CTA Bus And Rail Ridership

[BusHunter]

Despite my analysis of the above, it appears, from a Red Eye story on the home page, that there is some substance to loss of ridership on the bus system, mostly attributed to lousy bus service, according to Tracy Swartz. At least it supports that there are fewer transfers, maybe due to the polar vortex, but also that someone moved in with her boyfriend and the two moved closer to an L station. Cutting the X buses and not providing BRT alternatives is also blamed.

Yes, I believe that's the problem, the bus is just inconvenient because it is slow. They have to speed up the service to put it more on keel with the "L" rapid transit service and make it more attractive. They could turn this around all they have to do is bring back X service. But most likely the thinking is that that means more buses and operators to pay for and maintain. But not if done smartly because X service decreases total buses on the street, they could actually run locals with that and be close to what they were running originally as long as they don't run alot of locals and put more express' out than locals. How was ridership during the mid 2000's like around 2006? I bet it was good. All CTA has to do is look up the ridership then and it should prove my point.

[Busjack]

,,,How was ridership during the mid 2000's like around 2006? I bet it was good. All CTA has to do is look up the ridership then and it should prove my point.

The data on the Ridership Report page go back to 2001.Up to 2007 is in zips, but it is the same pdf format as the others, if you open the archives.

For instance, from the Dec. 2001 report, the average weekday boardings for bus were:

1999:864,895

2000: 859,612

2001: 916,577

2013 and 2014 provide statistical problems because of the Red Line shutdown and bad winter weather. However, if one wants to take the June 2014 report, the comparable numbers are:

2013: 977,300

2014: 854,522

So, 2013 was above the comparable, but 2014 below.

Since you said the 2006 report, the one for December is:

2004: 854,518

2005: 900,927

2006: 927,661

Still, 2013 seems better than these numbers (again undoubtedly due to the free shuttles), while 2014 is comparable to 2004.

Since the source exists, I'm sure you'll want to dig through it

[Busjack]

The other thing I figured after reviewing the above is that whoever are the civic groups that said that dysfunction here has resulted in no growth in ridership were correct.

[MRChiCity]

http://www.redeyechicago.com/news/cta/redeye-cta-bus-ridership-down-20140917,0,3251585.storyOne of the reasons the article brings up is bus bunching which has been discussed before as well as solutions to it. Once when riding the 20 Madison from work to Ogilvie we had three buses buses bunched up. A supervisor up at Washington and Jefferson was short turning several buses including mine, I would like to know why this is not done more often? Finally can't control short turn buses or dose it have to be a supervisor? Thanks

[jajuan]

As frequently pointed out, the metric (at least until 1992, the date of Krambles's book) was original boarding fares, not the current of unlinked trips. So, essentially, the statistic is twice what the comparable one was.

The reason, of course, was to start the 10 year (and still continuing) crying that CTA provides 80% of the rides, but gets only 50% of the subsidy. However, since the recovery ratio is 50%, it isn't collecting 80% of the fares. You'll note that when a financial report is posted, the average fare is $1.12 (up from $0.93). but certainly not $2.00.

Hence, the ridership number is relevant only for the reason I mentioned with regard to 108, and how Claypool is using it; if the number goes down, cut service, even though that results in the death spiral. Apparently CTA has no incentive to serve the bus riders, except to float pie in the sky plans and put some artics on routes where the garage manager doesn't complain about them.

Since supposedly RTA sales taxes have recovered (especially since the RTA won the Hartney Oil litigation), the least Claypool could do is reinstitute the X routes. However, undoubtedly Claypool has already bonded out that money.

I guess I should have been more clear when I said "more recent decades" as I was thinking of 1990s through today amd based on that metric the numbers still seem up on average as in I don't think we're near the previous lower levels quoted for past reasons to cut service like the mass wave of cuts under the Booz-Allen recommendations of the 1990s. Either way it backs up your point that CTA management and its own current lack of perspective in analyzing the numbers are indeed part of the problem.

