CTA(Bus) vs. Pace (Chicago, Oak Brook: schools, live, buses)

[Midwest Revival]

Which bus service do you think is better?

[Vlajos]

Cta

[Alacran]

Cta

[Golden Camel]

CTA is better when you are traveling to points within the city.
Pace is better when you are traveling to points in the suburbs.

Some exceptions apply where they overlap at the fringes of the
city and close-in suburbs.

[glass_of_merlot]

Cta

[andrew61]

My confession of the day: I have lived in Chicago for a full 17 years now and have never been on a Pace bus.

Never even figured out how their system works.

[chet everett]

Totally different things. One is a large URBAN system and the other a REGIONAL system that covers an wide geographic area.
The two services are designed to NOT compete. The degree to which folks inside the City of Chicago residents need to reach points served by Pace buses is much more limited than the needs of city residents to rely on the CTA to get them to points inside the city. A large percentage of Pace service merely links commuters to Metra while a signficant portion of the CTA ridership serves the fairly vital role of ferrying kids to schools.

It would be hard to say that the Pace equipment is not in the main "nicer" than the CTA equipment but that sorta overlooks the major differences in what they have to deal. There are shuttle that have the feel of "long distance" cross country buses that Pace runs to get workers to jobs in the collar counties that the CTA could never keep running while the grid of intersecting bus routes that the CTA struggles to maintain for its riders is so far beyond the scope of what Pace would ever attempt as be beyond comprehension. The abuse that CTA buses is something that really cuts into the CTA's ability to do more than try to patch up their most overworked equipement.

[chirack]

Pace may have nicer cleaner busses and may be on time more often but they lack the frequency, hours, and number of routes that CTA offers. PACE is very geared to the 9-5 office worker. CTA on the other hand is geared to a larger audience.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by chirack

[font=Calibri]Pace may have nicer cleaner busses

Not really...

[pvande55]

PACE wins for safety, comfort and value. Their routes are usually longer. But the service is rarefied, they put them to bed early, and the routes are circuitous. They have a number of express routes. For example south suburban to Oak Brook. Routes and schedules are changed often, so you can't use last year's information. PACE also lacks needed routes.