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Info for Elementary & High School Students

Welcome aboard!

We’re your ride not just to and from school, but also to anywhere you want to be in and around Chicago!

We can get you to work, shopping, food, events, libraries, fantastic parks and event spaces all across town.

Student Ventra Cards

If you have a Student Ventra Card, you’ll automatically get the special Student Fare when you’re attending classes. Outside of Student Fare hours, on weekends or when you’re not in school, your card keeps working and regular fare is deducted automatically when you ride.

You or your parent/guardian can load fare to your card in person (at vending machines or more than 1,000 locations) or, if registered, on the Ventra website or in the Ventra app. The Ventra app also shows your balance in an instant and sends notifications when your card is low on fare.

If you take summer classes, your parents or your school might need to take steps to renew the card’s Student Fare privileges each semester (depending on who got the card for you). Check with your school for details.

On weekends and over the summer, your card will keep working, but instead of the student fare you’ll be paying a regular fare, as appropriate.

See our Student Reduced Fares page for full details.

Just starting high school?

High school is an exciting time where you might begin to discover all that our great city has to offer, and transit’s a great way to do that!

Be sure to check out our Maps page to get a sense of where transit can take you. You can also use tools like Google Maps or the RTA Trip Planner to get door-to-door directions on CTA (as well as our friends at Metra and Pace), too. And, there are a ton of great apps that use data we publish to tell you when the next bus or train are coming.

We hope you’ll get to see us as your way to see new neighborhoods, visit museums, get to important institutions, experience music and art and food unique to Chicago and from all around the world. We live in a world-class city, and it’s easy to get to all of it because of transit.

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