Earlier this month, the CTA announced it was launching a "Frequent Network for Buses," with runs scheduled to show up every 10 minutes or less, all day, seven days a week. The plan called for providing shorter headways (waits between runs) on 20 high-ridership bus lines by the end of 2025, with upgrades to four more routes each quarter.
The transit agency said the increased service would be in effect from 6 a.m to 9 p.m. Monday to Friday, and between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekends. The program would kick in on Sunday, March 23, on eight South and West side routes with heavy ridership:
- J14 Jeffery Jump
- #34 South Michigan
- #47 47th Street
- #54 Cicero
- #60 Blue Island/26th
- #63 63rd Street
- #79 79th Street
- #95 95th Street
As I mentioned in my previous post about the program, March 23 also happened to be my birthday. My Zodiac sign is Aries. But, since I'm a sustainable transportation advocate, I wasn't planning on marking the occasion by cruising our city in the eponymous 1980s Dodge sedan.
Now, back in 2011 when I turned 40, I wrote a story for Newcity magazine titled, "Forty: Turning a milestone into an epic hike across suburbia." It was about my fun, if blister-inducing, three-day / 40-mile walk from Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood to the far-southwest suburb of Aurora, visiting lots of bike trails and tiki venues along the way.
Since I was turning 54 on Sunday, I opted to celebrate by checking out the promised frequent service on the #54 Cicero bus. (Cicero Avenue is 4800 West, six miles west of State Street.) Call it a busman's holiday, or at least a transit reporter's idea of a fun adventure.
Folks from the grassroots transit advocacy group Commuters Take Action previously told me they were concerned that the frustrating "bus bunching" problem might mess with the ten-minute intervals. So I wanted to see if that seemed to be much of an issue on Cicero. I also planned to ask riders what they thought about the new schedule.
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Sunday afternoon, I bicycled from my home in Uptown about four miles west on Montrose Avenue (4400 N.) to Cicero Avenue, where the northern terminus for the #54 bus is located, in the Portage Park community. The bus turnaround is just 0.3 miles west, roughly a six-minute walk, from the Kennedy Expressway and the Montrose Blue Line station. The Metra Milwaukee District North Line's Mayfair stop is just east of the turnaround.
The #54 goes eight miles south to a multi-route turnaround at 24th Place in suburban Cicero, appropriately enough, near the Pink Line's and the Metra BNSF Line's same-named stations. According to Google Maps, the full trip south on the Cicero bus line was taking about an hour during Tuesday's evening rush.
By the time I locked up my bike around 2:50 p.m. on a rack near the Cicero bus' Montrose turnaround, it was raining moderately hard, but luckily I brought along full weatherproof gear. That was good, because there was no shelter for CTA customers waiting at that stop.
Passenger Dezwon Quinn seemed to be stoic about the situation, but fortunately he didn't have to wait long for his ride. He had come from his job at O'Hare Airport via the Blue Line and was going to take the #54 bus south to Jackson Boulevard (300 S.) to head home to his West Side apartment.
Quinn said he hadn't heard about the new 10-minute bus frequencies before, but was happy about the news, because he's used to 15-minute headways at that location. "That's good, especially in the winter when it's cold and you have to stand outside, or it's weather like this, so you don't have to wait in the rain."
His #54 Cicero bus left at 2:58 p.m., followed by another one three minutes later, and a third 13 minutes after that. Eight minutes later at 3:22, I departed in the fourth bus. Obviously, the southbound drivers weren't precisely following the ten-minute interval schedule, even though they didn't have any traffic to contend with yet.
We passed by the Metra Grand/Cicero station, and then I got off the bus at 3:41 p.m. at North Avenue (1600 N.), roughly the center point of the route, in the Austin community. There was a bus shelter there, which was good because by then it was pouring, and eventually there were about eight CTA customers waiting under the canopy.
Before the stop got crowded, I spoke with Roberto Sanchez, who had just come from church. He said he often rides the Cicero bus, and also usually experiences 15-minute headways. He too said he was pleased to hear the headways are supposed to be shortened. "That'd be great, especially on weekends, when the waits can be really long."
Nine minutes after my bus stopped at North and departed, a second stopped at 3:50 p.m., followed by a third at 4:01. I boarded another one at 4:20, so clearly there wasn't consistent ten-minute timing. We passed Cicero stations on the Green, Blue, and Pink lines before arriving at the southern terminus at 4:44 p.m.
The 24th Place/Cicero turnaround serves several CTA and Pace bus routes. These include the #54B South Cicero, which continues south on the Avenue to the Ford City Mall at 76th Street in Chicago's West Lawn community.
To take a break from the rain before observing more bus departures at the turnaround, I headed half a block north to a branch of Nicky's The Real McCoy, a local fast food joint, at 2400 S. Cicero Ave., for a Big Baby. That's a double cheeseburger with lots of grilled onions on a sesame seed bun, which some consider to be the archetypal Chicagoland burger.
Back at the turnaround, I saw several CTA buses, plus a supervisor in a white SUV. Perhaps thanks to her coaching, the #54 (North) Cicero runs were departing the stop like clockwork, at 5:29 p.m., 5:39 p.m., and 5:49 p.m. The manager seemed a little suspicious of why I'd been hanging out at the terminal for so long, so I boarded the latter.
It was an uneventful ride back north, as I thought about what I'd seen that afternoon. It was obvious that the lack of dedicated, camera-enforced bus-only lanes on Cicero, which means buses are blocked by car drivers, isn't helping the bus-bunching issue. But having the runs leave the turnarounds at exactly ten minutes is something the CTA does have some control over.
It's inevitable there's going to be a learning curve for bus operators during these first few days of the program. But if the Frequent Network for Buses initiative is going to be successful in the long run, the transit agency should address the regular departures from terminals issue ASAP.
Arriving back at Montrose a little before 6:30 p.m., I unlocked my bike and pedaled a little over two miles east to catch my friend Joe's Southern rock band the Whiskey Misfits at the Montrose Saloon, 2933 W. Montrose. Unsurprisingly, they played a killer rendition of ZZ Top's bluesy "Jesus Just Left Chicago." But I was a little disappointed that they didn't cover the band's gritty "Waitin' for the Bus," which could have been my theme song that day.
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