The 111A was created because the city was patting itself on the back for getting a Walmart built on Doty Rd and then realized there was no bus service in the area, because the land was formerly vacant industrial. The local alderman publicly chastised CTA, avoiding any blame, even tho the project is his baby. So they threw in a circulator route instead of extending nearby routes. The 173 was a contract route designed and paid for by UofC, it’s never coming back unless UofC pays for it again.
Pace route 385 is one of the weirdest routes I know of. It's a very weird and pretty inefficient route considering it runs east and west along 87th st, 111th st, 127th st I would imagine that once the Red Line extension opens for revenue service many routes like 103 and 106, (111, 111A, 112) etc would be consolidated
Definitely agree that Pace Bus route 385 is one of Pace's weirdest routes. As mentioned, it operates on 3 streets and it pretty much connects to Rt 383 3 times as the route intersects Cicero Ave 3 times. Including connecting to other Pace Bus routes that start and end their trips at Midway CTA Orange Line Station at least 2 times. A few years ago, before we have the current route 315 today, that route used to have a weird routing. The original Rt 315 operated to/from Austin CTA Green Line Station and near Ridgeland CTA Green Line Station. It's basically routes 314 & 315 combined in one route and this was before we have route 314.
I went to uchicago and I am absolutely _loving_ all the Hyde Park representation in this video!! I used the 2 and 192 a few times as different ways to get downtown, they're certainly weird! part of the issue is that the main services to Hyde Park (the CTA 6 and Metra Electric) all bring you to Grant Park with no great way of going west, so having alternative services that get you further than Michigan are actually super helpful (not to mention other factors like the 192's ridership source of university hospital staff commuters!)
To say the 206 runs during peak service is generous as you can't even commute with a 9-5 on the Northside with it. With the last afternoon bus now leaving Howard at 4:30p, this means you need to leave work at 3:45p or earlier to even think about catching it assuming you need to transfer from the Red Line. It really needs to run until 6:30p like it did before they greatly cut service in 2018.
I would totally put 11 on the list when it used to serve between Howard/McCormick and Clinton Blue line before it split into 11 and 37. The route was unnecessarily long and does make quite a journey.
From what I’m told from supervisors who sit at the UPS terminals, It serves the routing it does to connect with the neighborhood. CTA didn’t exactly design the routing when it was first introduced as a pilot route. When UPS first pitched the idea to CTA, the employees & supervision at UPS came up with two different routings, then voted on it. Today’s 169 routing simply made more sense because the people who rode the route, they came from separate areas around the south side. Not to mention, the 69th Street Terminal has more connections after ending its trip at 69th. The bus also has to layover, in case it gets there early. It’s much easier to do so at 69th than 79th.
That is quite interesting not gonna lie. But it definitely does make sense for that route to start/end their trips at 69th CTA Red Line Station since the station has a bus station as mentioned above. Plus you can pretty travel at any direction with multiple routes serving that station as well, assuming that's where the general ridership comes from.
I love being a regular user of 2 of these routes 😅 the 2 & 192 are definitely weird. I think they exist mostly to express people to UChicago & CMed they make getting down to Hyde Park much much easier 😅
I went to Kennedy and never understood the 165 not being as accessible as so many kids who aren’t from clearing and need to access the orange line and, as you mentioned, the 165 is def faster than 62H or 63W
i would assume the 165 is primarily used by kids who go to hancock now, for its convince of direction being used by kids who take the orange line down to midway, heading west in morning, east in afternoon/evening (compared to walking 2 blocks down from 63W, unfortunate case for anyone in clearing/garfield ridge who HAS to go east)
I think that that 173 was created because at that time and still to this day Lakeview was a party neighborhood. I think that CTA thought a lot of University of Chicago students would want to go to Lakeview and party. And a lot of students did use it. I do remember sometimes the 173 was super packed back then. But it didn't last very long. So it was really basically just a party bus that was short-lived.
I'm surprised Rt 54A North Cicero/Skokie Blvd isn't mentioned. I honestly find that route weird since it operates only during the weekday rush hour. The weirdest part about it is that fact that when when that route isn't operating, passengers needs to suburbs like Skokie, IL to take a long detour just to access portions of the route like Dempster-Skokie & Oakton-Skokie Yellow Line Stations and Old Orchard Mall as perfect examples.
