Have you ever wondered how your station stacks up against the rest of the Metra system in terms of how many passengers use it on a daily basis? Well, we’ve got the latest rankings according to Metra’s 2018 boarding counts.
The top three busiest stations remained the same between the 2016 and 2018 counts. Route 59 on the BNSF Line has been Metra’s busiest station for more than a decade. Naperville, also on the BNSF, was second and Ravenswood on the Union Pacific North Line ranked third.
With 242 stations across our six-county region, determining passenger volume allows us to better understand how the Metra system is being used and how potential service adjustments may affect riders. Since we don’t have turnstiles, we can’t know the exact number of passengers at each station unless we physically count them as they get on and off the trains. Such counts aren’t practical on a daily basis so the last such “on/off” count was conducted in 2016. Between these counts, we use tickets sales to estimate passenger trips by month and conductor counts to measure passenger loads by train.
Here are some more interesting tidbits from our latest census, conducted in the fall of 2018:
The average number of daily boardings at stations across the system is 624, with 99th Street/ Beverly Hills on the Rock Island closest to that average at 645.
There were some changes in the top 10 busiest stations. Elmhurst on the Union Pacific West Line surged from seventh to fourth, while Evanston Davis Street and Aurora dropped out of the top ten to the 12th and 13th positions, respectively.
Route 59 had 6,339 boardings, or 2,324 more than the next closest station, Naperville, with 4,015.
The busiest stations outside of downtown on each line are: Ravenswood (UP North, No. 3), Glenview (Milwaukee District North, No. 22), Buffalo Grove (North Central Service, No. 76), Arlington Heights (UP Northwest, No. 5), Schaumburg (Milwaukee District West, No. 20), Elmhurst (UP West, No. 4), Route 59 (BNSF, No. 1), Lemont (Heritage Corridor, No. 106), Tinley Park 80th Ave. (Rock Island, No. 8), Oak Lawn Patriot Station (SouthWest Service, No. 31) and Homewood (Metra Electric, No. 32).
