So we recently moved to the Northern suburbs. I now take the Metra to my office in the loop. It’s all very pleasant but it also seems very behind the times. Can’t they come up with a better system for checking tickets then all those conductors? Why is the train so slow pulling into Ogilvie station?
Just want to read what other locals think of the service and how it might be improved.
More seriously, I took Metra briefly and I had mixed feelings about it. I was a fan of the clean, quiet cars and lack of panhandlers (plus no stops for me), but their schedule left so very much to be desired, and conductors walking down the aisle clipping away at tickets made me feel like I’d been transported to 50 years ago. But I dunno, what are they going to do? Revamp the stations and ticketing system so that it functions the normal way? Would be nice if it were simpler – buy a ticket, use it to board, get off the train when you’re done – but… well there really isn’t a but. It would be nice if it were simpler, so I guess the “but” is that I’ll just add this to a list of things that would be nice that I’ll just have to get over wanting.
I’m pretty sure they passed some law that said CTA, Pace and Metra all need to get on the same pay system, meaning Metra will probably transition to Ventra soon.
I’d like to say Ventra would be an improvement, but those words feel wrong.
To be fair, conductors and punch tickets were still in use the last time I rode the equivalent suburban light-rail systems in Boston (six months ago) and Philadelphia (about a year ago.) It’s not just a Metra thing.
Part of the problem is the pricing structure. When you jump on the el you can ride to any stop along the line for a single price. Metra has pricing that depends upon the stop you get on at and the one you get off at. Without conductors you could pay the lowest fare and then ride as far as you want.
You could argue that the pricing is outdated and should move to a flat model but I’m sure you’d have opponents who would see their fares increase for the short trips they take.
Metra runs a traditional suburban railway, with a conductor and several trainmen auditing tickets on board. Almost no Metra stations have controlled access where turnstiles are possible, and in many suburbs, trains are boarded in the middle of a street. Without the ability to have passengers tap in/tap out, someone has to see that your ticket is for the proper amount. A lot of stations are also on curves, so you need a trainman at each door anyway.
I wonder if unions have anything to do with it.
JR West has almost a glut of conductors checking tickets on trains and staff collecting tickets at station wickets, even in larger cities with busy stations where JR East would instead have automated systems. Supposedly JR West’s employees have a stronger union that prevents the company from installing improvements that would result in job losses.
Personally, I prefer the conductors and staff, it’s a lot more pleasant to interact with people rather than machines. If I hand in the wrong ticket by mistake to a human, I get politely asked for the correct one. A machine just buzzes angrily and swings a door at my knees.
Yes, and all three suburban NYC systems (NJTransit, LIRR, Metro-North) do the same thing.
It really is because of the distance-based fare structure. The DC Metro has a system where you swipe in and swipe out to accommodate this, but this necessitates fare gates, which are really hard to implement on a suburban system.
You can have a conductor-less system with distance-dependent pricing. The DC Metro, for example, works this way. You’re required to swipe your card upon entering the subway and then swipe it again upon exiting. The card “remembers” where you entered, and when you exit, the appropriate fare for the distance you’ve travelled is deducted from your card.
ETA: Ninjaed by someone replying to me! Is there a special word for that?
It’s not just the distance fare structure, it’s the ground-level tracks and open platforms. It would cost billions to change all the stations to restricted access that requires people to enter through gates and turnstiles, not to mention issues with many towns that would object to all the ugliness of fences and gates.
It may seem old fashioned, and revamping the payment system to something digital may make sense, like being able to scan cards or conductors being able to process credit cards, but I don’t see the conductor system going away completely on the Metra rails.
Cue Twilight Zone theme. 
Kids + the wife = Lochdale in the suburbs.
All very pleasant and quaint. Air of snobbery but then I’m a secret snob too so it suits me.
Next stop death I believe?
We have to do another Doper event so I can get an excuse to get into the city.
I always wondered, do conductors actually check your zone as they walk through? I’m sure you would get caught on a slow day or if you did it all the time, but is there really anything preventing people saying they’re just going a couple zones and then going a lot farther?
On Metro-North they punch a seat check with your zone on it and stick it in a little holder on the seat in front of you. Conductors all have their own secret codes for recording other information as well.
When I was a kid I may have experimented with surreptitiously swapping people’s seat checks when the conductor wasn’t looking. They are very good at remembering faces.
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I always wondered, do conductors actually check your zone as they walk through? I’m sure you would get caught on a slow day or if you did it all the time, but is there really anything preventing people saying they’re just going a couple zones and then going a lot farther?
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Most conductors have an amazing memory for people to start with, and they punch your ticket with the zone you boarded and where you say you’re going. Go past your claimed station, and be prepared to get charged more on the spot, or even ejected at the next station.
As for running dead slow in or out of Madison, err, Ogilvie, there are roughly seventeen thousand track crossings and switches. Maybe not quite that many, but to go from two different mainline routes to any of 16 platforms takes a lot of switches. Go too fast, and you run the risk of derailing or damaging the switches, either of which will really mess up everyone’s day. Due to the number of switches, this area is almost certainly classified as Class 1 track, which has a Federal speed limit of 15 MPH.
This satellite pic gives an idea of the layout. Zoom in a time or two to get a better image of the tracks.
Wow. There are a lot of tracks and switches.
I was reading in Crain’s the innovation is also being hampered by the fact that there isn’t a single body that controls all of the rail (CTA, METRA) functions in Chicago. They argue, quite compellingly, that having a centralised system would help.
I’ve noticed the same people ride at the same time with the same conductors so they tend to know whose who.
They leave the ticket in a pocket in the seat. They punch it a certain way to easily check. Really, it is there one job to check!
In some systems, they have you tap a card upon entering and exiting the vehicle, and it calculates the fare. This would eliminate the need to retrofit turnstiles, though it does raise the possibility of being easier to ride without paying your fair.
I know on the Minneapolis-St. Paul light rail lines (only two at the moment), there are no regular conductors, and you’re basically on the honor system. They will occasionally have employees spot-checking tickets, but it’s not a regular occurrence. I don’t have any data on how many people cheat the system, or how often they are caught.
"Can’t they come up with a better system for checking tickets then all those conductors? "
Having conductors allows unmanned stations.
Given the big gap between peak and one train per hour off-peak times, having each station manned all the time (which would be necessary if you had exit turnstiles that implemented a distance-based fare) would be inefficient.
The current system is the least bad of the options available.
As the above said, the biggest hurdle is the cost of building the infrastructure to allow platform-level boarding and the entry/exit turnstiles to check fares—and given all that, you might as well spend some more and separate the grade of the train from street level.
Turning what you see in a typical Metra station into something more like what you see in suburban Europe or Japan.
