How COVID-19 impacted Chicago Metra’s ridership loss and recovery: 2019–2022

This study examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on weekday ridership patterns of the Metra commuter rail system serving the greater Chicago area from January 2019 to October 2022. A sequential statistical modeling framework is implemented to relate the spatial factors — including socioeconomic, land use, and sociodemographic variables — to ridership losses and recovery over time per each origin–destination station pair. Our findings indicate that workplace occupancy reductions due to remote work policies were the primary cause of weekday ridership loss. Conversely, gas prices and transit’s level of service encouraged ridership recovery. Spatial analysis revealed that ridership levels among office workers were largely unresponsive to rising gas prices and service improvements, while older adults, Asian populations, educators, and goods-producing workers exhibited greater sensitivity to enhanced transit service, which may be informative for future service planning.