Metra's Unbuilt STAR Line

The Metra STAR ( Suburban Transit Access Route ) was a proposed, but unbuilt railroad project, which would have been the first Metra line to exclusively serve the suburbs of Chicago, and connect to multiple Metra lines. Here's a rendering of Diesel Multiple Units that were proposed to run on the STAR. Metra has since taken this site offline, but the Wayback Machine still has the page. This would have been key to connecting the Metra system outside of Downtown, as each individual line that makes up Metra runs from the suburbs in one direction into the city, i.e. a hub and spoke system . Thus, there are very few connections between individual Metra lines outside of Downtown Chicago. Here's an unofficial Metra Map showing how disconnected the system is. ( Wikipedia Commons ) That wouldn't necessarily be a problem if there was adequate bus transportation between individual lines, but despite being individual parts of the Regional Transportation Authority , Metra, Pace and t