Riders have been slow to return to public transit in Chicago. What will it take to get them back?
Riders have yet to fully return to trains and buses nearly two years since the crush of rush hour passengers abruptly disappeared.
When will they come back?
“That is the billion-dollar question. Not even a million-dollar question,” said P.S. Sriraj, director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
It will likely be tied to when and how employees who have been working remotely return to their offices, transportation agencies and experts say. But, amid continued uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, some employers have pushed back return-to-office dates in recent months and are weighing hybrid work schedules that combine days in the office with work-from-home days, throwing into question the traditional 9-5, five-day workweek that drove a significant portion of
