Major “L”: How the Chicago Transit Authority Gentrified its Elevated Trains
Creators: name: Wilcox, Micah
Publisher: name: University of Chicago
Year: 2023

description: The City of Chicago has pursued a path of urban valorization based on advertising the city as a nexus of entertainment, leisure, and consumption made possible by its dense, walkable environment. This valorization was carried out in the context of an economically neoliberal approach that consisted of market-focused policy choices and general government non-interventionism except to support market-based approaches. These policies aggravated existing inequality in discriminated-against communities while advancing gentrification in others in the form of new, higher-income residents and the restructuring of neighborhoods around their preferences. Despite being one of the few areas where Chicago undertook direct government investment, the Chicago Transit Authority’s “L” elevated train system’s ridership changed in ways that mirror this gentrification-disinvestment pattern, with Chicago’s more affluent/gentrifying North and and less-well off South Sides experiencing ridership increases and decreases disproportionate to their population changes. In the context of this data and the city government’s own observation that Chicago’s incentivizing of market-based development near “L” stations failed to produce development in disadvantaged neighborhoods, Chicago implicitly gentrified the “L” by leaving the development of the built environments surrounding stations up to the uneven distribution of the market. This market-first, hands-off approach on the part of the city government resulted in the “L”’s functioning as an amenity in certain neighborhoods and an afterthought in others based on presence or absence of development in surrounding stations. My argument is supported by multiple linear regression analyses that identify significant, strong positive correlations between ridership and census-tract change in median income (as estimated by the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Five Year Estimates) between 2010 (2006-2010) and 2019 (2015-2019) at the citywide level and on the North Side. I obtained these findings by comparing Chicago census tracts to their closest “L” station (excluding O’Hare Airport (Blue) and including Oak Park-Austin (Blue)). I also found significant, strong positive correlations between these variables when I analyzed only tracts ≤ 0.5 miles from their closest station. Although there is a positive relationship between population and ridership change at the citywide level and certain regional levels when broken down by line, I observe no relationship between them at the overall regional level. These results support my argument that the “L” essentially functioned like an amenity whose increased ridership paralleled increased income on the North Side even as ridership decreased on the South Side, where I observed a significant, weak negative correlation between median income and ridership for all tracts. Chicago is now fashioning a set of government-involved policies (in contrast to its prior neoliberal/purely market-focused approach to transit-oriented development) to address gentrification and inequality (including funding of development near neglected “L” stations). With this policy ongoing, it is relevant to understand the correlating characteristics of neighborhoods with “L” stations – particularly those outside of the Loop – that experienced the greatest increases and decreases in ridership. This data will ideally help drive long-term equitable development around the CTA that expands on current initiatives.