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Editorials
Why Metra trains here are so slow : Editorials : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisWhy Metra trains here are so slow
| 6/3/2010
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For those who hadn't yet heard, it will likely be years before the first passenger boards a Metra commuter rail train at a station in Oswego. That was the message that Oswego Village President Brian LeClercq shared with the village board recently after he conferred with Metra's acting director.
LeClercq and other village officials have publicly stated on multiple occasions over the past few years that securing a Metra station on the site of the village's current Park-n-Ride facility near Orchard and Mill roads is going to be a long, long process. However, that apparently hasn't stopped some developers and Realtors from suggesting to potential buyers that the station will be coming to the village sooner, rather than later.
There are a host of factors that are serving to slow the extension of Metra service to the village, including the $75 million cost for the project, the village's location outside the six county Regional Transportation Authority's service area, and the propensity on the part of the government agencies involved to hire consultants to complete various studies. Don't get us wrong, we're not objecting to the necessary environmental impact or engineering studies that the project will require, but now collecting dust on the shelf here at the Ledger-Sentinel office is a detailed 10 year-old study for an ad hoc Kendall County committee that determined-by golly-that commuter rail service would be viable in the county, and another from the mid-1990s prepared by Metra that identified Montgomery and Oswego as potential future station locations. In the aftermath of the wave of growth that made Kendall County the fastest growing county in the nation for a brief time just a few years ago, the studies are now both well out of date. We're left to wonder just what did the taxpayers get for the money spent on those studies?
We're resigned to waiting years for the Metra station to happen, based on the length of time similar extension projects have taken over the past 25 years in RTA member counties. However, LeClercq should be commended for reaching out to Metra's acting director and for his effort to make sure officials with the agency know of the village's continuing interest in a station.
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