Rush-hour CTA express bus service on Ashland and Western avenues will resume Dec. 21 after a five-year hiatus, the transit agency’s board voted Wednesday.
And in response to prolonged complaints from displaced riders, the CTA will conduct a pilot project starting next spring that brings back at least temporarily the No. 31 31st Street bus route and the severed portion of the No. 11 Lincoln route, CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. said.
Carter said details have not been worked out on the frequency of service for the No. 11 and No. 31 routes, or how long the pilot project will run before a decision is made over whether to restore the service permanently.
He said the move is the result of feedback from riders, but it also was apparently fueled by protests organized by community groups and pressure from several aldermen. Money is available in the 2016 budget to run the pilot project, Carter said.
“(Rider) demand that may not have been there before may be there today,” Carter said when asked about the CTA’s previous refusal to reverse the bus cuts.
In 2012, the CTA eliminated the portion of No. 11 service along Lincoln Avenue between the Western Brown Line stop in Lincoln Square and the Fullerton Red, Brown and Purple lines stop in Lincoln Park. The cutback saved the CTA about $1.4 million annually, officials said.
The change was part of a “de-crowding program” aimed at making buses and trains less congested by adding service to 48 bus routes and most train lines. About a dozen bus routes were eliminated or shortened.
The No. 11 bus still runs between Skokie and the Western stop, and the No. 37 Sedgwick bus route runs between the Fullerton and Clinton rail stops.
CTA bus service along 31st Street was cut in 1997. The CTA used to operate two routes along 31st but scaled back because of declining ridership, the transit agency said.
Some South Side residents long have called for resumption of service between the lakefront through the Bridgeport neighborhood and to suburban Cicero.
The CTA a few years ago studied adding service to 31st Street between the West Side and the lakefront, but the agency determined ridership demand was insufficient to help support the expense.
The closest east-west bus routes to 31st Street are along 35th Street and 26th Street.
Meanwhile, the X9 Ashland and X49 Western express service will operate with stops about every half-mile during weekday morning and evening peak travel periods starting Dec. 21, the CTA said. It will supplement the local bus lines on the two routes, which are among the busiest on the CTA system. Buses on Ashland and Western carry more than 55,600 riders a day, officials said.
The new service is expected to shave up to 22 minutes off the commutes of express bus riders and up to 10 minutes for riders on the local buses after the locations of some bus stops are tweaked to better serve rider demand and changes to traffic signals are completed, officials said.
The city of Chicago will install special signals giving buses longer green lights to cross intersections and get out in front of traffic. The signal project is scheduled to be completed in 2017, officials said.
The cost of the express bus service on Ashland and Western is $3.5 million a year, said Carole Morey, CTA chief planning officer. Express buses on the two routes were eliminated in 2010 as part of budget cuts.
“Ultra-express” bus rapid transit projects featuring dedicated bus-only lanes on Ashland and Western are still being planned by the CTA and the Chicago Department of Transportation. But those projects are not funded and they face opposition from some businesses, community groups and automobile drivers who are opposed to the planned elimination of some left-turn lanes on Ashland.
The Emanuel administration announced the $160 million Ashland bus rapid transit project in 2013, with the goal of cutting travel times by 80 percent.
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