RTA Mapping and Statistics website offers wealth of information on transit in our region

February 18, 2016

Have you ever taken public transportation? Wondered how many people ride your bus? Or, how your tax dollars from your town or county are being spent on transit? Well, you have this information and much more at your fingertips in our Regional Transportation Authority Mapping and Statistics (RTAMS) website, also known as RTAMS.



For over ten years, we’ve offered this one-stop, easy-to-use portal for planning and financial information on the transit systems in northeastern Illinois. As the manager of Data Services and Analysis, I lead a team responsible for maintaining this data and operating the website.  RTAMS provides a wealth of information about the RTA and all three Service boards – CTA, Metra and Pace.  It houses data like Service Board ridership numbers; the quantities and types of buses and trains that serve the nearly 300 communities in our region; maps and documents from the transit oriented development (TOD) planning projects that we have completed; and the amount of sales tax collected in each community and county for funding the transit system.  We’re always looking for ways to enhance the site’s features and released our latest version, RTAMS 4.0, last year.  The new version included upgrading our mapping software to the latest technology, and providing larger and better maps with the option of aerial imagery.  Recently we added the RTA’s financial reports and posted the latest service board budgets for 2016, making this site convenient for locating all of these reports. The tool is used by transit and planning staff every day, but the site is also useful for the public. Learn more about RTAMS and view the data at www.RTAMS.org.

Brad Thompson
Manager, Data Services and Analytics