Metra Parking

My highly skilled graphic should illustrate the new PERMIT ONLY parking areas the village has created to handle the sudden and dramatic increase in parking demand thanks to the increase in gas prices. Metra has been telling people that they have increased their ridership by almost 4% in the last few months.

The site in blue has 12 spots and the site in the white box has approximately 25 spots for permit parking. In addition there will be new traffic flow controls in the main parking lot creating a one way flow of traffic westwards on 134. This should ease the chaos that ensues in the evenings.

My administration has aggressively pursued an increase in parking spaces. We purchased the land on Goodnow for parking and created an additional 40 spots for parking 2 years ago. We had plans for more but sadly the political climate before the last election got the new Police and Public Works delayed for over one year. A slender majority of the trustees (Trustees Kohlmeyer, Newby and Blauvelt, with Shaw abstaining. Trustees Perkowitz and Multerer along with me strongly dissented, sadly I can't vote unless there is a tie) rejected guaranteed maximum bids of $6.4 million for the complete facility with a November 2004 move in date. Why does this matter for parking? Well the old village Public Works department is located on Metra land adjacent to the tracks. The land would have been about 150 new parking spaces for the village adding to our 360 existing spots.

So the facility is closing in on being over the $6.4 million budget, the facility is a year behind schedule and you are walking further for your Metra parking. Ain't life grand!