advertisement

---

Chicago’s Metra commuter rail agency plans to temporarily stop an engineer training program and decrease its overall engineer ranks, effective Oct. 1, citing an excess of engineers in its system.



The program discontinuance, which affects three employees, is not permanent, says Tom Miller, Metra spokesman.



Five other engineers from the Milwaukee North and West services have been offered jobs in train service in an effort to redeploy Metra’s resources while ridership is down.



"We need more train service employees than engineers now," says Miller.



Engineers choosing the craft transfers would have their pay cut about 20 percent, according to an unnamed source close to the situation.



— Kathi Kube