The Living L: Chicago’s Whole Rail System, In Motion
This is the Chicago L drawn from the city’s own coordinates: all eight lines in their official colors, every station placed by its published coordinates, the Loop where the Loop belongs, and the lake holding the eastern edge. Two things make it alive. The trains you see gliding along each line are animation set to each line’s rhythm, and every station is sized by its real 2025 weekday ridership, so the system’s busy hearts read at a glance. On a computer, hover any station; on a phone, tap one and read it below the map.
Tap any station to see its name and 2025 weekday ridership.
Built by KCM Desk from the CTA’s published station coordinates and ridership records. The moving trains are illustrative, not a live tracker.
What you’re looking at
Station positions and line assignments come from the CTA’s official system feed on the city data portal, and each line’s station sequence was checked against the CTA’s published order. Station dots are scaled by average weekday entries in 2025, computed from the same daily ridership dataset behind our 25-year analysis — the big circles at Clark/Lake and O’Hare are big because that is where the riders are. The long empty stretches are real too: the Yellow Line’s nonstop glide from Oakton to Howard, and the Blue Line’s run down the Kennedy median.
Two simplifications, named plainly: the Purple Line is drawn on its own Evanston tracks, without repeating its rush-hour express overlay of the Red and Brown corridors, and State/Lake is sized by its 2025 ridership even though it closed for reconstruction this January, so treat its dot as a memory for the next three years. For any station’s full quarter-century, the station lookup tool draws it on demand.