[Busjack]

I guess I should have been more clear when I said "more recent decades" as I was thinking of 1990s through today amd based on that metric the numbers still seem up on average as in I don't think we're near the previous lower levels quoted for past reasons to cut service like the mass wave of cuts under the Booz-Allen recommendations of the 1990s. Either way it backs up your point that CTA management and its own current lack of perspective in analyzing the numbers are indeed part of the problem.

As I had indicated in response to BusHunter, there doesn't seem to have been any growth since 1999 as reflected in the posted Ridership Report archives.

One also has to consider whatever falloff from the recession of 2008, and that bus service was cut 20% in 2010. Other than reshuffling around the edges by the Crowd Reduction Plan and some more articulated buses, nothing has really been done to restore service back to that level (300 6000s gone, and only 98 4300s added, so there is still a net loss of 200 buses).

[andrethebusman]

Was taking a look at the ridership reports and wow some of these bus routes are really getting hit. a 91.7% loss on the #X98. #169 is like a 55% loss.

Here's the link to the report I was looking at.

http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/ridership_reports/2014-01_2.pdf

X98 is a victim of Avon slowly shutting down the plant in Morton Grove. Used to be a bus went out in the evening with a load and came back with a load. Now overnight shift is gone, and evening shift is much reduced. Bus deadheads out and works back with a much smaller load.

169 has seen load shifted to 395. 169 only runs a couple of trips now, but 395 runs something like 4 trips each way each shift change, including some non-stop 95/Ryan to UPS. Basically CTA decided to give the business to PACE, which after all takes them to just a different (and a bit closer) station on the same rail route.

[andrethebusman]

Yes, I believe that's the problem, the bus is just inconvenient because it is slow. They have to speed up the service to put it more on keel with the "L" rapid transit service and make it more attractive.

I disagree. It is impossible to speed up bus service to any significant degree. There is simply too much traffic on the streets. This has been a growing problem for years as the number of cars is growing every single day (except Sundays when the dealers are closed). Since the 1980's, the CTA has made what was probably a fatal long-term decision to concentrate on first-shift (9 to 5) workers and basically abandoning anyone who has other hours. A huge number of routes now end around 11pm. If you work 2nd (or 3rd) shift, you simply cannot use CTA, as you have no means of getting home if you work afternoons. Now in and of itself the number of people who were thus forced off the system might be relatively small, but once somebody is forced to buy a car to get to work, he is much more likely to abandon transit altogether. CTA's recent program of reducing the number of bus stops and moving stops from what had been eons-long standard of nearside to farside basically at random (and in an amazingly large number of cases back nearside again!) just adds confusion to passengers' routines. You end up standing on a corner you might not be very familiar with saying "OK, where is the stop here??". In general, CTA has become more of a challenge to use.

I have always said that most bus riders are there from need not choice. They need to get somewhere and have no other viable means. The CTA would have been much better off in the long run if back in 1982 they had decided that less service per hour over a longer span was the preferred alternative to more service over a substantially shorter span. Somebody who rides out of necessity does not really care if the bus comes every 20 minutes or every hour, as long as it does in fact come.

Finally, back in the 1970's when the 5307's started coming in, CTA made the decision to start "speeding up" service by cutting running time. For a while it actually worked. Then as traffic congestion worsened and worsened, schedules became less and less makeable. As long as there was a lot of "recovery time" scheduled at terminals (it was not unusual during rush hours to see three or four buses at the end of the line waiting for leaving time) things weren't so bad as at least the bus left the end of the line on time. In the 1990's and especially in 2010 recovery time was cut to as little as possible in an effort to save a couple of buses on each street. So now, on many routes between unrealistic running times and no recovery time, buses routinely leave late because they arrive after leaving time. Basically there is a desperate need for CTA to look at how long it REALLY takes to go from point A to point B, and they have the capability to tell exactly how long it took each and every bus to go between each two stops, and recut schedules to reflect reality, not best-case scenarios.

