Flossmoor Metra Station Renovation in Progress

Metra and Flossmoor Village officials this week broke ground on a major $4 million project to rebuild the platforms and related facilities at the Flossmoor station on Metra’s Electric District Line.

“Station projects like Flossmoor are just the type of renewal our system needs and our passengers deserve,” said Metra CEO Don Orseno. “When the project is complete, Flossmoor will have a new and much more attractive gateway to their community.”

Orseno was joined at the groundbreaking by Flossmoor Mayor Paul Braun and Metra Board Director Don De Graff.

“We at Metra like to say that our stations are the gateways to our system,” De Graff said. “We want them to give riders a great first impression, and we are confident that when this work is done the Flossmoor station will do that.”

“On behalf of the Village Board of Trustees, village staff, and the 9,446 residents of Flossmoor, we are very pleased and delighted that METRA, through funding assistance from the State of Illinois, is reconstructing Flossmoor's train station,” said Mayor Braun. “From the Village of Flossmoor's inception in 1924 through today, train transportation has been paramount to the Village’s success, not only in the early days as our community was growing but continuing through the present day.”

“Our residents enjoy the amenities of being close to Chicago as well as having a vibrant central business district because of train service,” Mayor Braun said. “Metra has contributed greatly to Flossmoor's success story and as you can imagine, a modern train station is very important to the village's continued progress. This is true not only for our residents but also for the success of Flossmoor's business community.  We thank Metra, Cook County, and the State of Illinois for their efforts to undertake and successfully complete this important and necessary infrastructure project.”

The project will replace the existing platform, the concrete foundation as well as the north and south head house walls. The work also includes:

• A new warming house
• New LED platform lighting designed to match the village’s existing street lights.  (Flossmoor is providing funding to cover some of the costs of the new lighting.)
• The replacement of the existing accessible ramp, stair, and trench drain on the northwest side of the tunnel and all of the trench drain inside the tunnel.
• Repairs to the concrete bridge columns on the south side of the station,
• New retaining walls on the southwest side of the station and on the northwest side of Flossmoor Road.
• A new stairway for the northeast side of the depot.

The station will remain open to passenger service throughout the project with passengers diverted to one end of the platform while construction work proceeds on the other. The station serves more than 1,000 riders each weekday on the Metra Electric Line which runs between University Park and Millennium Station in downtown Chicago.

To accommodate passengers during the project’s first stage, workers for Metra contractor, John Burns Construction, have begun creating a temporary platform on the north end of the station. The stairs connecting to the north end of the platform were closed May 1 for two weeks so that portion of the platform can be widened to better accommodate passengers. At this time, the north platform gate house and ticket vending machines were removed.

Once the work to widen the existing north end of the platform is complete, all Flossmoor station customers will be diverted to the north end so construction can begin to completely replace the platform at the south end. Construction on the south end is scheduled to begin May 23 and be completed by Fall 2014. Access to the platform from the south stairs will be closed during construction. The process will be reversed in late September when the new south platform is reopened and work begins to replace the north end. The entire project is expected to be finished in early 2015.

The project is being funded primarily with proceeds from Metra’s share of the state bond program.