Chicago Transit Authority bus services
Chicago Transit Authority bus services are provided throughout Chicago, Illinois and the surrounding suburbs, operated by the Chicago Transit Authority., the CTA has 1,966 buses that operate 127 routes. In, the CTA bus system had a ridership of, or about per weekday as of.
History
Streetcar services
The first street railway service began in 1859 along State Street. At the time, the service was operated using horsecars. Within the next few decades, additional horsecar services, which were operated by multiple companies, entered operation. Throughout the 1880s, these lines were converted to cable cars. Between the 1890s and the 1900s, cable cars were replaced with electric streetcars.In 1914, the streetcar companies operating in Chicago were consolidated into the Chicago Surface Lines. In 1947, the consolidated company was acquired by the newly created Chicago Transit Authority.
Within the next decade after the acquisition, the CTA oversaw the removal of streetcar lines in favor of motor buses. On June 21, 1958, the last streetcar service, the Clark-Wentworth route, was removed.
Trolleybus services
In 1953, the CTA placed an order for Flxible buses after the latter's absorption of the Fageol Twin Coach Company.Until 1973, CTA's fleet included a large number of electric trolley buses – or "trolley coaches", as they were commonly known at the time. In the 1950s, the fleet of around 700 trolley coaches was the largest such fleet in the U.S., and represented about one-quarter of CTA's total number of surface-transit vehicles.
Possibly influenced by the 1967 Chicago blizzard, during which CTA trolley buses were unable to maneuver around abandoned automobiles without dewiring, CTA decided to discontinue trolley bus service. Trolley bus service was phased out in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and trolley buses ran for the last time on March 25, 1973.
Motor bus services
CTA buses were known as the "green limousine" or the "big green" — buses were one or more shades of green from the CTA's establishment until the end of the 1980s. With the delivery of the TMC RTS buses in 1991, a more patriotic color scheme was adopted, and the green scheme was fully phased out by 1996. A notable color scheme was the "Bicentennial" of about 1974 to 1976.CTA bought very few buses between the mid-1970s and the end of the 1980s. During this time, purchases were only made in 1979, 1982-83, and 1985. Another aspect of this period was that with the exception of the 1979 and 1983 MAN orders, none of those buses had air-conditioning, a budget saving move by the CTA. The 1972-76 fleet of GM "New Look" buses, 1870 total, which were originally air-conditioned, composed the majority of vehicles in service into the early 1990s.
In 1995, the CTA placed an experimental order of their first 65 low floor transit buses from Flyer Industries">New Flyer Industries">Flyer Industries, the D40LF. Also, that same year, the CTA received its last order of high floor buses from Flxible Corporation, shortly before the manufacturer folded. In 1998, the CTA placed an order for 484 new low floor transit buses from Canadian bus-building firm Nova Bus. This executed move billed the CTA as Nova's American launch customer for the latter's signature product, the LFS series. This was also done to meet the "Buy American" requirements for buses in the United States transit bus market, since General Motors ceased bus production and Flxible went out of business. Lastly, these buses replaced the ones that were built in 1983 and 1985 due to their age as well as their lack of air conditioning and ADA compliance.
In the 2010s, bus projects that sought to implement some features of bus rapid transit were conducted. The Jeffery Jump opened in November 2012, and the Loop Link opened in December 2015.
Fleet
Today, CTA's fleet is mostly dominated by the New Flyer D40LF which replaced buses that were built in 1991 and 1995. In 2014, CTA ordered 400 new buses from Nova. The number increased to 425 after it exercised an option. The CTA exercised another option for an additional twenty-five buses, from Nova Bus. Nova Bus delivered an additional 600 new buses which replaced the remainder of the older Nova buses that were delivered between 2000 and 2002, in addition to starting the retirement of New Flyer D40LF buses delivered between 2006 and 2009.In 2014, the CTA received their first electric buses from New Flyer, making the CTA the first major U.S. transit agency to use the new wave of electric buses as part of a regular service.
Active fleet
Notes:- Source:, unless otherwise indicated.
- Some individual numbers may no longer be in service.
- See for historic rosters.