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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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

cta famously dislikes an operationally mixed fleet

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.

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?

I think they have bigger fish to fry.

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. 🤢

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.

You have yet to articulate where are we gonna put them if CTA doesn't feel like scrapping them yet 🤭 NP has had around this amount since 2012-13

Apparently, simple logic evades you. From above" I [i.e. @Master58] said they're short of artics because of maintenance. I never said they NEED MORE ARTICS. " If they don't need more artics, then they are NOT short. You're talking from both sides of your mouth. Maybe @Sam92 got you to say what you mean, after he did all the work for you. But as I said in the budget topic, the logical thing is to write the CTA and say that the 5-year capital plan is wasting money by proposing 208 electric artics to replace 4000-series buses and rehabbing the 4300 series buses. But: I know you won't do that. Even if you did, your lack of logic and LOLs wouldn't persuade anyone. Don't treat me like I'm an idiot when you can't give a straight answer to a question, act like I didn't see that @Sam92 answered the question for you, and, generally speaking, can't articulate your thoughts. In your language, SMH.

The 2026 budget is here. The propsed fares are: Curiosities are: Niles is stil considered a revenue source, even though it is currently suspended. The 5-year capital [lan includes 16 CNGs in 2027, presumably to replace what's left of the 2015 15500 series, which is either to take advantage of the holes in the electrification law for electric buses not being available or carrying stuff forward. There are also hybrids scheduled for 2028, presumably in connection with the Wheeling garage. While suburban service won't be cut in 2026, the budget "includes $13.8 million in operating efficiencies from the delay of previously planned service adjustments," so no Jarrett Walker ridership or coverage implementation yet.

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

Press release on metra.com on the 2026 budget. (The budget book itself isn't yet posted on the budget and financial statements page). The main highlight is that fares will go up about 13%. I haven't really kept up, but they still seem less than before the fare zones were consolidated. Only one-ride tickets pictured below:

A majority didn't get much of anything interior wise, everything FG got from 77th was given a fresh coat of paint last year along with some mechanical upgrades. 77th does have a few #7900s running around a mix of fabric/plastic seat inserts. FG mechanics hates the #7900s they received from 77th along with the remaining #8200s they have. 74th may have a few #8000s running around with new seat inserts but that doesn't necessarily mean they rehabbed the entire bus.

Well I was more pondering than seeking a prediction whether the legislature would actually stick to the continued claim of the stated desire for handling the funding question this month now that higher urgency for doing lost a bit of steam. However I do agree with you that doing so this month became less likely in my own mind for the reasons you stated especially the fact that anything getting done in the veto session requiring a supermajority. They'll probably still throw ideas at each other to be on record for trying. But why push as hard under the smaller urgency when they've been given more wiggle room to get it together in the next regular session where as you noted the supermajority disappears?

Got a good update: New Metro Express service will be launched on October 27th

Chicago Sun Times news story relaying that CTA, Metra and Pace report they pushed needing to do any potential service cuts back to at least the second half of 2026. There's further confirmation of @Busjack's mention of Evanston Now's reporting of Pace telling RTA it won't have to do any cuts in 2026. It mentions that Metra also says it can hold off until 2027 on any service cuts. CTA is saying summer 2026 for them. The story also says the RTA reports the other three service boards have been able to bring the combined fiscal cliff deficit for next year down to $202 million from the previous $770 million. It says they managed it through a combination of expected revenue from implementing an across the board 10% fare increase at all three services on February 1st, new revenues from a recent online sales tax, and administrative cuts to name a few moves made. They say that the deficit for 2027 will still be close to the same that was originally thought for next year and $888 million for 2028. There's mention at the end that state Rep Dina Delgado blasted RTA over the latest numbers. On the one hand I understand she may have some frustrations from the standpoint that opportunists may pounce on it to say the transit boards were crying wolf over the severity of the fiscal emergency. But overall it still feels like saber rattling since it appears that the service boards actually did what the politicians always squawk about and found some budgetary efficiencies. Unfortunately they won't be enough to soften the blow as much beyond next year given COVID money was still a part of the equation in some way for next year's moves and won't last beyond next year. That's at the heart of the current problem and always has been since the beginning of transit agencies nationwide first publicly reporting the issue.

Long Term Hold

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.

Got some news https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article312149942.html Transit fares stay flat as Miami-Dade leaders scrap austerity and pass budget Also the New Metro Express Routes for the new South Dade BRT opening date has been pushed back to next year due to ongoing construction of the 4th new bus division in Homestead for new 100 60ft EV artic bus

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

I read the articles published here everyday, and sometimes I am just appalled at the level of bigotry and stupidity I come across from time to time. It seems we have some supposedly intellligent people that believe that dirty buses are only in minority communities. We have some supposedly intelligent people that believe that new buses should never be put in minority communities because new buses will become involved in accidents. If this is the kind of newsletter thats being put out maybe I should see about having it shut down. As an African American retired CTA Bus Operator with 26 years of service trust me dirty buses and new buses in accidents happen in all communities. Where do some of you get off saying other wise. The only thing you're doing besides showing your stupidity and ignorance is showing how lowbrow this newsletter can be. As far as accidents I wish I could have been with some of your parents before they mated so they could see what kind of accidents they were bringing into the community. Maybe I should e-mail some of these stories to the press to show them what type of mentality exits among folks at the CTA I think they-ed get a kick out of it don't you along with Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton. A disgusted New Flyer.