Improving service to the West Side and Western Suburbs

I am excited that later this month CTA will launch bus and rail service improvements to the West Side and Western Suburbs. You can see new maps and details here (PDF).

The bus changes take effect Sunday, June 18th and include 5 new routes (including 3 express routes) and extensions, routing, and scheduling improvements to 8 existing routes. These bus service changes are similar in design and scope to those made as part of the CTA’s north and south lakeshore corridor studies, which significantly increased ridership. I am hopeful that the West Side and West Suburban changes will do the same.

The new Pink Line will begin regular service on Sunday, June 25th, and will permit CTA to increase service on all portions of both the Cermak and Forest Park branches of what is now the "Blue Line" with improved connections to the Orange, Brown and Green Lines, Purple Line Express service and Metra. The photo here is of Eleni Vrettos of Cicero, the winner of the "Name the Line" contest, together with two contest finalists, Esther Muratalla (far left) and David Calvillo (far right). With me is CTA board member Cindy Panayotovich.

I am grateful to the thousands of customers who helped design these service changes (see my earlier post), which are being launched under CTA bylaws as 180-day experiments. As we usually do, CTA will monitor ridership and customer comments carefully and make changes as warranted.

NOTE: Edited from the original post, which said bus route changes would be made to 9 existing routes. The correct number is 8.