This site is named for the question of how Chicagoland moves — it is an independent publication, affiliated with no transit agency or government — 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 analyses of the city’s traffic-count, rideshare, scooter, and moved-vehicle files, and guides and tools built on the same public data. Every figure below comes from a public data file; the linked analysis reads that file, archives it, and explains the figure.
Ridership from CTA’s own station and route files · updated August 16, 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.
The city’s last published GIS of the downtown walkway system, measured segment by segment from its own geometry: 44 named routes, 35,142 feet, the City Hall–Cultural Center concourse the longest link — every figure dated to the file’s January 2013 state, the newest Pedway map on the city portal. Chicago’s Own Map of the Pedway Measures 6.66 Miles — a Third More Than Its “Roughly Five”
The network’s hardware, not its trips: the city’s station dataset and Divvy’s own live feed counted the same way on the same map, 840 stations apart inside the city — plus the archived feed’s arc from 72 stations in July 2013 to 1,419 on its last day in 2022, and every community area’s station and dock count. Divvy’s Live Feed Lists 2,048 Stations. Chicago’s Own Divvy Dataset Lists 1,197.
The city’s current bike-rack file is, by its own description, installs from 2015 on — 9,449 records reaching all 77 community areas, led by West Town and the Loop — while the older stock sits in a file frozen in August 2011 that the city still hopes to consolidate. Two files, two eras, never summed, and no complete rack count in either. Chicago’s Bike-Rack Data Splits in Two: 9,449 Records Since 2015, and a 2011 File the City Never Merged
The cameras’ traffic-count by-product, read in full: on the 1,572 street segments measured in both early-summer windows, the median moved just 0.4 percent year over year, and Cicero Avenue owns four of the ten busiest measured stretches. Camera-derived estimates, and the piece says so. The Traffic Census Inside Chicago’s Enforcement Cameras: 2.2 Million Readings, and the Median Matched Segment Down Just 0.4 Percent in a Year
The rideshare trip file, summed on the city’s own portal: $4.21 per mile all-in in June 2026 against $3.81 three Junes earlier, with the fare component falling to $2.51 and the unitemized additional-charges line growing from 18 to 35 percent of the bill from mid-2025 on. The Fare Fell. The Bill Rose. The Additional-Charges Line Now Takes More Than a Third of What Chicago Riders Pay.
The shared e-scooter feed’s 2025 season, 41 percent bigger than 2024, with an August peak of 1.35 million trips — and its two smallest vendors are sidewalk delivery-robot operators by their own announcements, logging 132,670 trips through the city’s scooter data. Chicago’s Scooter Feed Logged 9.45 Million Trips in 2025. Two of Its Four Vendors Are Delivery-Robot Companies.
The city’s two rolling 90-day lists of moved vehicles, archived before they roll over: 95 percent of tows ended at two impound lots, 53 percent of relocations carry city-department work reasons led by street resurfacing, and in the file’s own street fields 72 percent of relocated cars record a different drop street than the one they were taken from. In 90 Days, Chicago Recorded 5,396 Vehicle Tows — and 4,259 Relocations
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.
Archived: the 2026 festival-weekend rail plan as the agencies announced it, last updated July 27, 2026 and kept for reference now that the festival has passed. 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.