Pace suburban bus agency’s has unveiled a new draft plan, which includes no major changes to routes for Chicago’s West Side and western suburbs but proposes more frequent service in Brookfield, North Riverside, Oak Park and Austin and a potential service reduction in Forest Park.
For the past three years, the suburban bus agency has been working with Jarrett Walker + Associates public transit consulting firm on ReVision, a new system that they hope will better reflect post-pandemic ridership needs and financial realities.
The review first began in 2024 with three potential scenarios for public review and on April 15 a revised draft plan was released that combined elements from all three and took into account the public feedback and the new legislative requirements included in the Illinois transit funding and reform bill.
Pace is expected to hold public meetings later this year.
For now, it is focusing on the first phases of the transition to the new regional transit structure that will turn the Regional Transportation Authority into the Northern Illinois Transit Authority. According to Pace executive director Melinda Metzger, the plan will need to be approved by the revamped Pace board and the new NITA Board of Directors, neither of which will be seated until September.
In his presentation to the board, Daniel Costantino of Jarrett Walker + Associates gave a broad overview of the implications of the changes. The maps he presented didn’t show routes or street names, so it isn’t always clear exactly what the changes will mean for individual municipalities. But there is enough detail to indicate that major route changes will mostly fall within collar counties and Cook County suburbs further from Chicago.
Costantino told the board that one piece of feedback that was consistent across the entire region was that Pace needed more weekend service, especially on Sundays.
Service along Cermak Road, including the section that runs through North Riverside, would be more frequent, increasing from an average of every 20-30 minutes to every 15 minutes across the board, even during the usually slower Sundays. Route 331, which serves much of downtown Brookfield, Brookfield Zoo, Hines medical campus and Triton College, would get the same kind of increase.
Route 305 primarily serves the section of Roosevelt Road between Desplaines and Cicero avenues, making stops in Austin, Oak Park and Forest Park. During the weekend, the buses run once every hour. ReVision would bump it up to once every half an hour.
In Oak Park, Route 314, which serves the section of Ridgeland Avenue south of Lake Street, currently doesn’t have any Sunday service. ReVision would have those buses run on Sundays once every half an hour.
The map Costantino presented appears to be missing the section of Route 318 between Harlem Avenue and Forest Park Blue Line ‘L’ station, which serves the Forest Park portion of the Madison Street corridor east of Desplaines Avenue. The section of Route 318 along the portion of North Avenue that forms Elmwood Park/River Forest border appears to be unchanged. Service along the section of Madison Street west of Desplaines Avenue, which forms River Forest/Forest Park border, which is collectively provided by Route 303, 310 and 217, appears unchanged.
Pace spokesperson Maggie Daly Skogsbakken didn’t respond to a follow-up question regarding the potential changes to Route 318.
The map also includes a new route that will provide an express service among I-290/Eisenhower Expressway between the Forest Park Blue Line station, Oak Brook’s Oakbrook Center Mall and Yorktown Center mall in Lombard, with intermediate stops in Maywood and Hillside. While Pace board signed off on that route in Jan. 21, it still needs to secure about $1.4 million to get it off the ground.
Costantino told the Pace board that the more detailed version of the draft will be publicly available once Pace is ready to hold meetings and collect feedback.
“This is a plan that is basically ready at this point, and we would like to bring it to the public,” he said. “We’re just waiting to identify what the next steps are as NITA gets set up.”
