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What is the 152 bus?
The 152 Addison bus is a major bus route that is essential for transportation in Chicago. The bus travels east and west on Addison street, ranging from Cumberland to Lake Shore covering roughly 10 miles. The 152 bus provides major connections to the most frequently used trains such as: Brown Line, Blue Line and Red Line. These connections extend its range making it easily accessible and useful for daily transportation. Similarly to the 49, the 152 bus is a highly used bus route. The bus runs on a 5:00 am to 10:30 pm basis and uses buses which are able to accommodate for disabled people. Though the Addison bus does not offer night service, it has a high frequency of buses, with one typically coming every 15 minutes, and even less during rush hour (afternoons).
How is the 152 bus significant to Lane Tech?
Since Lane Tech is on the street Addison and Western, the 152 bus play key roles in transportation to Lane Tech because they reach Lane Tech quickly, and with no side routes. The 152 bus is also highly significant for Lane tech students because of its huge span and coverage across Chicago. With such major connections, as previously mentioned, the 152 western bus is great for reaching various places and getting Lane Tech students to school. The 152 bus has the Western bus stop which stops directly in front of the school, which is where many students are seen getting off in the morning and boarding after school. If you were to look at the 152 bus right as school is about to start (at around 7:45), you will see the 152 bus stops swarmed with students all excited to start their day at Lane Tech!
disclaimer: some of the data that we had worked with has some errors and inconsistancies. Considering that the CTA had to track all of the people boarding and getting off, it is extremely hard to maintain perfect and polished data. Our students had to work around this, so some of the results might not be 100% accurate
Most on-boardings and off-boardings separated by moth and type of day
Our students decided to look into the top 5 most on boarded and off board stops in the month of may (when school is in) during a weekend(days which school is out) going westward. Two of the most commonly boarded stops are 'L' stations (train stations) which makes sense as people can easily transfer from the red or brown line to the bus. Western being one of the stops with the most alightings shows that the people who get off at the western stop in front of Lane, are not only Lane Tech students, because this is showing a time which school is out.
Here, we looked into the same data but on weekdays when school is in, and as we can see, western went from the 3rd most off boarded stop, to the top off boared stop, showing that Lane Tech students likely do influence this increase in offboardings. Since the Red Line 152 stop is the most on boarded stop for both weekdays and Sundays, it shows that when taking the 152, most people use the red line to reach the 152 and transfer to that stop.
Here, we looked into the most and least on boardings going eastbound in October (when school is in). We see that many boardings occur at Western which again could have something to do with the large amount of students that board at western. We looked into why Kenndy Xway was such a popular stop, and with research we found that it is a critical high-traffic stop which connects Avondale to downtown and O'Hare airport.
We then looked into the least and most off boardings going east during the weekdays in October. Here, we see very similar trends as in May (both are school months) that the Red Line, Brown Line, and Lane Stadium drive are some the most off boardings for stops.
Does Lane Tech school days actually correlate to 152 bus ridership?
Here, we looked into how these stops around Lane tech have specifically been affected by the school days. The 152 bus is notorious at Lane Tech for having many students ride it to get to school, but it begs the question: does Lane Tech noticeably correlate to the 152 ridership? We decided to dive deeper into this by creating heat maps of the on rates (rate of passengers that get on at a particular stop) and off rates (rate of passengers that get off at a particular stop) of the 152 bus on a month which school is in, versus a month which school is out. A typical Lane Tech school starts at 8:00 am (but students are expected to arrive at 7:45), and it ends at 3:15 pm. As previously stated, the Western stop is the bus stop that stops right in front of Lane Tech, so we decided to specifically look deeper into that stop.
When looking at the 152 bus data, the data is set up so that there is typically a 20-30 minute period which the data does not calculate the time the bus reaches a specific stop. This means that when looking at the western bus stop right in front of Lane, we typically want to add 20-30 minutes after what the time reads. This being said, when the time reads 7:00, this typically means people exit the bus at around 7:30. (data is in military time units)
When looking at the western bus in October, a month which school is in, we graphed the frequency of the off rates and on rates throughout the day, specifically narrowed down to weekdays (days which school is in). Looking at the graph we can see an extremely strong correlation between when school starts and ends and the 152 bus rider ship. At 7:00 am (about 7:30), we can notice that there is a concentrated amount of people who exit the 152 bus going westward. We can also see a concentration of people getting on the 152 bus going the opposite direction at 3:00(3:30). When looking at the same stop right in front of Lane Tech in July, a month when school is out, we can see that the bus routes are way more dispersed throughout the whole day. This shows that Lane Tech school is most likely the leading factor in this strong correlation of ridership during school days. From this, we can infer that many students use the west bound 152 bus to get to school and many use the 152 East bus to get home from school.
Brown Line's significance
To further look the routes which lane students take, we inferred that many students would ride to the Brown Line to get to school, considering that it covers a large span of Chicago. Furthermore, we decided to take a deeper dive into the Brown Line stop, which is where people would typically transfer from the brown line, to the 152 (the bus to Lane Tech) or vise versa. When examining the data, we can see a very strong correlation between Brown Line transit transfers and Lane Tech closing and opening hours. When looking at the Brown Line stop in October, we can see that on the 152 bus going westward, there is a concentration of people getting on the 152 Brown Line stop at 7:00(7:30). Similarly, going eastward, a concentration of people exit the bus to take the Brown Line at around 3:00(3:30). The July data, when school is out, is less concentrated and more dispersed throughout the day, leading us to infer that students are the main cause of this increase in Brown Line Transit. Since the concentration of people in the October graphs of the 152 Brown Line stop is fairly similar to concentration of the October graphs of the 152 western stop, we can infer Lane students are the cause of this condensation, and that many students likely transfer to the Brown Line after taking the 152 addison bus.
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