CTA to determine with Pace ways to enhance bus service for more than 11,000 daily customers
The CTA announced it will conduct a study with Pace of bus service along a busy 11-mile portion of South Halsted to determine ways to jointly improve service reliability and safety, as part of CTA’s ongoing efforts to improve bus service for customers.
The Chicago Transit Board today approved an intergovernmental agreement that allows CTA and Pace to jointly look at ways to better coordinate service and improve the customer experience on South Halsted bus routes.
The study will begin this summer and will assess the four CTA and Pace routes that serve South Halsted, looking at a variety of possible modifications such as improved service coordination, bus stop spacing optimization, enhanced boarding areas, and elements of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) such as dedicated bus lanes and the installation of traffic signals and “queue jumps” that prioritize buses at busy intersections.
“Mayor Emanuel and I have placed a high priority on making our customers’ commutes better, including improving bus service,” said CTA President Dorval R. Carter, Jr. “Our goal is to improve bus speeds and service reliability and other ways to make the customer experience more pleasant, in the way that we’ve made improvements elsewhere on our bus system.”
CTA is pursuing the South Halsted Corridor to enhance mobility for more than 11,000 Far South Side and South Suburbs bus customers that travel through the Corridor and connect to the 95th and 79th Street CTA Red Line stations each weekday. CTA believes there are opportunities for improvements on everything from how buses move through traffic to amenities for customers.
The South Halsted study follows a number of recent bus service improvements by CTA, including:
• Reinstatement of Ashland and Western Express routes
• Expanded bus service on several South Side routes
• Launch of Loop Link
• Piloting new service on 31st Street and expanded service on
#11 Lincoln, #39 Pershing
• Pilots to allow customers to prepay fares ahead of boarding buses.
The CTA earlier this year received a federal grant through the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Agency’s (CMAP) Unified Work Program (UWP) to do the South Halsted Corridor Enhanced Bus Feasibility and Planning Study.
###