MPC Vice President comments on CTA ridership
Published July 4, 2024, Chicago Reader
By Reema Saleh
Photo: James Hocking
The CTA’s missing riders
After a steep drop in ridership, passengers are slowly returning to the CTA. But some Chicagoans have put down their Ventra cards for new ways to travel the city.
In this article, interviews with experts and transit riders show how a slower post-pandemic recovery to CTA ridership could be a result of multiple factors. MPC Vice President Kendra Freeman considers service cuts, dating from before COVID, to be an issue while warning about the increase in the use of ride share apps, saying in part, “What we don’t want to see is a continual uptick in people getting in cars, especially when they’re taking single-vehicle rides…because that not only has traffic implications but also environmental implications.”