Sheridan Fitzpatrick stopped taking the bus to work some two years ago when the waits became too long and passengers on board became too disrespectful.
She recalled one instance when, with snow on the ground, she waited an hour for a bus that never arrived.
So she bought a car and now drives to her job at Daley’s Restaurant in Woodlawn.
“I rode the bus for years and years before that, because I had to,” she said.
In the two years since Fitzpatrick stopped taking the bus, the CTA continued to struggle to provide frequent, reliable service . The agency first cut bus schedules to try to boost reliability and then began adding back service. Officials said scheduled service returned to prepandemic levels a few days before Christmas.
But a new analysis shows that some neighborhoods were slower than others to get back planned service — and many of the neighborhoods that fared the worst have particularly high unemployment rates and low household incomes. They were slow to get back service even though a CTA-commissioned report noted that these are the kinds of neighborhoods where the benefits of transit are clearest.