Mapped: Explore our interactive CTA ridership map (Chicago)

[marmar]

The CTA publishes informational network maps that most riders are familiar with, but what’s less well-known is that they publish daily average ridership statistics for each bus route and train station as well. So I took an interest in combining the two to visually highlight how ridership is spread throughout the CTA network. Before drawing any conclusions it’s important to note that ridership is strongly correlated with frequency of service, so low ridership does not necessarily mean low demand for transit, but could mean low-quality or infrequent service. Keeping that in mind, take a look at the interactive version of the map (based on weekday ridership from May 2022) and explore your most used routes.

In the map, bus routes are colored black and routes with lower ridership are drawn thinner and more transparent. Train lines are all drawn the same thickness (since we only have station-level boardings and no information on transfers), with stops’ areas scaled to boardings. You can pan, zoom and hover over bus routes and stations to see the available information.

What jumps out to me is how important the bus network is to transit ridership. The 79th Street bus route had about the same daily ridership (12,866) as all the Blue Line stations from LaSalle to Forest Park combined (12,844), and many other routes have comparably high ridership. These numbers are still well below pre-pandemic averages, but speak to the importance of buses not only in supplementing rail but as a transit modality in their own right. Looking at the map, it’s not hard to see that many of these routes lie where rail service is absent or going in the opposite direction of travel, and given the lower cost of bus service in comparison to rail, it’s quite impressive that ridership is as high as it is. Further, most of these routes have few or no bus priority treatments – bus lanes, signal priority or bus boarding bulbs or islands, to name a few – the introduction of which would improve quality of service and bolster ridership. ..............(more)

https://chi.streetsblog.org/2022/12/21/mapped-explore-our-interactive-cta-ridership-map/