Chicago neighbourhood question

March 24, 2006 12:02 PM

Posted on behalf of colleen711, who joined too recently to be able to post this herself: My roomate and I are recent college graduates, she's working in libertyville and I'm working in deer park. We want to live in the city, but keep our commute to less than or equal to one hour.

We've heard lincoln park, wrigleyville and lakeview (lakewood?) are really great places to live, but I can't figure out if there are metra stations in these areas, how long the metra takes, etc. If you could help me out or recommend other neighborhoods I would sincerely appreciate any help.
We have an appointment with an apt finding service next week. Unfortunately neither of us know anything about Chicago.

posted by Johnny Assay to home & garden (11 comments total)

For the record, my own e-mail response (paraphrased) was to point her towards the Metra and RTA Trip Planner websites to figure out how long the commute might take. My knowledge of North Side neighbourhoods is somewhat lacking, though, so any other neighbourhood recommendations would be appreciated, I'm sure.
posted by Johnny Assay at 12:06 PM on March 24, 2006

An acquaintance of mine lived downtown in Printer's Row, had low rent, a lot of space, and very good access to public transportation. Another acquaintance lived in Lincoln Park. He had a fashionable neighborhood, and none of those other things.
posted by Kwantsar at 12:08 PM on March 24, 2006

This map of Chicago neighborhoods and street names might help you, if you can cross-reference it with Metra's list of stations.

Remember that neighborhood "boundaries" here can be loosely-defined, often based on what a realtor or apartment management thinks you want to hear.

Other helpful links:

You will also be interested in the CTA.

The Apartment People have a neighborhood map on their site.

The Chicago Crime map is a database of crime and crime rates based on many different criteria, including zip code and neighborhood.

Chicago Parking Map
posted by SuperSquirrel at 12:33 PM on March 24, 2006

Lincoln Square/Ravenswood. If you live on the east side of the neighborhood you're close to the Metra stop. Gentrifying, but afaik the rents are still cheap.
posted by sugarfish at 12:38 PM on March 24, 2006

neither wrigleyville nor lincoln park have metra stations.

the libertyville metra stop, on the milwaukee-district north line, doesn't really go through neighborhoods i'd recommend living in the city. or at least, the ones that are nice are generally suburban-like neighborhoods in the city. (i.e. forest glen.)

even further complicating a metra commute is that deer park is a northwest suburb, while libertyville is more of a north suburb. i'm not aware of a direct metra route to deer park -- you might need to take the union pacific northwest line to barrington.

if you really want ride metra to work, i would then recommend living downtown or on the near west side (home of a thousand lofts). those would be pretty close to ogilvie station (where the union pacific trains depart) and union station (ironically, not where the union pacific trains leave -- the milwaukee district and burlington santa-fe lines do).
posted by moz at 12:51 PM on March 24, 2006

No offense, but I think that people who do the reverse commute are nuts.

If you are planning on taking the Metra, how do you get from your destination Metra station to your place of employment and back? Pace? I have heard that this is not very easy or effective.

If you are planning on driving, don't imagine that traffic moves any faster just because you are going out of the city in the morning and into the city in the afternoon. And, good luck with parking in the city. It's a pain.

Also, living in the city means you have a tiny, expensive, often crappy apartment. Living in the suburbs, you can get an apartment that is decently sized and affordable. If you can afford a nice apartment in the city, you can afford a really nice apartment (or buy a condo) in the 'burbs.

Just live in the 'burbs, save your money, save your sanity, and spend your weekends in the city.
posted by MrZero at 1:19 PM on March 24, 2006

If you end up living in the city, it's probably a good idea to get a short-term lease, in case the commute is unbearable.
posted by adrian_h at 1:37 PM on March 24, 2006

I don't have time for a full answer here, but I figured I'd point you to a question I asked similar to this last summer. It was my first post ... sniff.

Anyway, if you want to hear the details of what I ended up doing, shoot me an email. I did ultimately reverse commute from Wicker Park to Schaumburg each day, at about 1-1.5h each way. I don't regret it, but my circumstances were also different from you.

(Also, are either/both of you working at Motorola? I know they have facilities in both of those cities.)
posted by heresiarch at 3:12 PM on March 24, 2006

I don't think there's anywhere in the city that you could drive to/from those suburbs during rush hour without it being a huge pain in the ass. One of my friends was commuting between the northernmost tip of the city and Lake Forest every day and hated it.

And yeah, it looks like you would be on two different Metra lines, so the West Loop might be the way to go if you are both determined to take the train. I don't know what it costs to live there though. My guess would be not cheap.

As for neighborhoods, Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville are very frat-boy oriented, and Lakeview is gay friendly with a lot of "punk" trust fund kids. These are the neighborhoods where you get the tiny apartment for lots o rent.

If you don't mind being a little off the beaten path (but still with plenty of places to go), you can get way more for your money. Ravenswood, Andersonville, and Lincoln Square are good for this. If you're a hipster, I recommend Logan Square, Ukranian village, or Humbolt Park (all slightly crappy but gentrifying). Wicker Park and Bucktown are arty and fun, but also pricey.

Anyway, Good luck. Chicago is super fun. I hope you find something that works out.
posted by 912 Greens at 3:27 PM on March 24, 2006

I faced the same problem when I moved up here. Work is in Libertyville (at Motorola, actually), but I really want to live in the city. I ended up just getting a place in Buffalo Grove, which is a location I'm not too thrilled with, but it's a happy median between daily commute (half hour in the car), and access to the city (half hour when there's no traffic).

Of course, when I'm usually trying to get *into* the city is during rush hour. I usually budget about an hour and a half to get to Lakeview (where a friend of mine lives) on Friday evenings. I've looked into taking the Metra and busses, but it still comes out to about an hour-twenty.

Given that L'ville is farther north, you're probably looking at worse times, assuming you can even find a nearby Metra line that does the reverse commute. B'Grove's line does not, but I'm only a few miles from the Lake Cook station, which does.

As for me, I'm hoping to work here for a year or so, and then see if people are really right about Motorola's very flexible alternative work schedules -- get a place in the city, work remote most of the time, and come in once a week or so would be ideal for me.
posted by jammer at 3:39 PM on March 24, 2006

I posted a while back when I was looking for a condo, and today signed a contract on a place in Logan Square!


What you need to do is this:
1) Find out how you will get from the suburban metra station to work - my company has a shuttle bus that picks us up from the Glenview Metra. Obviously, you'll need to check the metra rail website and check the schedules page for the line you need.

2) check out the RTA Trip Planner that was linked above, and plug in the potential address of your new home (find addresses in neighborhoods you want to live in) and then "Cityname Metra" for the destination. Be sure to choose a weekday, and an early AM start time, because it takes schedules into account and will give totally different results if you want to leave at 8:30pm!

The metra site also has info on what stations have parking available, with phone numbers to contact etc.

Because of the fact that you and your wife will be on two different metra lines, you're probably going to be stuck either:

a) Living in the west loop area, which ain't cheap
b) One of you will be driving or taking a long-ish bus ride to the nearest metra, or taking a couple/few buses all the way to work.
c) Taking an L train into the loop, and going back outbound from one of the main stations downtown (Union Station or Ogilvie)


If you need any help/info, please feel free to drop me a line. I've just finished my condo hunt and am now working on closing stuff, so I've done this commute thing, etc to death....
posted by twiggy at 5:04 PM on March 24, 2006