METRA ridership (Chicago, Aurora, Naperville: employment, to live, prices)

[waltlantz]

They say they can't pack em in enough recently with the gas prices

Which region of the Chicago area has highest METRA ridership? I always thought it was the North Shore.

[chitown85]

West suburban lines are usually crowded. Likely the North Shore has the highest.

[css9450]

Highest ridership..... By passengers per train? Or number of trains overall?

[waltlantz]

either measure would be fine

[css9450]

Hmmm. Well, checking the timetables, and grouping each line roughly by region, we'd have the following:

North Suburban (UP North/Milwaukee North/North Central line): 152 trains per day.
Northwest (UP Northwest): 63 trains per day.
West Suburban: (Milwaukee West/UP West/BNSF Aurora): 204 trains per day.
Southwest: (Rock Island/Metra Southwest/Heritage Corridor): 83 trains per day.
South Suburban (Metra Electric): 157 trains per day.

This is based on picking an approximate midpoint on each line. On several of the routes, there are certain trains that turn short of the final destination, so some endpoints such as Elgin, Harvard and Aurora see fewer trains than at other closer-in stations.

The single busiest Metra line is the Electric line.

[waltlantz]

Wow, I didn't expect that much from the west seeing as how compared to the North SHore and South Side suburbs they have towns and locales that are job centers themselves.

[oakparkdude]

Guys, this info isn't that hard to find. When looking for information, best choice is to go straight to the source.

Metra Quick Facts

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by sukwoo

Guys, this info isn't that hard to find. When looking for information, best choice is to go straight to the source.

Metra Quick Facts

And the winner is... the BNSF!

[Drover]

Originally Posted by waltlantz

They say they can't pack em in enough recently with the gas prices

Which region of the Chicago area has highest METRA ridership? I always thought it was the North Shore.

Gas prices? Adjusted for inflation, gas prices are right about where it's been since the mid 1980s. If Metra ridership is up substantially, current gas prices aren't the reason. My guess is ridership is up because a) traffic is getting intolerable, and 2) the last gas price spike pushed people to alternatives that they found were easier to live with than they thought it would be, so they stuck to the new routine.

[chet everett]

Drover is correct. The real "drivers" are not mere prices of the alternatives, but the tolerance of folks to alter their routine and rely on the schedule of transit. BNSF lines have some key "helpers" in that the Tollway Renovation is nightmarish, and vast numbers of people literally drive right past the parking lots on their way to the tollway -- makes it pretty easy to decide to "park n' ride". The pattern of development out west is still mostly "car centric" with regard to LOCAL shopping and such, but huge percentages of the workforce really does move out there knowing full well that their best bet for employment is in the Loop -- not dissimilar for the NS, but signficantly different than the NW burbs where there are many employers stretching from Woodfield to Hoffman Estates...
Population densities alone are not helpful either, nor are observations of the "train loading" as the size of trains differs signficantly. Expresses to Naperville / Aurora are generally the most cars that Metra can string together, while other trains are far shorter. The configuration of the cars themselves has some impact too, the newer cars trade ultimate seating capacity for ADA access and passenger ammenities (wider aisles, full size lav, more single seats).

The data Metra publishes is reliable.