To fill trains in 2023, Metra aims for commuters to college and high school students

Metra executives hopes to attract new types of riders this year as they struggle to bring Chicago public transit back up to pre-COVID ridership levels.

The agency’s goal? Thirty-five million rides in 2023.

Passengers took 74 million rides in 2019, but annual ridership fell 75% in 2020 and has yet to climb back above 25 million.

The growth that has occurred, though, caused Metra to draw $94 million less federal COVID relief funding than expected this year, said chief financial officer John Morris.

To gain back more revenue, upcoming Metra marketing campaigns could focus on wooing high school and college students, non-office workers and reluctant drivers, Metra board members said Wednesday.

“Our mission now — the shift — is to remind people we’re there, actively and specifically reminding everyone in the region that we’re there,” marketing executive Stanton Lewin said at Wednesday’s meeting of the Metra board of directors. “Then we can play all those roles that we need to play in their lives.”

On average, a weekday Metra train now serves 43% of pre-pandemic ridership.

To test new scheduling priorities, Metra retooled the train service on four lines — BNSF, Metra Electric, Rock Island and Union Pacific North — to include midday trains. Ridership on these lines in the middle of the day came closer to pre-pandemic numbers than any other line during the same time of day in December, Lewin said.

Keeping Metra trains accessible to college commuter students could also pull in high school students and their families, who also travel from the suburbs and might otherwise drive, said Romayne Brown, chair of the Metra board of directors.

“I know there’s a population segment that Metra does not serve,” Brown said. “I know we don’t want them in their cars. But are we also selling the point that there are places to park to board Metra?”

Real-time tracking recently went into effect on six of 11 Metra lines. The agency hopes this will draw commuters’ attention in situations where the current train schedule would make for a faster trip than the current road traffic, Lewin said.

Chicago is one of the most congested cities in the world, according to the 2022 Global Traffic Scorecard by marketing firm Inrix.

Metra also hopes to woo customers frustrated with rising gas prices, Lewin said.

“During the period where the gas prices went really crazy... for a brief moment, the value of Metra exceeded the stress of traffic,” Lewin said.

Metra added 46 new weekday trains to its schedule last month, including 18 on the UP-North line.

Along with new goals for increasing ridership, Metra secured $204 million in federal grant funding by the end of 2022, Metra CEO Jim Derwinski said. The funds will mostly be used to build new infrastructure, including renovating the 95th St./Chicago State University and 59th-60th St./University of Chicago stations to become ADA-accessible.

Lewin also pitched using TikTok content, VR advertisements, celebrity cameos and partnerships with sports teams — whose parking lots fill faster at games when fans don’t choose public transit — to draw in younger riders. The marketing team has already reached out to sponsor minor-league baseball teams in Schaumburg and Joliet, Lewin said.

“We’re not your father’s Oldsmobile of Metra,” Lewin said.