Will anything ever change? I doubt it. The political will is not there since top management (ever since Belcaster, but now especially Claypool) have basically no concept of transit and as such have no concept of what the passengers really need as opposed to what the lakefront yuppies bleat about, and it would cost money to fix things in the form of either additional buses on the street or less buses for the bleating classes so that the less-vocal ones get something they really can use, noting is likely to ever happen.

[andrethebusman]

That might be why rail is doing better cause it's faster.

The problem is not that rail is that much faster, so much as it is much more reliable. Nowhere near the huge gaps followed by three or more buses together that have become normal on many bus routes.

[Busjack]

I disagree. It is impossible to speed up bus service to any significant degree. There is simply too much traffic on the streets. ..

That may be a bus driver perspective, but Emanuel has sure done his best to get cars off the street, from parking rate increases to using cameras as a means of extortion, to increases in city stickers, to the way vehicular traffic (including buses) are restricted to one lane on streets like East 55th. Just wait until he turns Chicago into China and you'll have to contend with bicycles everywhere, because that's what he wants.

Employment may be down in some spots, but as I have said many times before--it is irrelevant to CTA because it makes the sponsor pay full freight. UPS and Joblink can decide what level of service for which they want to pay.

If you want to talk about bleating--how many riders were lost because they cut 11 for spurious reasons? And if it is north side bleating, why does 77th get to dictate always getting new buses, and while X3 and X4 were dropped, the frequency of 3 and 4 certainly wasn't? Why did 111 and 115 get improved?

Which finally explains how they could improve bus service, but won't, but as I indicated above, they physically can't restore the X55.

[andrethebusman]

The L has been slowed down tremendously since the late 1960s when I first started riding around. First of all, then you had skip-stop service, now you have all-stops locals. Second, in that era speed reduction at curves, etc was entirely up to the motorman. Train drivers were trained differently then. You were expected to go as fast as conditions allowed, not as fast as the cab signal allowed. The result was motormen braked at the last possible second and accelerated as soon as possible. When I moved to New York in 1982-83 I was absolutely shocked how slow and basically lackadaisical the New York subway was by comparison, just sort of ambling along. But cab signals changed all that here. Now trains slow down way further back than they used to and creep much further past the end of the curve.

Another thing that changed was CTA's attitude toward "potential liability". For instance, if a column footing was being replaced (an ongoing issue since time immemorial it seems) the slow order was for a couple of hundred feet. Now it is four blocks because that is how long the signal blocks are. The north side L is down to mostly 15mph on the express tracks because everyone is afraid the embankment wall will collapse. It wasn't all that great looking 40 years ago, either, but trains ran full speed.

[andrethebusman]

If you want to talk about bleating--how many riders were lost because they cut 11 for spurious reasons?

The 11 between Fullerton and Leland was a lost cause. Minimal riding (I drove the route), incredible traffic congestion mostly caused by six-way intersections. There were in fact three separate "zones" on that route - Diversey to Downtown, Fullerton to Lawrence, and Leland to Howard, and very little riding between them, with the middle one being by far the lightest. Middle zone riding was mostly seniors midday, with rush hour riding being nearly nonexistent. This was really a route you wanted to work if you didn't feel like doing much.

[andrethebusman]

That may be a bus driver perspective, but Emanuel has sure done his best to get cars off the street, from parking rate increases to using cameras as a means of extortion, to increases in city stickers, to the way vehicular traffic (including buses) are restricted to one lane on streets like East 55th. Just wait until he turns Chicago into China and you'll have to contend with bicycles everywhere, because that's what he wants.

Saw a bust stop bench ad recently "Driving is a sin". This attitude among some (seems like mostly millenials) is what is driving a lot of this. They can't afford a car or a suburban house, so they try to shame everybody into living under conditions reminiscent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. No wonder a lot of older people consider millenials a bunch of goofballs.

