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Good evening or morning. Just sharing some information on train consists during early AM, middays, evenings, overnights and weekends. Looks like CTA is returning to the pre-Covid 4 cars consists again on the Blue 🔵, Brown 🟤, Green 🟢, Orange 🟠, Purple 🟣 and Red 🔴 lines.

Nora is doing a fantastic job as president they should keep her

Well to paraphrase in the meantime.... outside of the Orange changes, the article mentions a set of plans the president came to Springfield with including expansion of the frequent bus network and a plan to make rail lines 8 min headways. Then there's also some stuff we already found in other topics like the Cook County sheriff task force, lower fare ox recovery etc.

This leaves the following buses which have yet to enter service of any kind (not counting the buses which have seen limited service but are held for training purposes): 8880 8886 8900 8919 8931 8936 8938 8941 8949

From a brief glance, it isn't obvious how these alignments are much different than the former 747 (Forest Park-Yorktown [Wheaton], later merged into 301) and 757 ([Harlem]-Forest Park-[Elk Grove]-Schaunburg). Those raise the following concerns: There would have to be extensive highway improvements to overcome massive congestion, something along the lines of I-90, with flex lanes and in-line stations. 747 was merged into 301 for this reason, and while the Hillside Strangler was fixed, that just moved the congestion to 25th Ave. and east. IDOT has some proposals to add a toll express lane to I-290, but that doesn't seem to be progressing. The Central Tri-State project is doing something for the 294-290-88 interchange, but while that may help reinstating 895, it doesn't seem to do much for this, except for possible improvements to 290 in the Elmhurst area. Ridership would have to be rebuilt after 757 was cut during Covid. The station placement is relevant for something like Loyola Medicine. If at the hospital, there's a deviation, while if in-line or on the congested frontage roads, there would have to be a transfer to something like 331. If you asked me (and they didn't) I would extend the Blue Line to Mannheim, but IDOT has been screwing around too long studying that.

Orange line is gonna be the last to get the 7000s. Once Blue is equipped then they start hitting the brown line who in turn will send its 3200s to Midway to start scrapping the 2600s there. Then finally Orange gets them so were probably like 2-3 years away before we see any new cars on the Orange

I wasn't really surprised that they actually resolved the funding issue. You guys know I've been consistently on record in my belief that they would move to get something done. But what I am surprised by is that they got it done this month. When the news dropped that the overall RTA deficit coming from CTA, Metra and Pace's budgets dropped from $770 million to less $230 million for fiscal 2026, I was virtually certain that it wouldn't be until the regular session in the spring that we got the transit funding crisis behind us. But I am glad to see we got the one big part of it that suburban residents and we city residents were in overall agreement on, the abolishing of RTA and the official establishment of NITA in its place. Hopefully streamlining the responsibility of setting fares and addressing future capital needs among the other three boards brings positive budget impacts as hoped going forward.

Update: I changed this post after finding SB2111 and the following in the Tribune: "As a counterbalance to pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for road work, the bill also included a sharp, 45-cent-per-toll increase on the Illinois Tollway, which one GOP lawmaker said amounted to a 60% increase. The new tollway fares could generate as much as $1 billion annually for roadwork on the tollways that serve about a dozen counties, supporters said." This implies that I-Pass on passenger cars would be irrelevant to the fixed surcharge. Apparently it is it is 45 cents at the usual 0.95/1.90 toll on the Tr-State morth of O'Hare, and also $1.40/$2.80 at the Waukegan Toll Plaza, and the frequent .20/.40 toll on Ill. 390. It appears that tolls became more graduated with open-road tolling. The toll schedule is here, which also reveals that commercial vehicles don't get an I-Pass discount. The fixed increase is irrelevant, as the bill provides and the Trib says: "In addition to the 45-cent-per-toll hike for passenger vehicles on Illinois State Toll Highway Authority roads, the legislation called for increasing tolls for commercial vehicles by 30%. Tolls could continue to increase in subsequent years through inflation-based increases..."

Uihlein only moved his company to Kenosha County. He & his equally extreme right wing wife still prefer to live in a huge Lake Forest estate. If Illinois is so bad, why not move their home to Wisconsin? I believe they are descendants of the Schlitz brewing family, so maybe they don't want to live in the same state as the rest of the family.

7249/50 are the highest numbered cars i have seen and rode on so far. I have no idea what is in Skokie Shops or the CRRC facility.

It isn't MY burden to say whether NP does or doesn't -need 140 (apparently now 141) artics. Other than being lazy and letting @Sam92 do your work for you, you DID NOT provide any enpirical evidence for your assertions about how many NP has, nor your assertion that 103 is short because of maintenance. Do you work at NP or 103? Are you a dispatcher? And why, when asked about the situation systemwide, do you robotically repeat "NP does need 140 artics lol"? Did you let ChatGPT take over your posts? Or do all the LOLs show that you have your head up your touches? Intead you rely on facile lieralism, LOL, and now accusing someone of emotionalism to try to avoid giving direct answers. I'm sure it is because you don't have any. Stay away from the Internet, if all you can do is repeat nonsense.

they did ship out 4014-4032 to NP a few months ago and then kedzie sent some random ones down to 103rd for some reason, maybe 103rd is tryna die down on artics due to the fact they are only being used on the 6/14/26 and certain trips on the 192 as for North Park……140 is diabolical but at the same time would make sense because you got the 22/135/136/146/147/148/151 and 152 school trips that rely on artics and now for the season you got bears games as well so you need extras on the 146 for that, and this weekend for that Loop “L” service shutdown they got a lot of artics OOS being used for shuttles while also using the ones they have available to put into live service…..so NP having more would make more sense then sending more to a garage that can’t seem to handle or maintain them, every artic 103rd gets goes OOS for a while…..comes back….boom OOS again.

