This site is named for the question of how Chicagoland moves, and this page is where we keep the answers: ridership counted from the CTA’s own station and route files, station by station and year by year, plus the guides and tools built on the same data. Every figure below comes from a committed source file and is explained in the analysis it links to.
Ridership from CTA’s own station and route files · updated July 29, 2026Is transit coming back?
Buses at 86 percent of their matched 2019 ridership, trains at 65 — the recovery is lopsided, and the gap is mapped route by route. Chicago’s Buses Are Back to 86% of Pre-Pandemic Ridership. The “L” Is at 65%.
All 143 stations against their 2019 selves — Cermak-Chinatown and Morgan-Lake are the only two above water. Only Two L Stations Are Busier Than Before the Pandemic. Neither Is Downtown.
The bike system on the same matched window — 1.76 million trips, 69 percent on e-bikes, from a network with nearly three times the named starting points it had in 2019. Expansion, not recovery, and the piece keeps the two apart. Buses Are at 86 Percent of 2019. The L Is at 65. Divvy Is at 176.
A quarter century of riding, measured
The busiest year in the 2001–2025 file — 198 million station entries in 2015 — and the slide that began years before the pandemic. The L’s Best Year Was 2015, Not 2019. A Quarter Century of Ridership in Three Charts.
The city’s spine, told station by station. Riding the Red Line, 2001–2026: Every Station, One Scroll
Explore the system
The whole rail network animated from a quarter century of station counts. The Living L: Chicago’s Whole Rail System, In Motion
Pick a station, get its history. Your L Stop, by the Numbers
Getting there, and what it costs
Chicagoland’s half-price rail program, how it works and who qualifies, running through December 31, 2026. New York Just Expanded Half-Price Transit. Chicagoland Has Its Own Version — and It Runs Through December 31.
The festival-week rail plan, last updated July 27, 2026 with the agencies’ announced 2026 service. Lollapalooza 2026: How to Get There by Train — and What CTA and Metra Haven’t Announced Yet
The rail suburbs
Every town on one Metra corridor, profiled with the same measures. The Northwest Suburbs of Chicago: 23 Towns Along the UP-NW Corridor, With the Numbers
Fifty towns organized by the lines that serve them. The West Suburbs of Chicago: 50 Towns by Train Line, With the Numbers
How this hub works
Every figure on this page is computed from the same source files the analyses use, committed alongside them — chiefly the CTA’s public station-entry and bus-route ridership files — and each analysis documents its own methods, windows and caveats. Ridership comparisons use matched calendar windows, never a partial year against a full one. This page is rebuilt from those same files when analyses are updated; the date above is its last rebuild. If you spot an error, corrections come first.