[Busjack]

If you want to talk about bleating--how many riders were lost because they cut 11 for spurious reasons?

The 11 between Fullerton and Leland was a lost cause. Minimal riding (I drove the route), incredible traffic congestion mostly caused by six-way intersections. There were in fact three separate "zones" on that route - Diversey to Downtown, Fullerton to Lawrence, and Leland to Howard, and very little riding between them, with the middle one being by far the lightest. Middle zone riding was mostly seniors midday, with rush hour riding being nearly nonexistent. This was really a route you wanted to work if you didn't feel like doing much.

It may have been that, but Claypool never had the guts to say that. Instead, he relied on the Northwestern U Transportation Center saying something about the Brown Line being parallel, which it wasn't, and if that was the real justification, 7 and 56 should also have been canceled, and 1 not only cut back but canceled.

Sure it was the seniors and disabled who packed the hearings and were lied to when Terry Peterson said he was listening, but if CTA is saying that it is cutting half fare routes (especially when those groups said that they would have to go to paratransit and CTA previously complained about state law providing that paratransit is funded off the top), there would be a whole lot of other routes to cut (I can think of 96, for instance), and undoubtedly face a huge ADA suit.

In fact, all that proves is that certain demographic groups on the north side are far less litigious that those on the south side.

[Busjack]

Saw a bust stop bench ad recently "Driving is a sin". This attitude among some (seems like mostly millenials) is what is driving a lot of this. They can't afford a car or a suburban house, so they try to shame everybody into living under conditions reminiscent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. No wonder a lot of older people consider millenials a bunch of goofballs.

That's fine, but that's to whom Emanuel is catering. And, as I indicated above, they can't afford a car (I certainly couldn't when I lived in the city in up to 1976) and apparently they don't want to be defecated on or have their iPhone stolen in a CTA vehicle.

[geneking7320]

Given the recent postings on this thread I'd like to ask:

What you think of the city's creation of bike lanes on streets on which the CTA has routes?

Two come to mind - State north of I-55 [stevenson Expwy] and South Chicago avenue.

I think it hinders the performance of the bus routes and auto traffic.

Also north of the Stevenson a good bike alternative might be to use Wabash (1 street east).

[Busjack]

Given the recent postings on this thread I'd like to ask:

What you think of the city's creation of bike lanes on streets on which the CTA has routes?

Two come to mind - State north of I-55 [stevenson Expwy] and South Chicago avenue.

I think it hinders the performance of the bus routes and auto traffic.

Also north of the Stevenson a good bike alternative might be to use Wabash (1 street east).

I made my views where I knew of a particular, above, but, in general, creating a bus lane should get priority over creating a bike lane.

The bike lane seems to be a manifestation of what Distinguished Fellow Daley was reportedly recommending for Gary--if you are going to do something, do something that costs only a $5 can of white paint. While I suppose the cost of reflective street marking is more than that, that illustrates the point. The problem with the Ashland BRT is that they want $160 million to do essentially that.

[strictures]

http://www.redeyechicago.com/news/cta/redeye-cta-bus-ridership-down-20140917,0,3251585.storyOne of the reasons the article brings up is bus bunching which has been discussed before as well as solutions to it. Once when riding the 20 Madison from work to Ogilvie we had three buses buses bunched up. A supervisor up at Washington and Jefferson was short turning several buses including mine, I would like to know why this is not done more often? Finally can't control short turn buses or dose it have to be a supervisor? Thanks

There are no more street corner supervisors to flip one out of four bunched up buses.

Several years ago, we managed to get the supervisor at Jackson/Michigan to change a #3 to a #4, when there had been a dozen SB #3s pass by & not a single #4 for a half hour. That included not a single NB #4 which would turn at South Water & return South.

The street corner supervisors need to return, they actually did good work.

