Ridership
Ridership Statistics
Welcome to the Ridership Statistics portion of RTAMS. This page includes data on transit usage patterns by Service Board and system wide. The data is presented by different views including time of day, bus routes, train lines, stations, and more.
The CTA is responsible for operations and planning for the rapid transit and bus systems serving the City of Chicago and 35 surrounding suburbs.
CTA bus and rail ridership results are collected using electronic fare collection system data. Each customer boarding a bus or passing through a rail station turnstile is counted as a single rider. Follow the links to the right to explore ridership data for CTA buses and rail lines overall, as well as ridership by bus route or rail station.
Metra is responsible for operations and planning for the commuter rail system serving the Northeastern Illinois region.
Metra Rail summary data is an estimate based on ticket sales (monthly, 10-ride, and one way) for a given month. Metra Station detail data is based on a count of boardings (the number of passengers boarding a train) and alightings (the number of passengers exiting a train) on a given weekday for each station and for each train from the agency's bi-annual survey. Follow the links to the right to explore overall Metra ridership data sorted by line, fare zone, station, and time of day.
Pace Suburban Bus is responsible for operations and planning for the suburban bus system serving the Northeastern Illinois region. Pace also operates the region’s Paratransit, Vanpool and Dial-a-Ride services.
Pace ridership data is primarily collected using the electronic fare collection systems for each passenger boarding a bus. Ridership for Pace's contract bus routes and Vanpool, which do not have electronic fare collection systems, is manually reported. Follow the links to the right to explore overall Pace ridership data sorted by route and for Paratransit, Vanpool and Dial-a-Ride services.
The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) is responsible for finanical oversight and conducting transit planning for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Metra and Pace, which together provide nearly two million rail and bus rides each weekday across northeastern Illinois.
RTA's system ridership data is reported annually from data provided by the National Transit Database (NTD).