
I’m writing in reference to the op-ed “Public transit in Chicago will fall off a fiscal cliff without a plan for 2025.” The authors, U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi and state Sen. Ram Villivalam, use old data (from 11 months ago) to claim the CTA has only 53% of pre-pandemic ridership.
First, from June 2019 to June 2023 (the latest data in the Chicago Data Portal), that number is 61% of pre-pandemic levels. Eleven-month-old data ignores improvements CTA has tried to implement.