Parking Questions (Chicago, Geneva, Union: to rent, crime, how much)

[cloud2010]

Hi There!, I am traveling to Chicago for a week vacation. I will be driving there, and staying at a hotel in the loop. I need a place to park my car for the whole week, and I probably don't need it during the week (just some sight seeing, probably take the transit). Any good ideas where I should park? Roughly how much??

Thanks!

P.S. Never been to Chicago, any good suggestions for places/restaurants to try??

[Drover]

If you're not going to need your car while you're here, why not bus/fly/train it in? Amtrak in particular from nearby surroundings is quite cheap.

If these are not practical options, I'd just dump it off on a non-permit residential side street near an L station for the week. Easier said than done but I can PM you some location options if you're game.

As for locations/restaurants to try.... there are literally several thousand options for feeding yourself here, from 4 bucks a person to 400 bucks a person per meal. You'll need to give us some idea of what kind of dining experiences you're after.

[cloud2010]

Originally Posted by Drover

If you're not going to need your car while you're here, why not bus/fly/train it in? Amtrak in particular from nearby surroundings is quite cheap.

If these are not practical options, I'd just dump it off on a non-permit residential side street near an L station for the week. Easier said than done but I can PM you some location options if you're game.

As for locations/restaurants to try.... there are literally several thousand options for feeding yourself here, from 4 bucks a person to 400 bucks a person per meal. You'll need to give us some idea of what kind of dining experiences you're after.

I am coming from a small-ish college town in Canada, flying and train is not an option . Could you PM me the locations? is it safe?? I really don't want to get the car towled

[chet everett]

I would really question the sanity of anyone suggesting that a visitor from a foreign nation (or even a neighboring state...) essentially abandon their car for a week in Chicago or any other place.

The handful of Chicago neighborhoods that are not covered with restrictive parking regulations tend to be both distant from any sort of reliable transit options and in parts of the city that are so far off the beaten path that, while even in "safe" from a crime statistics standpoint, are so uncommon for visitors that the various things that could "go wrong" far outweigh any savings...

Park your vehicle in a garage on the edge of the Loop. One of the the largest and least hassle prone ones is across from Union Station: Chicago Union Station :: Parking If you could not budget $20 maybe you should have planned on visiting a cheaper area...

[oakparkdude]

There are some suburban train stations that allow overnight parking for cheap. If you can find one on your route to Chicago you can drop your car off then hop on the train into the city. Which direction will you be coming from? If from the west, I have personal knowledge of the Geneva, IL Metra station which has safe overnight parking for $1.25/day. From Geneva, its about 1 hr by train into the Loop.

[chet everett]

How long ago did you try that trick?

Parking In Geneva Illinois

"no vehicle can be parked for more than 24 consecutive hours on ANY street or in ANY city owned parking lot. Overnight parking is also prohibited in the parking garage"

Originally Posted by oakparkdude

There are some suburban train stations that allow overnight parking for cheap. If you can find one on your route to Chicago you can drop your car off then hop on the train into the city. Which direction will you be coming from? If from the west, I have personal knowledge of the Geneva, IL Metra station which has safe overnight parking for $1.25/day. From Geneva, its about 1 hr by train into the Loop.

[gomexico]

One of the CTA (public transit agency) Park & Ride lots, Cumberland Ave. or Howard St. possibly: Deprecated Browser Error

[oakparkdude]

Originally Posted by chet everett

How long ago did you try that trick?

Parking In Geneva Illinois

"no vehicle can be parked for more than 24 consecutive hours on ANY street or in ANY city owned parking lot. Overnight parking is also prohibited in the parking garage"

While it is true that overnight parking has never been allowed in the garage, the route 31 parking lot has always and still allowed multiple-day cash pay parking (although now its $1.75 instead of $1.25/day).

BTW, since my car PERMANENTLY lives in Geneva, and I drive it only to commute to work M-F, every single weekend it stays in the lot for consecutive days without being moved.

I just called the city of Geneva police department to confirm that the website was poorly worded, their policy hasn't changed, and what I have been doing for 4 years remains legal.

Sorry Chet, you may be really knowledgeable about Chicagoland, but you don't know the Geneva Metra station parking regulations as well as I do.

PS: To the OP, obviously every town will have different parking regulations so if you choose to remotely park your car at a Metra station, you're best off figuring out which one is closest to your travel route, then call that particular town and ask specific questions about legality of multiple-day overnight parking.

[chet everett]

If you are using the car to get to your office from the Metra station it would not be parked in the same spot for more than 24 hours. The visitor would have to trek out to Geneva daily, move the car and come back. Not practical.

[emathias]

I have a parking space I don't use that I sometimes rent out for $10/day. I live in River North about a 10 minute walk from Michigan Ave (I won't post my address here, but check 700 N Wells St on Google maps and I'm within a block of there). I'd be willing to rent it to you for a week for $50 total.

If you're interested, PM me. The only real catch is that it's not a huge space, so if you have a huge car it wouldn't work very well. But depending on where downtown your hotel is, it could save you a lot of hassle vs. remote parking, while still being cheaper than most overnight options downtown. The Felix Hotel, for example, is 1 block from me and they charge $40/night for parking.