[BusHunter]

I disagree. It is impossible to speed up bus service to any significant degree. There is simply too much traffic on the streets. This has been a growing problem for years as the number of cars is growing every single day (except Sundays when the dealers are closed). Since the 1980's, the CTA has made what was probably a fatal long-term decision to concentrate on first-shift (9 to 5) workers and basically abandoning anyone who has other hours. A huge number of routes now end around 11pm. If you work 2nd (or 3rd) shift, you simply cannot use CTA, as you have no means of getting home if you work afternoons. Now in and of itself the number of people who were thus forced off the system might be relatively small, but once somebody is forced to buy a car to get to work, he is much more likely to abandon transit altogether. CTA's recent program of reducing the number of bus stops and moving stops from what had been eons-long standard of nearside to farside basically at random (and in an amazingly large number of cases back nearside again!) just adds confusion to passengers' routines. You end up standing on a corner you might not be very familiar with saying "OK, where is the stop here??". In general, CTA has become more of a challenge to use.

I have always said that most bus riders are there from need not choice. They need to get somewhere and have no other viable means. The CTA would have been much better off in the long run if back in 1982 they had decided that less service per hour over a longer span was the preferred alternative to more service over a substantially shorter span. Somebody who rides out of necessity does not really care if the bus comes every 20 minutes or every hour, as long as it does in fact come.

Finally, back in the 1970's when the 5307's started coming in, CTA made the decision to start "speeding up" service by cutting running time. For a while it actually worked. Then as traffic congestion worsened and worsened, schedules became less and less makeable. As long as there was a lot of "recovery time" scheduled at terminals (it was not unusual during rush hours to see three or four buses at the end of the line waiting for leaving time) things weren't so bad as at least the bus left the end of the line on time. In the 1990's and especially in 2010 recovery time was cut to as little as possible in an effort to save a couple of buses on each street. So now, on many routes between unrealistic running times and no recovery time, buses routinely leave late because they arrive after leaving time. Basically there is a desperate need for CTA to look at how long it REALLY takes to go from point A to point B, and they have the capability to tell exactly how long it took each and every bus to go between each two stops, and recut schedules to reflect reality, not best-case scenarios.

Will anything ever change? I doubt it. The political will is not there since top management (ever since Belcaster, but now especially Claypool) have basically no concept of transit and as such have no concept of what the passengers really need as opposed to what the lakefront yuppies bleat about, and it would cost money to fix things in the form of either additional buses on the street or less buses for the bleating classes so that the less-vocal ones get something they really can use, noting is likely to ever happen.

They could speed up the service with X routes, i don't believe that all streets are congested to the point of slowing down service that badly. To me it's how they are configured with bike lanes that cut off an entire lane of traffic. I notice the two lane streets are slower than the four lane. That's why alot of those make good x route capable streets. Get a pack of #9's on Ashland and see how incredibly fast the service is. This simulates X service in a way because 4 buses in a pack will not stop at all stops. Maybe CTA should try skip stop bus service.

Service to me seems to be the major concern. I was told a story of one hour waits this past weekend on Addison on a saturday morning. Now why is this occurring? There is no rush hour on saturday. After 8PM bus service is terribly non existent

even on main streets like the #77 as I have witnessed 40 minute waits pretty regular. Now these instances are both in the non rush hour so what is the deal? It's not traffic!! I think it's just CTA has cut the service to the bare bones and they expect it to function. They can't expect an operator to do double his/her load and maintain schedule.

The city hasn't helped either with additional traffic lights where it's not needed. Those need to be programmed to at least decrease light change intervals at night. You know in the suburbs IDOT does this with the lights but I don't see it in the city. Then with all these traffic lights and safety we have countless bicyclists going through red lights. If the city has gone through making them a lane they should respect the rules of the road. All this to me is too much and I try to not drive in the city.

An interesting story this year was one that developed on N. Milwaukee, the city wanted to install protected bike lanes on Milwaukee from Jeff Pk to Devon eliminating one lane of traffic in each direction. Now the residents didn't like this and there were some pretty heavy protests. The alderman up there, John Arena, was going up for reelection this year and his opponent said he would not support this project to the joy of the protestors. Do you know that the project was stopped probably due to it's political sensitivity.

