Photo: A CTA Red Line train in the Dan Ryan Expressway median near 31st Street (file photo). AlphaBeta135, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
CTA rides in September 2026
rides on Oct. 8, best post-COVID day
year-to-date growth
Chicago Transit Authority ridership hit its highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic this fall. The CTA carried 31.8 million rides in September 2026, its best month since the pandemic, and Oct. 8 set a new post-COVID single-day high of 1,285,107 rides, according to a ridership update presented to the CTA board this month.
CTA ridership sets post-pandemic records
The CTA board update says system ridership was up 2.8% year over year through September and up 2.4% over the last three months. All 12 of the system’s highest post-COVID days have come since Aug. 27, 2026. The top three were Oct. 8 (1,285,107 rides), Oct. 7 (1,277,446) and Sept. 22 (1,256,880).
The CTA serves Chicago and 35 surrounding suburbs with bus and rail, and it counts each bus boarding and each pass through a rail turnstile as one ride, according to the Northeastern Illinois Transit Authority’s data hub. In March 2026 the CTA restated its ridership figures retroactively to January 2025 after a methodology review, so comparisons with older published reports should use the restated data.
By the numbers: September ridership since 2019
The Chicago Data Portal’s daily boarding totals show 40.0 million CTA rides in September 2019, before the pandemic. That fell to 13.1 million in September 2020, then climbed every year: 21.0 million in 2021, 23.5 million in 2022, 25.9 million in 2023, 27.8 million in 2024 and 30.9 million in 2025.
The September 2026 total of 31.8 million is about 0.9 million rides, or 3.0%, above September 2025, and about 2.4 times the September 2020 low. It equals roughly 79% of the September 2019 level, so ridership is still about 8.2 million rides a month below where it was before the pandemic (TBR calculations from CTA and City of Chicago data). The portal’s monthly data also shows growth through the year: 24.4 million rides in January 2026, 29.6 million in April and 30.9 million in August.
Marathon Sunday and the 30-day pass
Big events helped. The CTA estimates 972,000 system rides on Chicago Marathon Sunday 2026, the highest post-pandemic Sunday and 11.4% (about 100,000 rides) more than Marathon Sunday 2025. Rail ridership that day, an estimated 626,000 rides, ranked first of any Sunday since at least 2001, ahead of the previous high of 592,000 on July 3, 2009. More than 55,000 runners started the race.
The agency also credits regular riders. The 30-day pass is up 11% this year and accounts for half of all system growth, the board update says, driven by more customers using the pass. The CTA sold more than 2,200 marathon-themed Ventra cards.
Transit gains as ride-hailing stalls
The update compares CTA trips with Uber and Lyft trips in Chicago. Ride-hailing recovered to about 80% of 2019 levels in early 2024 and peaked near 89% in late summer 2025, but it slipped back to 80% and 81% in June and July 2026. The CTA says the gap between ride-hail and transit recovery, which was widest in 2023 before the agency restored 2019 service levels and introduced its Frequent Network, had almost disappeared by summer 2026.
City policy is also aimed at bus speeds. On Oct. 30, CBS Chicago reported that the City Council approved a citywide expansion of Smart Streets, which uses cameras on CTA buses and city vehicles to ticket drivers who park in bus and bike lanes. The city says 84% of drivers who got a warning during the pilot did not offend again. The expansion starts in January 2027 and is expected to cover the whole city by 2028.
What it means for Chicago riders
The fall numbers come before winter, when ridership usually dips, and the CTA has not yet released its full October report. For Boston comparisons, see our coverage of Cambridge’s fare-free Route 1 bus and Waltham’s Trapelo Road bus survey. More stories for Chicago readers are on our Chicago news page.
Sources
- Chicago Transit Authority: Ridership and Marketing Update, board presentation (October 2026)
- City of Chicago Data Portal: CTA Ridership, Daily Boarding Totals
- Northeastern Illinois Transit Authority data hub: CTA ridership statistics
Additional sources
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