interactive-cta-buses

Chicago Bus Ridership Trends 2001 to 2024

By: Ruben Gallardo

Description

In May 2024, the local Chicago news reported that the CTA along with New York City’s MTA lagged behind other major cities in recovering to pre-pandemic ridership levels. Transit activists and city council blame Carter Dorval, the president of the CTA, for failing to take the necessary measures to speed up the recovery according to reporting by Block Club Chicago. The CTA’s own performance dashboard tracks ridership levels and other metrics from January 2022 to September 2024. This dashboard shows improvements in performance by the CTA in the past two years, but it doesn’t go back far enough so users can compared current performance to pre-pandemic years.

The goal of this project is to create an interactive visualization of CTA bus ridership data that goes beyond the dates currently available in the CTA’s performance dashboard. I hope this map reaches decision makers in Chicago’s City Council and those at the CTA to help inform future improvements to the bus system.

Final Project Screenshot

Data Sources

• CTA - Ridership - Bus Routes - Daily Totals by Route
• CTA Bus Routes

Licensed under a Limited, Non-Exclusive Developer License Agreement. Use of this data does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by the Chicago Transit Authority. For more details visit Developer License Agreement & Terms of Use on CTA website.