[artthouwill]

They could speed up the service with X routes, i don't believe that all streets are congested to the point of slowing down service that badly. To me it's how they are configured with bike lanes that cut off an entire lane of traffic. I notice the two lane streets are slower than the four lane. That's why alot of those make good x route capable streets. Get a pack of #9's on Ashland and see how incredibly fast the service is. This simulates X service in a way because 4 buses in a pack will not stop at all stops. Maybe CTA should try skip stop bus service.

Service to me seems to be the major concern. I was told a story of one hour waits this past weekend on Addison on a saturday morning. Now why is this occurring? There is no rush hour on saturday. After 8PM bus service is terribly non existent

even on main streets like the #77 as I have witnessed 40 minute waits pretty regular. Now these instances are both in the non rush hour so what is the deal? It's not traffic!! I think it's just CTA has cut the service to the bare bones and they expect it to function. They can't expect an operator to do double his/her load and maintain schedule.

The city hasn't helped either with additional traffic lights where it's not needed. Those need to be programmed to at least decrease light change intervals at night. You know in the suburbs IDOT does this with the lights but I don't see it in the city. Then with all these traffic lights and safety we have countless bicyclists going through red lights. If the city has gone through making them a lane they should respect the rules of the road. All this to me is too much and I try to not drive in the city.

An interesting story this year was one that developed on N. Milwaukee, the city wanted to install protected bike lanes on Milwaukee from Jeff Pk to Devon eliminating one lane of traffic in each direction. Now the residents didn't like this and there were some pretty heavy protests. The alderman up there, John Arena, was going up for reelection this year and his opponent said he would not support this project to the joy of the protestors. Do you know that the project was stopped probably due to it's political sensitivity.

There are many factors that create service gaps. The many festivals and parades and construction in this city causes ALL traffic, including buses to reroute. For instance, 35th Street between Archer and Western is a virtual parking lot during the PM rush, as is Archer west of Damen. Why? Because traffic cannot turn south on Western AVe or Western Blvd from Archer, and Western Blvd is closed north of Pershing. So all traffic wishing to go SB on Western must access Western from 35th Street. which has a stop sign at Leavitt. A WB 35th bus must navigate all of this traffic from Damen to Leavitt, turn into the Orange Line station, try to negoitiate traffic back on to ARcher to turn NB on Leavitt and reenter the traffic on WB 35th. It could take 1/2 hour to go from 35th and Damen to 35th and Western. Also remember that the 62 must negotiate the same traffic from Archer to WB 35th and SB on Leavitt into the Orange Line station, then continue south on the parking lot known as ARcher ave.

Other causes of delays include truck parking, accidents, freight train delays, CTA bus breakdowns, late driver reliefs ( I was on a bus where the relief driver was so late, the follower actually caught us).

The bike lanes definitely have worsened traffic. Dearborn used to be a pretty good south to north arterial through downtown. With the bike lane and the parking reconfiguration, Dearborn is an absolute nightmare as this configuration literally has stolen one lane. Needless to say if the cars aren't moving, the buses aren't moving..

The city also seems to be adding more and more stop signs as well This doesn't even include those midblock signs that state laws say traffic must stop for pedestrian crossings midblock. Yet more people seem to be driving than ever before which creates more gridlock. Even in so called nonrush periods, traffic is absolutely horrendous in certain pockets of the city.

[jajuan]

I agree that the city going overboard with these bike lanes while doing relatively little to make the increased number of bikers follow the traffic rules and laws like everyone is contributes to this issue. In addition to the examples given by others, Broadway is another example of the aggravation of the city having taken out a traffic lane for bicyclists at some detriment to the rest of us in cars and buses while also seeing some of those cyclists thumb their noses up at everyone else's forced sacrifice supposedly for those cyclists' safety by stupidly zipping through red lights and swinging their bikes into moving traffic with no signaled warning from the cyclists. And yes the festivals and construction are definitely culprits. Spring and summer months as we all know make those two particular factors worse. I lost count of how many times I had a bus on a route I ride get slowed by traffic going toward or away from a festival or by a detour due to a festival or some construction project.

