Chicago’s public transit fare collection system, Ventra, turned 10 years old in September. WNUR’s Brandon Kondritz rode down to the 95th and Dan Ryan ‘L’ station to find out how CTA celebrated the milestone and what’s next for public transportation across the city.
This story was selected as a Region 5 Radio News Reporting finalist in the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2023 Mark of Excellence Awards.
(natural sound: 95th/Dan Ryan ‘L’ station escalator, music fades in)
On Friday afternoon, commuters at the southern tip of the ‘L’s red line found more than the typical hustle and bustle of the 95th and Dan Ryan station. As patrons hopped off their trains and went up the escalator, they were met with music, art, and history, all to celebrate Ventra’s 10-year anniversary.
(natural sound: music fades up, then down)
Ventra is Chicago’s first fare collection system that allows riders to pay for all of the city’s public transportation services: CTA, Pace, and Metra. When it launched in 2013, Ventra made fare payment across Chicagoland entirely contactless, and this sound …
(natural sound: Ventra turnstile ding)
… quickly become synonymous with hopping on the ‘L’ or bus.
POPPE: The Ventra fare collection system has been around for 10 years. It’s gone through a host of evolution and innovation, and we really wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate Ventra, celebrate our riders, and kind of just have a fun event at a station.
That’s Molly Poppe, CTA’s Chief Innovation Officer. Although Ventra officially hit the terminals, stations, and streets of Chicago in 2013, its ten-year history is full of change already.
POPPE: So in 2015, we launched the Ventra mobile app, which brings together Pace, Metra, and CTA, so you’re able to pay for all three regional transit agencies through the mobile app. We’ve done partnerships to improve our Ventra vending machines, so you’ve seen new vending machines roll out. Really in the last 10 years, we’ve made marked improvements to start to have those partnerships with Apple, Google, and really start to meet where the contactless payment industry is.
While Friday’s party was full of Ventra history, it was completed with a drumline and DJ, a photo booth and interactive memory wall, sweet treats, and a presentation by Chicago’s own social media historian, Shermann ‘Dilla’ Thomas. Poppe said it was important to host the celebration at the 95th Street station, and she and her team worked to create an event that engaged all of the afternoon’s riders.
POPPE: When you think of a huge, great station in CTA, you think of 95th. It has so much space. There’s a built-in DJ booth—we have a DJ here two times a week. So we wanted to use the space and also be in the community where we can celebrate. You know, we didn’t want to do it someplace downtown, we wanted to do it where we can meet our riders. And 95th Street is one of our highest ridership stations.
(natural sound: ‘L’ riding down the track)
As an Auburn Gresham native, Dilla Thomas has spent most of his life commuting through the 95th Street station. With thousands of TikTok and Instagram followers, he’s used to making videos about Chicago’s history for viewers from all over the world to enjoy, but he said presenting at Friday’s celebration was special.
THOMAS: I’m honored. I spend a lot of time just in my life catching the bus and the train at 95th Street and the Dan Ryan, so to be disseminating history here is cool, but it also proves the point that positivity wins out. There are a lot of content creators—they got a million followers, they got a million views and streams on YouTube—but the city don’t ever ask them to come do anything. They’re not asked to come speak at events like this.
Thomas took listeners through Chicago’s fare collection history. Throughout most of the 1900s, riders used coin collection boxes to pay their fare. In the ‘90s, CTA rolled out magnetic strip cards that riders swiped at the turnstile, and the first version of contactless CTA payment debuted in 2002. 11 years later, CTA made the move to Ventra, which had one billion card, ticket, or mobile wallet taps in its first five years.
THOMAS: We’re not only just celebrating them but just celebrating the innovative ways Chicago pays for fares. Having to get a Ventra card can sometimes seem cumbersome—you want to throw a couple of bucks in—but robberies and financial-type crimes have gone down tremendously because we use the Ventra cards.
Thomas also shared some of his favorite CTA facts, including how the Blue Line was the first ever train to run down an expressway, and how Chicago was the first city in the nation to use an electrified third rail. His presentation also looked toward the future, which got riders like Khristian Ogao, who’s from the suburbs, thinking about CTA’s next steps.
OGAO: If you live by the highway, he said that your lifespan is about 20 years less compared to the north side of the city, where there’s expansive public transit—you live healthier over there. It just goes to show, for the longest time, I didn’t have a car, and I had always put an importance on using public transit for a lot of people who don’t have cars like me. It just goes to show that there needs to be more investment in the south side, because there’s not as much lines and services on the south side of the city.
The CTA’s working on some expansion, like the Red Line Extension Project, which proposes a 5.6-mile extension of red line service south of the 95th Street stop. It’s been in the works since 2006, and a preferred track alignment was selected in early 2018. Although progress is slow, both Ogao and Thomas said Friday’s event shows that CTA is making efforts to invest in the south and west sides of the city.
OGAO: I think they care a lot about investing in and expanding lines and expanding services. What’s really stopping them, I think, is funding, really. Expanding and investing in infrastructure in the United States in general can be so hard compared to what you see in other countries like China, where they’re doing so good with building all this really nice infrastructure, while here in the U.S. we’re kind of falling apart. So I think that bringing awareness is the first step to making sure our infrastructure in the city and the country is on top.
THOMAS: When you’re visible on the south side, it makes the south side feel like they belong to the city. And then when you feel like you belong, you participate, and we need the south and west side to participate more. Looking forward to the Red Line Expansion, all the way out to the far south side, but also, making it easier for folks to be able to use public transportation helps us all.
Aside from train service expansions, Poppe said CTA will soon get to work upgrading Ventra’s infrastructure. After all, it’s been 10 years since the thousands of contactless readers were installed at turnstiles and on buses throughout Chicagoland.
POPPE: In the next probably year, year and a half, we will start to see brand new Ventra equipment roll out and we will have a brand new Ventra system on the backend as well. In the last couple of years, we announced Ventra on Apple, so we have the virtual Ventra card on iPhone, we have the virtual Ventra card on Google Pay. We’re really going to build on that digital experience, continue to look to expand it, and really have new equipment, because the equipment we have out there is 10 years old and it’s time for a revamp.
(natural sound: overhead voice on the ‘L’ saying “doors closing”)
Above all, the celebration was a chance to reflect on everything that makes the CTA special. Taisei Okazaki, who’s from South Loop, said he’s been all over the country and the CTA remains one of his favorite public transit systems.
OKAZAKI: I’m originally from Japan, so I know how good, you know, transportation can be. I travel around the US, and this is the best transportation. It’s accessible, it’s okay on time. It’s not necessarily the cleanest, but compared to Philadelphia or New York, it’s cleaner and nicer. It’s been 30 years since the color scheme, which I think is a pretty smart idea—you make it visualized so it’s easier to transfer and whatnot.
Thomas said he hoped the celebration went beyond just talking about the Windy City’s public transportation. Because the party was all the way at the southern tip of the Red Line, he encouraged Chicagoans to explore parts of the city they might not have experienced before.
THOMAS: It’s very unique—again, it’s not something typical for 95th and Dan Ryan, right? On your way here and on your way home, maybe you’re experiencing other parts of the south side. Maybe you’re stopping at restaurants you didn’t know existed, maybe you’re looking at houses and the architecture here and you’re like ‘oh my God, that’s cool architecture.’
But at the end of the day, even those who were just coming and going through the 95th Street Station rode away with a greater sense of our city’s transit system history.
(natural sound: ‘L’ train riding away)
On Chicago’s South Side, Brandon Kondritz, WNUR News.
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