Reverse Commuting in Lake County

Increasingly, millennials living in downtown Chicago are reverse commuting for better job opportunities outside of the urban core. One of the largest destinations for reverse commuters is Lake County, Illinois.

Lake County provides a unique opportunity for the millennial workforce. Lake County is situated on the northern section of the Chicago metro area. The Lake County workforce is dominated by large tech and biomedical corporations along with a growing startup community. Despite Lake County’s makeup of large pharmaceutical, tech, and startups businesses looking for educated millennial workers, until recently the regions transit system has failed to provide access for reverse commuters.

For decades the government and businesses community adapted to a residential-focused suburbian model with little concern for reverse commuters. However, Chicagoland is long beyond the model where suburbia is mostly a residential expanse. According to the Illinois Department of Labor Security, Suburban Cook County employs 1.1 million jobs while the collar counties employ another 1.3 million. As a result, with 2.4 million jobs in suburban Chicagoland, the transit system is behind the times.

The regions transit system was dedicated solely to efficiently facilitating the traditional commute. Metra’s schedules, as a result, have been far from ideal for reverse commuters. Consequently, for educated young workers living in the city, there were no outbound express trains to suburban office hubs in south and central Lake County.

However, the Lake County Government and the business community are reversing this trend. Young professionals commuting to the Lake County suburban office market will now have express trains for the morning commute running on the Milwaukee District North Line. “This project makes it even easier to live in Chicago and work in Lake County,” according to Lake County Partners President and CEO Kevin Considine. Moreover, Lake County’s Government sees the new reverse commuting lines as a start to possible additional reverse commuting express lines. Whether or not additional commuting options come to fruition in the next few months is unclear, but what is certain is Lake County will continue to explore better public transit options for reverse commuters.