Since October, the CTA has been operating two newly purchased battery electric buses. Since early December, I’ve gathered bus tracker data on the six routes that these buses are initially operating on: 7 – Harrison, 120 – Ogilvie/Streeterville Express, 121 Union Station/Streeterville Express, 124 – Navy Pier, 125 – Water Tower Express, and 157 – Streeterville/Taylor. I’ve also tracked some major north-south bus routes on the south side that I will comment on in a future post. As before, plots of the bus tracker data are available here. I’ve also added zipped csv files of the plotted position and speed data.
The electric buses, buses 700 and 701, have been replacing diesel buses on up to two peak-hour tripper runs per day each. Each run lasts between two and four hours and up to 35 miles. In the mornings, the buses have either taken run number 52 of route 157 inbound switching to route 121 at Union then the 120 in Streeterville, or they’ve taken run 54 of route 120, switching to route 121 in Streeterville, then route 124 for a round trip. In the afternoons, they’ve taken run 3 of routes 7, 125, and 121, or run 2 of route 7. On my plots of these routes, diesel buses are in red and electric buses in blue.
