Steam era The line was built by the Illinois Central Railroad, one of the first commuter services outside the major metropolitan areas of the northeastern United States. It opened on July 21, 1856 between the IC's then-downtown station,
Great Central Station, (now Millennium Station) and
Hyde Park. Part of the line was elevated for the
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in
Jackson Park. The line predates the
1871 Great Chicago Fire, and ran on a
trestle just offshore in
Lake Michigan. After the fire, remains of buildings destroyed by the fire were dumped into the lake, creating
landfill that forms the foundation of
Grant Park, which the Metra Electric District runs through. Two branches were added: from Brookdale southeast to
South Chicago in the early 1880s, and from Kensington southwest to
Blue Island in the early 1890s, both later electrified along with the main line. When the IC moved its intercity operations to
Central Station in 1893, it built Randolph Street Terminal on the former site of Great Central to handle its growing commuter operations.
Electric IC era in 1968 By the early 20th century the IC operated up to 300 steam-hauled trains each day. In 1919, the IC and the
Chicago city government collaborated on a
grade separation project from the far south suburb of
Homewood into the city. They also dug a trench from the near south side into the city proper, eliminating all grade crossings on the main line except one just south of the
Richton Park station. The
University Park extension required the line to cross a very long private driveway. The South Chicago branch runs at grade, crossing many city streets. The
grade crossing elimination project was followed by electrification. The IC
electrified the commuter tracks in 1926, from downtown to
Matteson. In addition to the removal of all grade crossings, the tracks were separated from, and moved to the west side of, the two freight and
inter-city tracks. At
McCormick Place just south of downtown Chicago, the two non-electrified tracks to Central Station crossed over the new electric alignment. The electric tracks continued north to Randolph Street Terminal. Service was extended southward from Matteson to
Richton Park, a new station at the south end of the coach storage yard, in 1946. The main line had six tracks between
Roosevelt Road (Central Station) and 53rd Street (reduced to four in 1962), four to 111th Street, then two. The South Chicago branch is double tracked, and the Blue Island branch has a single track with a passing siding at
West Pullman. The "IC Electric" was once Chicago's busiest suburban railroad, and carried a great deal of traffic within the city as well as to suburban communities. The three lines carried 26 million passengers in 1927, the first full year of electrified operation. Ridership rose to 35 million in 1929, and reached an all-time peak of 47 million in 1946, when 128,000 passengers boarded each day. Between 1935 and 1949, the South Chicago branch was served by trains every 10 minutes all-day. Faced with declining ridership as urban transportation patterns changed, the Illinois Central attempted to modernize the IC Electric system from 1966, implementing an automatic ticketing scheme called Automated Revenue Collection System (ARCS), which comprised a system of
faregates and magnetic cards scanned by passengers when entering and exiting stations. This was intended to enable the reduction of train crews from three—engineer, conductor, and ticket collector—to just two, eliminating the position of the ticket collector. However, labour dispute arbitration and a 1969 strike forestalled these plans. By 1960, ridership on the IC Electric had fallen to less than 54,000 daily, the line was a loss-maker most years, and ridership was overwhelmingly concentrated in commuting peak hours. The system's rolling stock still dated to the original 1920s electrification but funds were not available for their replacement. The system's position degraded severely from 1969, when the
Dan Ryan branch of the Chicago "L" opened. That line, subsidised and publicly operated, in contrast to the unsubsidised IC Electric, operated with cost-effective one-person crews, and attracted customers with lower fares, better off-peak service, and integration with the city bus network. In response to declining ridership, the Illinois Central began to raise fares, starting from a price very similar to that of the "L" but rising to 1973 to a price 40% greater. In 1972 the IC Electric, with assistance of public funding from the Chicago South Suburban Mass Transit District, procured new rolling stock in the
Highliner railcars. Although highly modern compared to the railway's existing fleet, they had fewer doors than the old coaches, and also featured the interior layout of the
gallery cars designed to facilitate fare collection despite the use of automated faregates, a design optimized for long-haul suburban service but ill-suited to the line's former role as urban rapid transit. This mirrored progressive declines in service; through 1949, the South Chicago Branch had 10-minute headways, but this service had fallen to 30-minute frequency patterns by 1974. Frequency, however, increased on the mainline and the Blue Island Branch from every 40 minutes to every 30 minutes, reflecting a shift from urban to suburban service. Two inter-city freight tracks retained by the ICG are now part of the
Canadian National Railway, used by
Amtrak's
City of New Orleans,
Illini and
Saluki trains. From 1988 onward, Randolph Street Terminal was under near-perpetual construction. The construction of Millennium Park moved the station completely underground, and in 2005 it was renamed Millennium Station. The Metra Electric is the only line on the Metra system in which all stations (except 18th and 47th Streets, both
flag stops) have ticket vending machines. The machines originally sold
magnetically encoded tickets which unlocked the turnstiles. People with paper tickets or weekend passes, on reduced fares or who had trouble with the vending machines had to use a blue or orange pal phone to contact an operator who would unlock the turnstiles. Complaints from passengers who missed their trains caused Metra to remove the turnstiles in November 2003. The main line and South Chicago branch run daily, but the Blue Island Branch does not operate on Sundays or holidays. A unique feature of the Metra Electric schedule is the similarity of the weekday and Saturday timetables. Many express trains run throughout the day in both directions. On other Metra lines, express service operates exclusively during the morning and afternoon rush hours. It is the only Metra line where all trackage is used exclusively for commuter service. Freight trains and Amtrak trains run on a pair of adjacent tracks owned by the Canadian National Railroad. Off-peak and Saturday service is frequent, while Sunday service operates hourly north of
63rd Street and every 2 hours south of 63rd. On January 4, 2021, fares on the Metra Electric line, along with the
Rock Island line, were cut in half for all passengers. Since July 2024, a fourth track is being constructed from Museum Campus to Millennium stations to accommodate increased services on the South Shore Line. ==Potential expansion or service alterations==