Probably becuase the bus has sat dormant for so long and plus it's on the 34. 😅😅😅😅

Happy Birthday (to me), indeed... /If i could spend my birthday down there, I probably wouldn't.

Well although CTA stopped vocally talking about 2 for 3 replacements with new artic's and 148 didn't reduce its headways with its artics, the headways on 79th were in fact reduced* but added running time probably meant that they ended up needing the same amount buses in which case C and 77 were 5 buses short to meet the spare ratio**. You can't pick one of those 2 garages because even though you'd have enough to and they have other artic worthy routes, you wouldn't be able to equip those other routes after 79 or 66 because they other artic routes require more than the 25 artics that would have been left (and you can't mix fleets) so there would have been 4 garages with surplus. *The pick before 79 became all artic had a block with 7-10 min headways. That same time period went to 10-13 min with artics. **They only gave C and 77th 40 artics a piece, the fact that cutting the interval back didn't work means that they should have had 45 a piece if they needed to keep headways the same.

4014 has returned to service after being out for 1 year, 6 months, and 14 days, bus has moved to North Park from 103rd.

I personally only saw 3 buses so far with new seats in them and those buses are 8015, 8060, and 8071.

3113-3114 & 2715-2716 is the consist. Looks like it's from the Blue Line.

Again, I don't know how this devolved in the wrong topic, but since CTA doesn't knpw (as typified by the pullback of the 9000s proposal), you all certainly don't know. For that matter, nobody has seen anything higher than 7250, and that was 2 MONTHS AGO.

The 7000s are definitely not going to orange line. At some point the 3200s will go back as a few already went back to the brown.

cta famously dislikes an operationally mixed fleet

8949 has entered service outta 103rd currently on the 29 State

Paywall-- An easier way around it is ro search on the Google News tab for something like CTA Orange Line 24 hour. The link Google uses gets you in. No need to use some ladder. Messing with N62--CTA is not going to do because all service boards said they were not cutting service. Short-turning Orange Line--Not happening because the aericle said the putpose was to foster economic development at Midway, which doesn't happen if CTA forces additional night-time transfers. I don't thpnk there's much additional cosr, as Loop stattions have to stay open until 02:00 for the Brown Line.

Also 12ft ladder or archives.is gets around paywalls

New schedules are now up for every line but Yellow. I have Blue, Pink, and Red timetables from April, and from these, I am indeed only seeing minor adjustments to departure or arrival times, and most Blue runs are lengthened by a minute (-1 between FP and Cicero; +2 between Jefferson Park and O’Hare). Other line-specific tweaks: Blue Weekdays: the two afternoon Jefferson Park short turns moved approx. 15-20 mins later Weekday late nights: 10 minutes headways from the terminal only go until 12a (previously 2a) Sunday: UIC short turns start and end about a half hour later. Red (comparing to April; I don't have the updated July timetable from RPM opening) Weekday late nights: 7.5 minute headways from the terminal until 12a (previously switched to 10 minute at 11p) Pink Weekdays: 1 additional AM train departing from the terminal in the 6:00 hour There are likely similar tweaks across the other lines except Yellow.

most likely the whole way into the loop to facilitate connections with the blue line and the night bus hub at washington/state

They got rid of the Vontas banner and put it back to the Pace branded bus tracker banner. the bus tracker is currently down and not working.

Not being a planning professional, I didn't completely follow this, but I don't think it has as much to do with how people get to the L or Metra station but how to get denser, more affordable housing near transit. It becomes cheaper if a city doesn't require one parking space per unit. From the description, clearly anything new along the Milwaukee and Dempster Pulse lines would be subject to the law, and maybe that is what the law was modelled on. We'll have to see whether some really-depressed area, like Harvey, gets development, as it is clearly a transit hub.

[Abolishing] Parking minimums, in the spirit of the law, is intended to bring folks closer to transit (and either have those folks who live in high-dense areas live a car or car-lite atmosphere). That said, this would reduce the need for feeders since (1) parking is deprioritized in favor for housing; (2) more formal Transportation Demand Strategies can be levied, including city garage rentals as part of an un/bundling; and (3) it wouldn't preclude the park-and-ride model that the BNSF feeders would have, but a foci on more frequent service like Pulse or Jump be preferred. The late, great Donald Shoup would be proud.

On the other hand, the transit activists said to cancel the remaining options on the 8350s order and get electrics, but CTA said that was physically impossible. What would you have said now if CTA listened to these Transit "Authorities," and now would have been 400 buses short?

