Metra allocates $332.4 million for a 2024 budget, focusing on replacing 22 bridges in Chicago. The extensive project involves multiple stages to ensure safety and efficiency. Other improvements include track structure upgrades, station renovations, and track maintenance initiatives across the commuter rail system.
Photo courtesy of Metra
Metra’s 2024 construction budget includes $332.4 million allocated for a variety of projects ranging from major infrastructure improvements to smaller tasks across Metra’s 11 lines.
Metra's 2024 construction budget includes $332.4 million allocated for a variety of projects ranging from major infrastructure improvements to smaller tasks across Metra's 11 lines.
Topping the list for Chicago's commuter rail system is a plan to replace 11 120-year-old bridges on the Union Pacific (UP) North Line.
Photo courtesy of Metra
"It's work we've known we needed to do for a long time," said Michael Gillis, director of Metra Communications. "We've been attacking it as funding becomes available. It's completely replacing the bridges with new spans. Metra was formed 40 years ago. Our system is made up of, sort of a patchwork of systems. Some lines we inherited from lines that went out of business. Some we started ourselves, some we started from others.
"We're replacing a total of 22 bridges and have already completed 11 bridges north of this work zone. Now, we'll do 11 more to the south."
The big challenge to the job is working in a tight space, only about 66-ft.-wide, with all the work taking place in that space, Gillis said. The bridges have bays, not unlike lanes on a highway. During replacement, only two of the three bays are in use.
"It's very complicated and very involved," Gillis said. "They take down one bay, reconstruct it, lay the new tracks onto the new bridges ... While doing that, they're operating trains on the older bridges. When we're done with that, we'll have one new bridge and two older. Next is to take out the middle and reconstruct it there, operating trains on one old and one new. It's very complicated staging. We have to be very vigilant. Safety is always the highest priority."
The project also will replace 4 mi. of track structure and 1.75 mi. of retaining walls. It is expected to go out for bid later this year, with construction planned to begin in 2025.
The construction budget also includes $81.6 million for station and parking improvements, $22 million for track maintenance, $6.4 million for rail crossing replacements and $66.2 million for signal electrical and communications maintenance and upgrades.
Photo courtesy of Metra
Station improvements are planned for 35 of Metra's 242 stations this year. Along the Metra Electric Line, Metra is continuing a multiyear effort to rebuild stations and improve accessibility with major projects either already under way or slated to begin at 79th, 87th, 95th, 103rd and 147th streets, as well as Homewood and Harvey. The budget also includes six platform replacements, and a new Peterson/Ridge Station on the UP North Line opened this spring. Work at the new Auburn Park Station on the Rock Island Line Beverly Branch will continue, along with various rehabilitation projects including new bike racks and painting.
A big part of the track maintenance plans involves replacing about 129,000 railroad ties. It sounds like a huge undertaking but is actually typical in the rail industry, Gillis said. "Talk to any railroad, they do the same thing. We replace ties on a regular basis, and it's all done on rotating basis. There's a series of specialized machines that roll down the track."
In a story Gillis wrote for the Metra webpage, he said: "They look like something Dr. Seuss might have dreamed up, and you want them to have Dr. Seussian names – something like the Automatic Puller-Outer Gizmo or Whatchamacallit Thingamabob 3000. Instead, they are boringly named after their functions – the tie extractor, the tie crane, the anchor spreader, the rail broom, the tamper, the spiker."
Gillis noted the number of ties Metra replaces each year varies due to a number of factors.
"It's interesting is to think how they did that before they had these machines," Gillis said. "They had to do it by hand." CEG
Lori Tobias
Lori Tobias is a journalist of more years than she cares to count, most recently as a staff writer for The Oregonian and previously as a columnist and features writer for the Rocky Mountain News. She is the author of the memoir, Storm Beat - A Journalist Reports from the Oregon Coast, and the novel Wander, winner of the Nancy Pearl Literary Award in 2017. She has freelanced for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Denver Post, Alaska Airlines in-flight, Natural Home, Spotlight Germany, Vegetarian Times and the Miami Herald. She is an avid reader, enjoys kayaking, traveling and exploring the Oregon Coast where she lives with her husband Chan and rescue pups, Gus and Lily.
Read more from Lori Tobias here.
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