Palos Heights Metra passengers may soon have an easier way to reach the station by foot or by bicycle.
The Palos Heights City Council on Sept. 1 unanimously approved an intergovernmental agreement with the village of Worth to allow a bike path Worth is already constructing to extend into the Palos Heights Metra station property.
Worth will pay all the construction and maintenance costs for the bike path and just needed permission from Palos Heights to extend the construction onto their property.
“They were already building the path along the canal. This is just taking it an extra block or two to reach the train station,” said Palos Heights Mayor Robert Straz. “It’s beneficial because we’ve been trying to get more people to use the Metra station ever since the pandemic. This gives people another route to get there.”
While Straz said he believed the project wouldn’t be completed until next year, Worth Mayor Mary Werner said the project should be finished by the end of 2026.
“We’re already working on it,” she told the Regional. “Worth was already taking our bike path along the canal west from Harlem towards Palos, and Palos has a path that runs east towards Worth. While we were planning, Metra said they wanted to know who would be responsible for the path going under the viaduct and their tracks, so Worth took responsibility for it.”
Werner said Worth will be responsible for maintaining the path on Metra’s property once the project is completed, which she estimated would be by November.
The extension under the tracks which required Palos Heights’ intergovernmental agreement accounts for “a few hundred feet” of the overall project.
