There are a lot of dense areas with weak rail connectivity we should expand infrastructure to reach these areas in my opinion. We should also focus development around existing stations both should be prioritized.

The city has been adding back infill stations on existing rail lines which seems like the right approach given the size of the system already and current utilization. Ashland BRT will probably happen someday when more industrial users sell out in the West Loop as development marches westward. A bunch more work on the current bus system (more bus lanes, signal priority) would be nice but are also constrained by available funding.

Metra can barely keep their decades old rolling stock/infrastructure operating with their current level of funding and they're not exactly an innovative bunch to begin with.

In all honesty, I see no implicit requirement to extend the L system beyond the shockingly obvious need to connect the Brown to Blue at Jefferson Park. If the Cta had all the money in the world I would have liked to see most of the south side Green Line dive into a trench and extended by subway under 63rd all the way to the IC row or SI Ave. Ok ok, I'd take the Circle Line and Clinton Subway too.

There is some notion that rapid transit's purpose is to serve as many people as possible.

In Chicago this has never been the case.

For the last 60 years, its purpose is to serve as many people as it can afford to.

What the CTA needs is more destination development at the outside ends and middles of all lines (particularly those already heavily used) to balance the reverse commute and more development of all kinds, (destination and origin) on the under-utilized lines.

This will serve to balance existing lines, and until this happens, it is a losing proposition to invest in new imbalanced lines.

The problem for the CTA seems to be that there is a lot of rail infrastructure in places where there is no longer demand (huge swaths of the South Side) and a lack of infrastructure in places that are booming and are overcrowded.

The infrastructure is static and the city is not.

Isn't CTA rail ridership near record highs?

So, I ask yet again: why should we allow development in locations that are not served by transit?

We should probably just maintain what we have and add stations here and there as CTA has been doing. Too many other spending priorities. Is CTA the best system? Of course not.

But it is very good by US standards.

It's been falling the last couple of years.
2017 was down about 7,600,000 rides over 2016. Led mostly by the Red line which is down about 4,500,000 rides over all three segments.

Isn't ridership down mostly on weekends and off-peak hours? Mostly attributable to ride hailing. Will it last? :shrug:

System wide, rail boardings are down 7000 rides on the average Weekday. 650 average Sat (yes 650) and 7850 avg Sun.


Red North -4200 Weekday,-1800 Sat, -1000 Sun
Red Sub -3700 Weekday, -2000 Sat, -1400 Sun
Red South -1650 Weekday, -900 Sat, -700 Sun

Thanks for sharing. Do you know what those numbers as a percentage of total riders for each segment? A link to the source? I'd guess those weekend declines across the three segments are much larger percentage wise.

Yes, ridership is down slightly but still near record highs. I think it's mostly driven by Lyft and Uber rides. I did notice that December rail ridership saw a tiny increase after about a year of declines. I bet lyfr and Uber are played out.

System wide, rail boardings are down 1.3% on the average Weekday, .2% average Sat (yes .2%) and 3.1% avg Sun.


Red North -3.9% Weekday,-2.2% Sat, -1.9% Sun
Red Sub -6.9% Weekday, -6.6% Sat, -6.8 Sun
Red South -4.0% Weekday, -2.9% Sat, -3.2% Sun

Remember there are 5 weekdays.

https://www.transitchicago.com/ridership/

Wow, so weekday ridership is down over weekend ridership? Seems counterintuitive. I wonder what's driving that. I don't know of many people who regularly rely on Uber or Lyft to get to work.

Demographics, probably.
There was a loss of 13k 15-24 yos 2015-16. No reason to assume that isn't continuing through 2017.

Were those losses scattered across the city or concentrated on the south and west sides? It'd make sense to me that there'd be declines on the south branch of the red line, but I'm not making sense of the declines on the north branch. The only thing I can think of is that people are bypassing the red line because of congestion. I'm sure there are more forces at work here than meet the eye.

Don't know, I only drill the data that far for my own neighborhood.

It seems like all the millenials in my office take Ubers to work. Or Divvy

A lot of people in my office use ride sharing, too. If you're in a hurry or stressed, the last thing you want to do is wait for a bus or walk to the train.