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Editorials
Oswego still a player in Metra station game : Editorials : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisOswego still a player in Metra station game
| 10/11/2012
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We've reported on the possibility of Oswego securing a Metra station since the late 1990s. One of the things we've learned over the years is that if the village is to one day get a Metra station it will have to play a game devised by Metra and RTA officials with the assistance of the state and federal government.
One of the first rules of this game is you have to have numerous engineering and feasibility studies conducted by engineering firms and consultants to study the very possibility of constructing a Metra station in your community. Another rule of the game is you have to demonstrate a need for a station.
In Oswego's case, the village officially entered the game when it used a grant to construct a Metra Park-n-Ride facility in 2004 and then used another grant to pay to have the Pace Suburban bus service transport riders to and from the park-n-ride to the Metra station at the downtown Aurora Transportation Center. By having a large number of people using the Park-n-Ride, village officials have hoped to show Metra and RTA officials there is in fact a need for a Metra station way out here in what was just a few years ago the fastest growing county in the nation.
But the game has become more complicated and costly for the village in recent years since the grant it had used to pay for Pace bus service ran out and the village has had to use its own revenues to keep the bus service to the Park-n-Ride going.
Last month the village board, in a split 4-2 vote, approved a contract with Kendall Area Transportation (KAT) to replace Pace as the Park-n-Ride bus service provider effective Jan. 1. Under terms of the deal, KAT will increase the number of bus rides to and from the Aurora Metra station and provide those rides at a reduced cost to the village.
Some board members and village residents justifiably have reservations about the village continuing to subsidize bus service for people who use the Park-n-Ride. But the rules of the game now dictate that if the village were to stop paying for the bus service and effectively shutdown the Park-n-Ride, it will likely hurt the village's chances of one day getting a full-fledged Metra station.
As a result, the village is likely locked in to subsidizing the operation of the Park-n-Ride to the tune of thousands (millions?) of dollars for years to come as the studies continue.
While we share the concerns raised by some board members of the continued Park-n-Ride subsidies, we would remind them that the village's situation is not unique. Local governments across the nation have been subsidizing motorists since the car was invented by paying to build and then maintain local streets and highways that some of their residents never use. Communities right in the Chicago area also continue to subsidize public transportation through the RTA. They have done so because they have determined commuter rail and bus service is worthy of public subsidies in exchange for the benefits those services provide to the community as a whole: convenience to many residents, reduced vehicle traffic on area roads and highways, and cleaner air. Taxpayers in those communities and in Oswego already subsidize numerous other public services and facilities that many local residents will never use that provide a benefit to their residents. Those services include: public schools, police protection, fire protection, emergency ambulance service, public parks, community festivals and brush pick-up service.
By voting to award the contract to KAT and keep the Park-n-Ride in operation, the board has kept the village in this convoluted and costly Metra station game.
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