[BusHunter]

Here's something else to consider. How many ride statistics have been lost by these broken ventra card readers. It still takes me up to three taps to get my card read. If that happens on a repeated basis service is going to take between 2 or 3 times as long as it did before. This is a potential whammy on the buses as trains board paid customers and are unaffected by this. So they may actually have a double jeopardy situation where buses are late and stats are not being tabulated correctly. You could also add in the difficulty for a noob to learn ventra policies. So there's many avenues to consider here.

[Busjack]

Here's something else to consider. How many ride statistics have been lost by these broken ventra card readers....

I had mentioned that way above. Since the Ridership Report says it is based on farebox (which is only about 6% of fares) "and farecard reader" the only remaining farecard reader is Ventra.

Unless CTA is doing what it did around November, and charging Cubic based on camera counts or the like, the Ridership Report is going to be short. That's why I said that the Clever Device passenger counter would at least give a more accurate count of boardings, and more importantly, where the boardings occur.

[andrethebusman]

There are no more street corner supervisors to flip one out of four bunched up buses.

Several years ago, we managed to get the supervisor at Jackson/Michigan to change a #3 to a #4, when there had been a dozen SB #3s pass by & not a single #4 for a half hour. That included not a single NB #4 which would turn at South Water & return South.

The street corner supervisors need to return, they actually did good work.

Removing "point men" was made to "increase efficiency". But realistically, it made the situation worse. Used to be drivers knew where the supervisors were located, and knew that something would be done when they got there. Now it is pretty much catch as catch can. Hope a supervisor happens to catch up with you. Some supervisors make an effort, others not so.

And I repeat - CTA has over the years always had the idea of minimum running time so the passengers don't bitch the bus is sitting killing time. As long as there was a lot of recovery time at terminals, this worked. Now that recovery time has been severely reduced in the name of efficiency, it no longer does. Delays are getting harder and harder to correct.

For instance, 85-Central on Sunday. Buses are schedules for four minutes at Harrison and six at the Glen. Detour via Chicago-Austin-Division realistically eats up 4 or five minutes. So if you leave FG on time, you will barely get to Harrison in time to leave, barring any wheelchairs, zombies with shopping carts, farmers market at Portage Park, etc. Now you get to FG barely in time to leave. If you get to Harrison a minute or two later (plus the detour delay) you are leaving late, and are essentially guaranteed of hitting the Glen after leaving time, so now you are guaranteed a 10-minute delay next trip. It all becomes cumulative. My point being you have to either have a slow schedule to take care of unusual situations or a good amount of recovery time. Weekdays and Saturdays are a lot better as for realistic running time, but Sundays are a real bear in this city.

[andrethebusman]

I had mentioned that way above. Since the Ridership Report says it is based on farebox (which is only about 6% of fares) "and farecard reader" the only remaining farecard reader is Ventra.

Unless CTA is doing what it did around November, and charging Cubic based on camera counts or the like, the Ridership Report is going to be short. That's why I said that the Clever Device passenger counter would at least give a more accurate count of boardings, and more importantly, where the boardings occur.

My experience has been that now Ventra almost always eventually collects the fare. But it very often does take more than one tap. Two in maybe 50 percent of cases, 3 in maybe 10 percent. So what Ventra says comes in the bus door is probably pretty close to reality. What has happened however is that it has rather severely slowed down loading. There is definitely a lag between tapping and the system responding. Though I have noticed one oddity. If there are a large number (10 or more) getting on one right after another, the first one or two might have to tap twice or thrice, but rest will usually get read first time. Almost seems like the reader gets "used to being used". If only one or two get on at a stop, it is much more likely they will have to tap multiple times.