore, Program Manager

The ding, ding, ding of a railway crossing always gives me a thrill.  I love my two wheeled steeds, but am awed by the iron horse. No matter how many times I climb aboard, each trip feels special.

Over the last two years, the Bike to Metra (BTM) Guide project took me on many special trips around the region. I met planners dedicated to making their communities more bicycle friendly and local cyclists who lead by example. I chatted up conductors and fellow Metra passengers about our work. All agreed that biking plus transit makes sense as a way to get around, though many expressed nervousness about on-road biking.  (That’s why LIB is upping its advocacy around bike-friendly roads. Stay tuned!)

The project’s main objective is simple: to encourage people to ride bikes instead of drive to Metra stations. That’s the Trojan Horse; the process of developing the guides sneaked in other benefits.  For example, identifying routes helped highlight problem areas that should be priorities for improvements. Many times, I called Ed while looking at aerial images, flummoxed about how to get cyclists across a barrier such as an interstate or river. We had to be creative to find convenient but not harrowing travel options.

Although the emphasis was on travel to Metra, the guides can also serve as de facto bike maps because we designed the networks to connect destinations within and beyond municipal boundaries, such as forest preserves and shopping centers.

This helps with another fun goal: to encourage people to visit communities via bike and train for recreation. Next time I want to roll down the Fox River Trail, I will pedal furiously the two miles from my home in Chicago to the Kedzie station on the UP-W line to catch a train to Geneva, and use its Bike to Metra Guide to find my way to the trailhead and back for ice cream.

Gin-approved tips for bringing bikes on Metra:

• A belt or purse strap can stand in for a bungee cord.
• If there are other bikes on the train, compare destinations and stack them accordingly.
• Metra is on time most of the time; cutting it close can provide a great aerobic workout.
• Take off your reading glasses before getting on board; tripping on the stairs, bike in hand, does not make conductors happy.
• Be nice to the conductors.