I wish 54A bus service more often, than just rush hour. But ridership has never been high on that route, unfortunately. 54A used to be ran by CTA, and Pace briefly instituted a 254 bus after CTA cut all 54A hours on Saturday. Though as ridership was very low on the 254 bus route, Pace eliminated the 254 bus. In the late 2010s, it was proposed for Pace to bring back a modified version of the 254 bus. The modification was that it would express for part of the route on the Edens Expressway(I think between Foster and Touhy), then run west on Foster and south on Milwaukee to get to Jefferson Park transit center. To this day, that idea has never been implemented as a new bus route. Probably since all these bus route revision ideas for Pace were proposed barely before COVID, and of course the pandemic put a pause to some of these ideas Pace considered doing for North Shore region service.
The 192 pm route is useless imo. The only people that get on it are university staff at 59th. But the university added a shuttle that circled campus and takes you directly to the Garfield Red Line. Perhaps some people just don't want to be on the red line from Garfield to Roosevelt but it's at least 10min quicker to take the shuttle to the red line to arrive at Roosevelt
I can think of a really weird bus route CTA had. You'll have to look up a vintage CTA map from the late 1970s. It was called the 89 University bus. It started roughly around where northeastern Illinois University is it ran up to northwestern University in evanston. It ran maybe about 3 or 4 times in the day during the weekdays. But it had a crazy routing. But yeah the 173 is an oddball route.
I don't remember the 89 bus running up to Evanston. As I remember before the CTA cut that route, it ran on Kedzie between(I think) somewhere near Lincoln and Jersey(forget how north it once ran to), south to I think the Logan Square Blue Line station. At some point I am going to research old CTA and RTA maps, to see if the 89 bus ever ran up to Evanston.
Yeah this was a route that was around in the late seventies and maybe up to the early 80s. They've recycled that number a couple of other different times in the past. Those are like historic routes.
In the case of the 33, its final scheduling structure of service in the AM rush only was a result of funding. If I remember correctly, the route was sponsored by Metra, the Chicago area's suburban commuter rail service. The route used to be peak only service both in AM and PM rush. However, somewhere along the way the subsidy was cut and only the AM rush service remained. After the 33, there was a 132 Goose Island Express which operated limit stops between Michigan/Congress Plaza and the Clybourn Metra Station. This route was subsidized by Mars Wrigley Confectionery and provided bidirectional peak only. Some Northbound trips ended at Blackhawk and Cherry streets in the Goose Island area near the Wrigley and other major Goose Island facilities while some Southbound trips ended at Union Station. It did not operate along the Magnificent Mile and Lake Shore Drive like the 33 when downtown, but instead along major streets that took it near or past all the downtown Metra terminals, including La Salle Metra, Union and Ogilvie stations. It then operated along Halsted, deviating to the Blackhawk and Cherry stop before returning to Halsted, Clybourn and Cortland to the Clybourn Metra station. It operated from 2006 up until its elimination in December 2018 due to Mars Wrigley cutting the subsidy.
I do remember the 132, and it definitely would have been in the regular top 10 if it still existed. I still find it confusing why Metra wanted the 33 to stop at the stations it did rather than serving the downtown stations. Metra really should've just subsidized extra service on the 120, 121, and 125.
ok, ups bus and Hyde park only 2 I been on the rest I've seen downtown, most I should say but has no idea where they were going lol. now pace will confuse the heck out of you
Question about this comment: if you were to work for the CTA and had the idea to bring back these routes mentioned, what would you want to the schedules to be like and what would the destinations be to and from in your opinion?
56A probably won't come back, due to the fact Pace runs the 270 bus and also Pulse(their limited stop bus service, I think every 1/2 mile) bus service, on Milwaukee. What I do wonder, is if CTA would ever consider doing a few 86 bus runs on Devon going west between Milwaukee and Devon/Harlem(instead of to the bus turnaround just north of Devon/Milwaukee), like there used to be before CTA cut 56A service? Unfortunately ridership was probably low on the 56A, when they did cut that route.
@@BoratWanksta I would say they should expend the 56 instead of Jeff Park Blue To Devon and Harlem for rush periods or Early Morning To Mid Evening and to finishing at Jefferson Park For Late Evening because 56A did has customers Or I do agree for the 86 bus to expand to Devon and Harlem
@@BoratWankstaPulse is Good but Pulse isn’t enough and 270 every hour is too much to wait for individual stops but still wait a hour is ridiculous and they don’t put 270 every 30 mins and most times people are getting pick up on elston by the pulse because they are confused
The purpose of the 192 is to show people with money coming from the University the beautiful properties in the hood between 55th Street and downtown without stopping in the hood. It's to start more gentrification on the South side. His bus is basically a real estate tour guide for people with money. Notice there are no stops between the University and downtown
