3 ms·

The population of the City of Chicago is 2.7 million. The population of the Chicago metropolitan area i.e. "Chicagoland" is 9.5 million (almost the size of Mic

by wenc 8y ago

The population of the City of Chicago is 2.7 million. The population of the Chicago metropolitan area i.e. "Chicagoland" is 9.5 million (almost the size of Michigan). So 6.7 million people are technically not in the city. A significant fraction of them commute to downtown Chicago for work.

baybal2 8y ago
6.7 / 9.5 = 0.7. That's really a lot, 70%! How big of a portion of them are commuting to downtown?
- nkrisc 8y ago
  Might be hard to find that, but based on the info I can find, a good many do commute in to the city. You could dig down more into station level numbers to get a more accurate count. For example, if you wanted to exclude stations on the line that are within city limits, but not downtown. Anecdotally, as someone whose walk to work (from other transit) takes them against the flow of people coming from Union Station: it's a lot of people indeed. September 2018 Metra ridership report: https://metrarail.com/sites/default/files/assets/planning/ridership/september_2018_ridership_report_standalone.pdf https://metrarail.com/sites/default/files/assets/planning/ri... All reports: https://metrarail.com/about-metra/reports-documents/operations-ridership-data/monthlyannual-ridership https://metrarail.com/about-metra/reports-documents/operatio...
- lenzm 8y ago
  I can't find the source now, but I think it's about 600-700k commuters into the city center (Loop, River North, West Loop) every weekday.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    That's unexpectedly low, I'd say. In SZ, the daily commuter count approaches at least 2.5-3 million for people living on municipality's border. Shenzhen has twice as many people as Chicago. So, if we extrapolate, the amount of people commuting will double for Chicago if Chicago were to be turned into Shenzhen. That tells that much, much, more people in Chicago work outside of urban centre, or the portion of population who is working is simply less.
    - wenc 8y ago
      China is also the largest country in the world by population as well as hyper-urban. That makes the comparison difficult. The U.S. has 1/4 of China's populations, Chicago is the 3rd largest metro area in the U.S. It has a population comparable to Qingdao, but it's relative influence in the country is similar to Chongqing or Hangzhou.

by wenc 8y ago

baybal2 8y ago

6.7 / 9.5 = 0.7. That's really a lot, 70%! How big of a portion of them are commuting to downtown?

nkrisc 8y ago
Might be hard to find that, but based on the info I can find, a good many do commute in to the city. You could dig down more into station level numbers to get a more accurate count. For example, if you wanted to exclude stations on the line that are within city limits, but not downtown. Anecdotally, as someone whose walk to work (from other transit) takes them against the flow of people coming from Union Station: it's a lot of people indeed. September 2018 Metra ridership report: https://metrarail.com/sites/default/files/assets/planning/ridership/september_2018_ridership_report_standalone.pdf https://metrarail.com/sites/default/files/assets/planning/ri... All reports: https://metrarail.com/about-metra/reports-documents/operations-ridership-data/monthlyannual-ridership https://metrarail.com/about-metra/reports-documents/operatio...
lenzm 8y ago
I can't find the source now, but I think it's about 600-700k commuters into the city center (Loop, River North, West Loop) every weekday.
- baybal2 8y ago
  That's unexpectedly low, I'd say. In SZ, the daily commuter count approaches at least 2.5-3 million for people living on municipality's border. Shenzhen has twice as many people as Chicago. So, if we extrapolate, the amount of people commuting will double for Chicago if Chicago were to be turned into Shenzhen. That tells that much, much, more people in Chicago work outside of urban centre, or the portion of population who is working is simply less.
  - wenc 8y ago
    China is also the largest country in the world by population as well as hyper-urban. That makes the comparison difficult. The U.S. has 1/4 of China's populations, Chicago is the 3rd largest metro area in the U.S. It has a population comparable to Qingdao, but it's relative influence in the country is similar to Chongqing or Hangzhou.