Mapped: Explore our interactive CTA ridership map (Chicago)
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/
= new reply since forum marked as read
because of a lack of bus drivers. I hear we're not alone.
I've lost bus service (well, I can still walk 1.5 miles (30 minutes) to catch a bus that runs every 2 hours).
The rest of the service has become unreliable as we have numerous same-day cancellations.
These measures are forcing people who managed without a car to have to get one.
Nationally, the labor force participation rate has been dwindling from a high point of about 67.3% in 2000 to 62.2% now. (It was 62.2% in January, so there hasn't been any progress in that all year).
Meanwhile the population of elderly (such as me) needing more and more service (me not yet but soon) grows.
Labor force participation rate: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
Labor force in thousands: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11000000
In Minnesota, there are 90,000 fewer workers than before the pandemic.
The labor force = employed + officially unemployed as per the BLS's monthly Household Survey
The officially unemployed are jobless people who have looked for work in the past 4 weeks (must be more than just looking at job listings). BTW, the officially unemployed is not a count of people claiming unemployment insurance, it has nothing to do with that (a common myth unfortunately).
How the Government Measures Unemployment http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
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I don't see the situation getting any better. Oh, temporarily, if we have a recession, but not in the long run. Economists have been warning about this for at least 2 decades. Now it is starting to bite. Hard. Replacing the freely given labor of people driving their own cars with train and bus drivers won't be possible, unless we open the immigration spigot wider than its ever been.