commute question Tinley Park to West Loop area

[makinthemagic]

You're looking at 90+ minutes door to door depending on the specifics on exactly where you live and exactly where the office is. If it snows add an hour easily to the drive time.

[urza216]

The Metra stops in Tinley Park. And it's not far a drive at all from the city limits of Chicago. I'd give myself 45 minutes for a drive to the West Loop.

It's not a bad choice. But I'm not sure why you chose it. Do you have family or friends down south or something?

[ChiNaan]

I knew a guy who commuted from Tinley to the Loop, but he was older, first bought out there decades ago when it was cheap, less crowded (more exurban than suburban), and the commuter traffic was better, and was just riding it out until retirement. He hated how bad the traffic had become as of a few years ago.

If I worked in the West Loop and didn't want to live in the city for whatever reason, I'd probably go with a closer suburb like Oak Park or even LaGrange. I can't think of a reason to live in Tinley unless you work near there or just really, really like malls and chain restaurants. There are worse commutes, for sure, but there are far better ones.

[chet everett]

There definately has been a shift in the SW suburbs that once had a little bit of "out in the country" feel to 'em and now are suffering from the effects of a weirdly disconnected mash-up of urban grid and suburban sprawl. Without the the more compact tradional organizing features of more mature areas and their superior transit infrastructure / more heavily travelled rail lines there is a bit of catch-22 at work -- the schedules on the BNSF to Union from places like LaGrange are faster / more frequent than service to LaSalle becuase they overall are more attractive to folks that rely on transit and the folks that are attracted to towns like Tinely Park are increasingly making transit an afterthought becuase they work in places out in the other SW suburbs...

(and ChiNaan claims he doesn't know anything about the 'burbs... I even tried to give some rep points for this one, I gotta spread it around though. Christmass Spirit!)

Originally Posted by ChiNaan

I knew a guy who commuted from Tinley to the Loop, but he was older, first bought out there decades ago when it was cheap, less crowded (more exurban than suburban), and the commuter traffic was better, and was just riding it out until retirement. He hated how bad the traffic had become as of a few years ago.

If I worked in the West Loop and didn't want to live in the city for whatever reason, I'd probably go with a closer suburb like Oak Park or even LaGrange. I can't think of a reason to live in Tinley unless you work near there or just really, really like malls and chain restaurants. There are worse commutes, for sure, but there are far better ones.

[ChiNaan]

Originally Posted by chet everett

(and ChiNaan claims he doesn't know anything about the 'burbs...

I've never claimed that. You have, though.

[urza216]

Tinley and Orland have been a mecca for shopping and dining for more than just a few years though. Traffic has been heavy there for closer to 20 years - at LEAST ten.

Tinley has a Metra station. What exactly is supposedly inferior about the Rock Island line to other Metra lines? I have never ridden it before. I've never had any reason to take any Metra train other than the ones on the Metra Electric line.. Although a friend of mine used to visit his girlfriend in Downers grove and he said the trains and that line were very fancy.

[ChiNaan]

Originally Posted by urza216

Tinley and Orland have been a mecca for shopping and dining for more than just a few years though. Traffic has been heavy there for closer to 20 years - at LEAST ten.

Yep. I think we're all talking about a period of decades here, not just a few years.