If you have not parked in Buffalo Grove’s Metra lot in the past few weeks, get ready to bring some extra change or a credit card with you.
Village Hall has scheduled a price increase for both daily and bi-monthly parking permits, to go into effect on March 1.
Starting that date, the price of a spot is up 25 cents to $2, while the cost of a two-month permit is rising from $60 to $80.
“The point of that train station really is to be self-sufficient,” said Scott Anderson, Buffalo Grove’s finance director. “The lot has been losing money each year.”
From Monday through Friday, Metra’s trains on the North Central Service line stop at Buffalo Grove’s 25-year-old station.
Anderson said it averages 400 to 425 parked cars per day. Buffalo Grove leases the land, on the southeast corner of Deerfield Parkway and Commerce Court, from utility ComEd, whose power lines hang overhead. Anderson said that lease includes a 3 percent price escalator, annually.
Also, the village spent about $50,000 two years ago to put new fare boxes inside the depot, Anderson said. The old machines had become antiquated, he said, and were not able to print out receipts.
He and Dane Bragg, village manager, said the municipality once had good reason to believe that ridership was going to increase: Six years ago, Metra planned to expand its service to Buffalo Grove.
The train system backed that talk up by paying for an addition to the Buffalo Grove lot, Bragg said, from about 650 spots to 1,100.
But “the expansion never materialized,” Bragg lamented.
Anderson said Buffalo Grove needs permission from Metra to raise prices, and that the village tried to jump to $2 per day in 2007. At that time, a daily pass was $1.50. Seeing that they would need new revenue, the village requested a 50-cent increase.
“They split the difference,” Anderson recalled, and the new rate became $1.75. “We knew at some point we’d be coming back.”
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Other government agencies are involved: the Pace bus system owns the lot’s first 95 spaces, and Anderson said Buffalo Grove has a small lease with them.
Although Metra built the expanded lot, Anderson and Bragg said Buffalo Grove maintains it.
It will likely go through renovations this summer, they said: Village Hall is currently seeking bids for asphalt removal, pavement cleaning, drainage adjustments and replacements of the curbs, gutters and sidewalks. Bids for that work are due March 8.
Twitter: @RonnieAtPioneer