Here’s how to quickly boost use of public transit on the South Side and in the south suburbs

Suppose you live at 115th and Calumet in Roseland on the Far South Side. You get a job at Fulton and Morgan in the West Loop. You have several commuting options, all bad.

You can drive, which takes 39 minutes. But parking in the West Loop can cost $15 or more a day.

You can take UberPool, also 39 minutes. Cost: $12 to $33 — one way.

You can ride the CTA’s 115 bus to the L’s Red Line at 95th, change in the Loop to the Green Line, then take the Harlem branch to Morgan. Cost, assuming you have a Ventra card: $2.75. But it’ll take an hour and 15 minutes.

You can board a Metra Electric train at 115th, take it to Millennium Station downtown, then transfer to the Green Line at Washington and Wabash via the Pedway. Commuting time: 50 minutes.

Again, the problem is the cost: $5.50 for Metra plus $2.50 for the L=$8, $16 for a round trip.

There’s a better way, proposed last summer by the Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways: Lower Metra fares, and integrate them with the CTA so riders pay only one full fare.

That would make the trip from 115th and Calumet to the West Loop 25 minutes faster and more than $5 cheaper.

Too good to be true? Right now, it looks that way. The city of Chicago opposes the county’s scheme, though discussions continue.

This is a fabulous deal. Integrating Chicago’s two major rail transit services should have been done decades ago. The present arrangement, in which the CTA and Metra have little to do with each other or — worse — act like competitors, is an unsustainable waste of public funds. It’s a legacy of the days when Chicago had multiple, independent rapid transit systems — one for the city north of 63rd Street, the others for the Far South Side.

This worked OK once upon a time. In 1956, the Illinois Central suburban service, predecessor to the Metra Electric, carried 107,000 riders a day, according to a history of the line by Metra board chairman Norm Carlson.

In those days, the city’s central business district was packed into the Loop, and costs were low. Illinois Central fares were comparable to those of the CTA. Riders arriving at the IC’s downtown terminal didn’t need to transfer. They just walked the rest of the way to their jobs, as some still do.

For most people, though, things are more complicated today. After several fare increases, riding the Metra Electric is much more expensive than the CTA. And getting to your destination in Chicago’s expanded downtown often requires transferring — and paying a second full fare.

Many people balk at that prospect. Many Metra Electric stops see fewer than 100 boardings daily.

That brings us to the main reason traffic is down — the crumbling economy of much of south Cook County, including the Far South Side. Traffic on all Metra lines fell after the 2008-2009 recession but eventually stabilized on most. On the Metra Electric and Rock Island, which also serves south Cook County, it didn’t. Ridership on the two lines has fallen by more than 25% since 2008.

The county’s plan aims to reverse that. The aim of the experiment is to reduce Metra Electric and Rock Island fares to parity with the CTA within the city and lower them by lesser amounts for patrons boarding at south suburban stops. Riders would be able to transfer between the two Metra lines and the CTA at little or no cost. Twenty-two trains a day would be added to the Metra Electric schedule, allowing service frequency approaching that of the CTA.

The plan is sweeping, as seen in the accompanying map. It encompasses 70 stations over 54 miles of rail line. Forty-seven of the stations and 23 miles of rail line are in Chicago. In effect, this would give the city two new L routes.

Ed Zotti / Sun-Times

The Metra Electric and Rock Island can easily be integrated with the L system. Unlike Union Station and the Ogilvie Transportation Center, the downtown terminals of the two services are within easy walking distance of the L.

Metra Electric riders arriving at Millennium Station can use the Pedway to walk to the Red Line and Blue Line subways and the Loop elevated. Rock Island commuters exiting the LaSalle Street Station can walk downstairs to the LaSalle Street stop on the Blue Line.

Equally important, the plan can be implemented relatively quickly — Metra and county officials say a year or two — and at modest cost. There’s more to it than simply having riders flash their Ventra cards at Metra conductors. If the experiment succeeds and Metra starts carrying large numbers of city riders, presumably the agency will have to install turnstiles, repair dilapidated stations and possibly build some new ones. But the trains, tracks and stations already are in place and in daily use.

Compare that with the chief alternative scheme for improving Far South Side transit — the proposed Red Line extension to 130th Street, shown as a dotted red line on the map. The extension would add four stations and 5.3 miles of rail line — a fraction of what the south Cook County pilot would provide — at a cost of $2.3 billion.

The prospects for finding that money in the foreseeable future are close to nil, even if there’s a friendly administration in the White House. County and Metra officials won’t get specific about what the south Cook County pilot would cost but suggest it’s in the tens of millions of dollars.

The city opposes the pilot because it would reduce CTA ridership — the county estimates a daily loss of 8,000 L riders and 23,000 CTA bus riders. The most noticeable drop would be at the Red Line’s 95th Street terminal, where ridership could fall by half.

But that’s a problem only if the plan doesn’t do anything but shift riders from one transit service to another. It’s a minor concern if better service means more people start using transit. An analysis for the county by a consultant indicates, accounting for other factors, that Metra would gain 84,000 riders — a net gain in overall transit ridership of 48,000.

And a county spokesperson says, “The Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways is prepared to help offset potential losses if a transit agency loses revenue as a result of the pilot.”

By itself, the plan isn’t going to end south Cook County’s slide. But it would make life easier for tens of thousands of people, letting them get to jobs downtown quickly and at reasonable cost. It would strength connections between the core and the Far South Side.

And it would provide a boost for the middle-class African American neighborhoods emerging on the south lakefront, which would benefit from the stimulus good rail service would provide.

Much remains to be agreed on — how fares will be collected, how the revenue will be split. For the plan to succeed, Metra, CTA, the county and the city must work closely together and make investments ranging from new fare collection equipment to signs, maps and marketing campaigns. The deal needs to include enough incentives for everyone to go all in.

The first step is for all parties to acknowledge the plan is a good idea and start negotiating in earnest. This is a deal we want to make.

This is part of the ongoing series City at the Crossroads by journalist Ed Zotti on trends affecting Chicago and choices the city faces.

Email comments to: letters@suntimes.com.