CTA ridership continues to climb as extra prospects are returning to high school or the workplace

CHICAGO (CBS) — CTA ridership is now at its highest degree for the reason that begin of the pandemic.

A giant bounceback in downtown ridership is main the best way, with a 21% enhance over final 12 months.

Systemwide, common weekday ridership on the CTA has risen above 900,000 for the primary time since February 2020, simply earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic prompted stay-at-home orders, forcing many individuals to earn a living from home, and colleges to modify to distant studying.

The CTA mentioned ridership for the week of Sept. 12 was up 10% from one 12 months in the past, with a complete of greater than 5.5 million rides. Bus and rail ridership for that week have been up 8% and 13% respectively, in comparison with the identical week final 12 months.

Ridership has grown steadily since January 2022, when the system was averaging 540,000 rides on weekdays, in accordance with the CTA.

So far in September, the CTA has offered roughly 22.3 million rides, in comparison with 14.3 million for all of January.

The CTA mentioned, along with the rising ridership downtown, pupil ridership throughout town can be going up.

The CTA averaged 68,000 each day rides for elementary and highschool college students through the week of Sept. 12, up 6% from the identical week final 12 months. College college students enrolled within the CTA’s U-Pass program additionally noticed a 16% enhance in ridership over the previous 12 months, with common weekday ridership as much as 65,000 the week of Sept. 12.