How many places in Chicago dispense something other than gasoline? The city’s file answers directly, so we will too: 398 listed locations, 367 of them electric charging stations — and of those, 350 both carry a public access label and stand at status E, the code the field dictionary defines as Available. That is the short answer, and it is honest as far as it goes. Whether any one listing fits a given driver is a different question. Four more columns carry most of it — charger level, network, posted hours, and how recently anyone confirmed the listing — and this page reads all four. One thing no column can show is whether a port is free this minute; that limit gets its own section below.
Alternative Fuel Locations — Chicago (fi3z-jc3f), 398 rows, one per station location, updated August 31, 2026, retrieved September 1, 2026; the whole file was downloaded and every figure recomputed · field meanings per the federal AFDC data dictionary the city’s description points to · no person appears in the file or on this pageWhy one number can’t answer it
The 398 rows split five ways by fuel code — ELEC 367, E85 22, LPG 5, CNG 3, BD 1 — so nine listed locations in ten are electric, and the non-electric tail is 31 stations. They split again by access: 353 rows read simply “Public,” 7 read “Public – Call ahead,” 8 “Public – Credit card at all times,” 26 are private — 15 of those “Private – Government only” — and the last 4 carry their condition in the access label itself: 3 read “PLANNED – not yet accessible (Public)” and 1 “TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE (Public).” That matches the third split, status: 394 rows at E, which the AFDC dictionary defines as Available, 3 at P for Planned, 1 at T for Temporarily Unavailable. A count that ignores those columns counts stations a driver cannot use.
The scenarios, compared
| What a driver is looking for | What the file holds |
|---|---|
| Any listed alt-fuel location | 398 |
| Electric charging stations | 367 |
| Electric, public-labeled, status Available | 350 |
| …of those, posted hours “24 hours daily” | 283 |
| DC fast-charge stations (every one public and Available) | 46 |
| DC fast-charge ports citywide | 291 |
| Level 2 ports citywide | 1,043 |
| Private-access stations | 26 |
| Planned, not yet accessible | 3 |
| Temporarily unavailable | 1 |
| Non-electric fuel locations (E85, LPG, CNG, BD) | 31 |
The sharpest split in the table is the one rarely said out loud: Chicago’s public charging is overwhelmingly Level 2. The fast lane — 46 stations, 291 ports — is real but narrow, and every fast station in the file is public and marked Available. The 1,337 total ports otherwise skew 1,043-to-291 toward the slower standard, with 3 Level 1 plugs bringing up the rear.
What the file confirms
Twenty-six network labels appear on the electric stations. 212 of the 367 — 58 percent — are listed under the ChargePoint Network label, with Blink Network on 41 and 12 stations listed Non-Networked. Tesla appears under two labels the file keeps apart, “Tesla” (9) and “Tesla Destination” (24) — 33 stations if you sum them, which is our arithmetic, not the file’s. The build-out has a shape: 83 of the listed stations opened in 2021, the biggest year on the file, then 70 in 2025 and 33 in 2026 by the August 31 update; the oldest open dates read 2000. And the geography concentrates hard: the four best-stocked ZIP codes — 60611, 60606, 60607, 60601 — hold 151 of the 398 locations, 38 percent of the citywide file.
What the file cannot tell you
This file carries no price field: a cards_accepted column lists payment methods on 47 rows, but no column in this view records what a session costs. No column records whether a port is working this minute, how many cars are queued, or how often a station is down; status T exists, but only one row carries it. The access field itself comes with a federal caveat: the AFDC dictionary marks groups_with_access_code as a deprecated legacy field. And freshness varies by row: 350 of the 394 dated rows were confirmed in 2026, but the oldest confirmation stands at October 11, 2022 — the file carries a date_last_confirmed on 394 of its 398 rows — four listings go undated — so the age of nearly every answer is itself on the record. And what this file was never built to hold — whether a landlord wires a garage, whether a cord may cross a parkway — lives outside it, in other records than this one.
Where the record lives
Three records finish what this page starts. First, the city’s own dataset, one row per station with address, network, port counts, posted hours, and status — updated August 31, 2026. Second, the AFDC field dictionary the city’s description points to, which defines every code on this page, E, P, and T included. Third, each row’s own date_last_confirmed column — the file’s built-in answer to how current any single listing is.
The bottom line
Read whole, the file says Chicago’s alternative-fuel map is an electric map: 92 percent of listed locations are charging stations, nearly all public-labeled and Available, four in five of those posted around the clock. It also says the map is thinner than the headline: 291 fast ports citywide, 38 percent of all locations packed into four ZIP codes, and a non-electric tail of 31 stations for every other fuel combined. Both readings are the same table. Which one matters is decided by the column the reader stands in.
Three more questions the file can answer
Is any of it Tesla-specific? Two network labels, 33 stations between them, listed exactly as above. Is anything besides electricity still out there? Yes, and all of it at status Available: 22 E85 stations, 5 propane, 3 compressed natural gas, and a single biodiesel row. Is the list still growing? The file records 33 stations with 2026 open dates as of its August 31 update — a reading of the register, not a projection.
- Source: the city’s Alternative Fuel Locations — Chicago view (fi3z-jc3f): 398 rows, one per station location, updated August 31, 2026, retrieved September 1, 2026. The whole file was downloaded and every figure on this page recomputed from it.
- Field meanings: status and access codes are defined by the federal AFDC station data dictionary, which the city’s own description references; E means Available, P Planned, T Temporarily Unavailable, and the access field is marked there as a deprecated legacy field.
- Units: stations and ports are counted apart throughout; “public” groups the file’s access labels that begin Public; ZIP codes are printed as filed with no place names attached.
- Structure note: this page tests a decision-guide format: the direct answer first, then the columns that change it, the scenarios, what the file confirms and cannot, and where the records live. No advice appears; the lookups above carry the decision as far as the records go.
Computed by KCM Desk from the city’s alternative-fuel station file, retrieved September 1, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
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