Queasy rider finds you can't get there from here in 30 minutes

On a good day, driving to work takes about 30 minutes from Downers Grove to Arlington Heights.

Friday it took three hours. And that was a good day using public transit to get from suburb to suburb.

I promised in last week's column to take the Chicagoland Car-free Day pledge and spend a day without my best friend. It's all about your carbon footprint.

So I left the abode around 8:20 a.m. clutching directions from the Regional Transportation Authority's trip planner, Goroo. Goroo gives precise instructions but that didn't help me when I couldn't find a marked bus stop. I trotted up and down the block looking for the right place and waved wildly when my Pace bus came into sight. Fortunately, the kindly driver stopped and explained my $2 would be good for a few transfers. The bus was relatively full of commuters, like Carla Caltheerone. "I can't complain," she said about the service. "It's fairly good unless you have to work after 6 p.m."

I reached the Downers Grove Metra station in plenty of time to grab a danish and catch the 8:45 a.m. eastbound train.

My stop was LaGrange, where I had a date with Pace Bus 330. It pulled up on time at 9:28 a.m. and I settled in for the scenic Mannheim Road trip.

Twenty minutes into the 40-minute jaunt, I had lost count of the adult-themed shops and realized that danish and bus travel don't mix. Call me queasy rider.

Bus 330 pulled into the O'Hare Kiss 'N' Fly early at 10:07 a.m. Bus 250 was next but it wasn't due to leave for 20 minutes - about the same time it would take to reach work by car. I thought wistfully of the trusty Honda Civic, but repeated "carbon footprint" to myself.

Among the eight passengers on Bus 250 was James Cousineau, an American Airlines employee who uses Pace several times a week. "I'm very pleased with it," he said when asked to assess the experience.

Also on board was American Airlines pilot Steve Erickson, taking Pace from the airport to the Des Plaines train station, where he heads west on Metra to Fox River Grove.

"I don't have to worry about traffic or road conditions. I can just chill and let them worry," he said. But Erickson did note that if the buses are off schedule by a few minutes, he can miss the train and have to wait an hour for another.

In Des Plaines I catch the last bus, No. 208, which leaves at 10:53 a.m. At this point, my transfer's expired and I need to pay $1.75.

At a stop outside of Pace's Northwest Division offices, we run into a technical problem.

"We're going to bring another bus. This one's got a flat tire," the driver explains.

There are advantages to getting a flat right outside the Pace office. A new bus arrived shortly and I was at the corner of Golf and Arlington Heights roads at 11:17 a.m., just 7 minutes behind schedule.

One thing about Arlington Heights Road - walkers are few and far between. I arrived at work by 11:33 a.m. - just a little over three hours. The cost was $3.35 for Metra and $3.75 for Pace - $7.10 in total.

On the way back, it was only $1.75. That was because rain and traffic delayed Bus 606 from Arlington Heights by 5 minutes so I lost my 5 p.m. connection with Bus 325 at the Rosemont CTA station. That caused a domino effect with my subsequent connections.

I was stranded in the suburbs with no car and my Goroo cheat sheet was no good. What to take now? Bus 230/South Des Plaines? No good. Bus 223/Elk Grove? Nope.

Then I noticed Bus 332/River-York roads. My ticket home, and a friendly driver. We bounced along for an hour or so until reaching Oakbrook Center. And Oak Brook is next to Downers Grove. After two hours in transit I gave in to the dark side and called home for a ride (in a car).

I love public transit. But the reality is, I couldn't afford to spend five hours a day on it.

We're very good at getting people to Chicago and back, but travel from suburb to suburb? Not so much.

I'm hardly the first one to discover this. Plans like the STAR line and the Cook DuPage Corridor that aim to get a real suburb-to-suburb system going are in the works, but years off.

Both the RTA and Pace are developing bus rapid transit plans to provide a more viable suburban commute. RTA spokeswoman Diane Palmer said the agency is working on several fronts to improve suburb-to-suburb transit and reverse commutes.

"The reality is we're constrained by resources," she said. "Where we stand now, is we have the resources to afford us the ability to strengthen the infrastructure that exists today. We do not have the additional funds, given what we receive from the state and federal governments, to enable us to pursue the projects we're keenly aware would benefit the suburb-to-suburb commute."

Pace spokesman Patrick Wilmot agreed in an e-mail that "there's not enough investment in suburb-to suburb commuting."

"We've been addressing more demand for suburb-to-suburb commuting when restructuring service, like the project we recently completed in South Cook and Will counties. These projects give us the opportunity to assess current demand and relate that to existing resources to realign service to meet those demands. We're working through our service area to do that and in the past few years projects have been completed in the North Shore and part of Northwest Cook. Aurora, Elgin, and South Cook and Will. These projects are an opportunity to shift from that traditional market to feed into downtown job centers to more of the suburb-to-suburb market," Wilmot said.

Incoming

• IDOT will start pavement patching Monday through November leading to some lane closures. Watch out for: the Route 59 and Route 72 intersection, Route 62 from east of Palatine Road and west of Route 68, the Route 83 and Hintz Road intersection, the Palatine Road express (under the bridge between Wheeling and Wolf roads), Route 59 from Route 68 to Route 64, and Barrington Road at Central and Mudhank roads.