Only reason I’m doing this is because there’s barely any updates on what’s in the boneyard and in SS outside of street view and I’m like the only one who’s getting information now.

I think they have bigger fish to fry.

you ever wonder if they know bus nerds come down to 77th, or do they think we're normal weirdos, poking camera lenses through the fence?

So 600-605 have likely run their last miles? For shame, for shame, CTA falling for the snake oil seller's pitch.

In that it is now questionable, it was only supposed to be for off peak hours. The intention wasn't to run max capacity cars during rush hour, nor affect frequency. Your second paragraph may be more to the point, as it is probably safr not to spread sparese riders among 8 cars at 2:00 a.m. BTW, someone noted that there were not any schedule alerts, and the schedule brochures for the L are the prior ones. So the pick may be wholly internal.

A trip to the boneyard confirms 1760 has been retired The shop guys were towing 1914 around to the fuel bay where they started the bus up and left it running in the oil bay for about five minutes.

Well let’s see what happens down the wire following the point of this topic being created. @Mr.NewFlyer1279’s comment made me scroll up knowing I wasn’t tripping as I read everything accurately. If u read the flyer it stated “EFFECTIVE Sunday, 11/2/25”

I guess there's a reason why this thread was renamed "speculative." If CTA is scheduled to go off the fiscal cliff in July, and the NITA Act takes effect in June, there won't be money to implement a growth budget until planning authority is turned over to NITA. CTA just proposed a growth budget only because the RTA told it to.

BE40 600-602 have not run since fall 2023; 603-605 since summer 2024. Only the later ZX5-40 have run this year

While Purple ran primarily 2400s, they only had about 40 to 50 max, which meant they needed about 20 2600s to supplement the Express service. I guess they also used them on the shuttle service also. The Yellow Line used the 2600s when they went to third rail and their 3200s went to the Brown Line.

Below: This basically shows why it won't happen in the Chicago area. There isn't enough right of way, unless CTA was going to implement my idea of an LRT on S. Michigan unloading directly into the paid area of the 95th station. ,Pulse, with some gussied up bus shelters and a slightly raised platforms, certainly isn't like this. Most of Chicago's experiments on prepay (such as the one Loop Link station) failed. too. And while the NWTC was expanded, nobody built a 6-story parking garage there (only comparable garage is at Cumberland-Blue Line).

Neither 1982 or 2001 are retired they both returned this afternoon. The total is still 12.

IDK if this is part of the end of the specialty electric bus assemblers. At the time, Toronto had ordered, on an equal basis, Proterras, BYDs, and NFs, but soon cut back on the BYDs. Now it has large orders of NFs and Novas. There was the SEPTA debacle for whatever cause. BC Transit disaffirmed in the bankruptcy case, because of product defects. Pace's order supposedly went from "soon on the line" in early 2024 to "4 buses on the line" a couple of months ago. The CTA count (according to the 2025 Budget) is down from 23 to 20. According to @maths22's Run History, 15 have recently been in service, which is better than it was. (One has been reported in training.) No word on the other 22 on order. Your Miami-Dade post establishes that NF can deliver, and we'll have to see if Pace's Gilligs are delivered before the PhoenixEVs.

I watched a YT video. It's almost like a light rail concept, even with crossing gates at intersection so the bus doesn't have to stop except at stations. Perhaps if ridership grows enough they may actually build rail

Well,it is Halloween. 🤢

Legal hold isn't that. The bus sits until plaintiff's lawyers can inspect it, which could be a couple of years.

The bus in the Larry wins wrap pictured is 1902. coincidentally, another Larry wins bus has also been retired, which is 2024.

You can probably approximate it yourself. First, it's "up to" 500. Could be 467 or 482. Second, it won't be 1630 and over. Third, it won't be those with significant body damage. Powertrain damage doesn't matter, because the contractor is usually required to remove the old one and install a rebuilt one.

I have now confirmed both buses are retired.1941 is pictured with an LTH sticker and appears to be running (I didn’t hear the engine) but the bus is on. Despite 1917 having a new shield, 1917 has now been officially retired due to body damage. this is the body damage presented on 1917 which prompted its retirement. I was actually able to catch 1917 on the 53 the night before its official retirement and was able to catch it pulling in to Chicago Garage for its last time ever on 9/14. It was sent to SS the next day via the 66. Besides those two I have see the following flyers around SS/boneyard from street view: Boneyard: 1879 (retired), 1734 (retired), 1170, 1966/1900 (retired), 1349 (legal hold off the 1 from 9/15). South Shops: 1862 (brake job appears to be complete), 1352, 1268, 1358, 1394, 1072, 1970 (retired), 2000 and 1735, 1822, 1589, 1551 (new farebox inside it), 1272 had its shield removed, 1718 (79th fence), 1215 (brakes work), 1419 (no bike rack), 1715, 1470, and last but not least 1061. I also spotted 1025 which has a new farebox and is on LTH and 1895 with another bus right behind 1866 and 1674.

You could look at the Next Phases page, including the presentations, which said about 1-1/2 years ago: