Come on and take a free ride (in Wheeling soon)

Wheeling will soon roll out a free bus service -- a project two years in the making.

The board on Monday, agreed to lease two 15-passenger buses from Pace for a year with the option to renew the contract after that point.

The next step is to lease bus drivers for the service, which the village hopes to launch in late summer or early fall.

"I'm excited," said Trustee Ken Brady, who spear-headed the initiative and came up with the idea in fall of 2006. "I can't wait until we get this thing going."

Brady said he used to drive through Niles, which offers a free bus service to its residents, and saw how efficient that was.

"I informally started inquiring about it and found out it was not that expensive of a deal," he said.

According to a cost study done by the village last year, the two buses and two routes should come out to about $120,000 a year.

The buses will run in a north route, called the red line, and a south route, called the blue line. Each will leave from the train station at Northgate Parkway and Dundee Road and run in about 55-minute loops from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The buses will stop at places such as the Senior Center, the industrial areas in town for people commuting to work on Metra and at local grocery and shopping areas.

Brady said he also envisions the service being valuable for younger residents who want to get to the city's parks or summer jobs.

Jon Sfondilis, assistant village manager, who has been working on the project, said a schedule for the routes should be completed within the next couple of months. Then the village will start advertising the service before it is officially started in the fall.

"I know this is just a small part of relieving traffic," Brady said. "But we have a lot of pedestrian traffic in the community. Even in the winter, you see people walking in the snowstorms. I think this is going to be a big asset -- I really do."