Thanks for putting together that data, Emathias.
I'm quite impressed by the last figures. CTA L ridership has steadily risen over the past 3 decades, but simply exploded from 2000-2012 despite the city's population loss. One could partly attribute the gains from 1978-2000 to the opening of the Orange Line, but that doesn't explain the massive increases from 2000-2012.
In addition, besides the central area, very little of the city saw much of an increase in density despite the ridiculous condo and rental boom that we saw (and are still seeing) due to the drop in household sizes, etc which has been discussed at length before.
Not only that, but this has occurred despite increased gentrification and car ownership throughout the city.
So what gives? Is this growth all occurring at the expense of bus ridership, or is there some other process (paradigm shift, etc) at work?
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