Watch your step while exiting at Downers Grove

After a chill night drive to drop off my brother at soccer practice, I had some spare time in the heart of Downers Grove, a bustling suburb of Chicago. With plenty of exciting things to do, such as… um… after googling “fun things to do in Downers Grove”, the first result it gave me was to go to the Brookfield Zoo, which is about 10 miles away from Downers Grove proper. Oh well! Reviewing transit is more than fun enough for me! Plus, I got to practice my night photography skills.

My slander aside, downtown Downers Grove is a lovely place to shop, dine, and take in the scenery of a mid-sized Chicago suburb. With a population of a bit over 50,000, Downers Grove is no small player in the Chicagoland area. Luckily for it, Downers Grove is served by Metra’s most frequent and most popular service, the BNSF. Alongside that, Downers Grove has not one, not two, but three different BNSF stations located within its borders. We will be looking at busiest and most central of the 3 stations, that being Downers Grove Main St, sometimes shortened to either “Downers Grove” or “Main Street”.

Statistics & Connections

As mentioned before, Downers Grove Main St is served by Metra’s BNSF service, which in turn is run by BNSF. Located 21.1 miles from Chicago Union Station, Downers Grove is in Metra fare zone 4. Calling Main St. the busiest of the 3 Downers Grove stations is no understatement either, with 2,492 weekday boardings per the 2018 Metra report. This makes it the 6th most used station on the entire Metra system, excluding the downtown termini.

Downers Grove is served by 66 trains in each direction on weekdays, 33 per direction, as of June 2026. It is also served by all 40 trains on weekends, 20 per direction. The greatest aspect of the BNSF service, outside of its frequency, has to be the number of express trains it provides to the outreaches of its service. While a local trip stopping at every stop from Main St to Union Station will take a bit less than an hour, an express trip direct to Chicago will cut that time in half to about 30 minutes. Downers Grove is the last station served by the majority of BNSF express trains, which make all previous stops from Aurora to Main St. Not many other stations have the luxury of offering a no stop ride direct to Chicago and back, and most definitely not as frequently as every 15 minutes during peak times.

Lastly, Downers Grove is served by a single Pace bus service, that being the 834 Joliet-Downers Grove bus, connecting the station to Woodridge, Bolingbrook, Romeoville, Lockport, and Joliet to the south, as well as the Yorktown mall in Lombard to the north. This bus terminates at the Joliet Transit Center, which provides a direct connection to the Heritage Corridor and Rock Island Metra services. Much of the towns in the middle of the route, specifically Bolingbrook and Woodridge, have very few transit options and have a wide variety of shopping and business districts which are inaccessible to the average pedestrian. A service like the 834 helps to provide options for those who can’t afford or choose not to use a car to have access to busy shopping districts such as Yorktown mall or the Promenade Bolingbrook. Downers Grove may not have a lot of bus services, but the one it does have is very useful. The one downside of this bus route is its frequency, with a peak frequency of every 40 minutes.

Amenities

Much like the majority of suburban Metra stations, Downers Grove has a traditional stationhouse on the inbound side of the station. I like the look of this stationhouse in particular; the architecture is very intriguing and unique compared to other stations along the BNSF and around Chicagoland. As for its interior, I didn’t have the chance to go inside it the day I originally went, however, I cheated a bit and returned another day to see what it was like. Much like La Grange Road, it has a bakery on the inside that may or may not be operational. It also has a cute bookshelf with books to take with you on your train ride.

Continuing on, the stationhouse has your standard restrooms and plenty of seating for travelers waiting for their train in the morning. As for the rest of the platform, plenty of benches, ticket machines, and bike parking is available. There’s covered seating on the inbound side of the station, but none on the outbound platform. As a matter a fact, the outbound platform seemed to get the short end of the stick in terms of amenities, with it being essentially a baren slab of concrete with little to no seating. There is however bike parking, and a little news stand to grab a free newspaper on your way home.

Surroundings

Downers Grove is very bike friendly, with bike paths around the station and on Main St. up to the Downers Grove North high school. Outside of the downtown there are plenty of residential streets to bike to, but the real attraction once again is the downtown. I wish there were more mixed-use development in American suburbs as a whole, but that’s a rant for another day. I shouldn’t really be complaining in this part of the review, Downers Grove is very well placed with so much to do. I should probably also mention the parking around the station, which is very limited with only street parking. This station isn’t meant to be driven to, and I can commend it for that.

Conclusion

As you may conclude, I quite like this station. While I’m not the biggest fan of old money Downers Grove in general, their high schools were rivals with mine, I must admit that it’s a very nice place to live with great public transit options. With frequent service to any suburb on the BNSF, as well as plenty of trains directly to Union Station in the morning, Downer’s Grove is definitely deserving of the 6th most used station on the Metra system. I’m really struggling to think of negative things to say about this station, I suppose I could mention the reliability of the BNSF line not being on the level of, say, the Tokyo metro, but it’s still really decent for American commuter rail. With that being said, I think this station is worthy of an incredibly respectable

9.5/10

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