Transportation Responsive Website Design Case Study | Chicago Transit Authority

Chicago Transit Authority Finds Route to Mobile Success

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) operates the nation's second largest public transportation system, covering the city of Chicago and 40 of its surrounding suburbs. On an average weekday, approximately 1.7 million rides are taken on the CTA.

Challenges

In order to attract new riders and enhance the online experience of existing ones, the CTA wanted train tracking functionality that was web-based, allowing riders to get up to date public transportation information without having to download an app. Overall, they wanted to give their customers the most up-to-date information available and provide a personalized user experience.

“Chicago Card Plus brought us into the modern era with the development of the first account based web portal in North America. Riders could now safely manage all facets of their CTA fare purchases, including the storing of credit card data for auto reloading. The Americaneagle.com system had a significant impact on reducing our costs related to external fare card vendors, the maintenance of fare processing machines and the overall collection process. Through Chicago Card Plus, we safely and efficiently collected and managed hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions on an annual basis.”

Roxann Galvan General Manager, Treasury Operations

Expertise

Solutions

The CTA contracted with Americaneagle.com for a complete redesign of their website and mobile presence as well as a new train-tracking tool.

The new CTA Train Tracker enables riders to view estimated arrival times for all 144 train stations across 8 rail lines on CTA’s desktop or mobile website.

Americaneagle.com worked closely with the CTA to integrate the software that monitors the agency's signal system, allowing CTA Train Tracker to deliver the predicted arrival times of approaching trains to be posted within a 15 minute timeframe. The tool was built to then refresh prediction times every 20-30 seconds, giving riders the most up-to-date information available.

Riders now have a truly personalized experience as they can choose the number of results that appear as well as how they are sorted – whether by track, route, or time.

The results have been incredible as the train tracking mobile page has been accessed over 8 million times and there’s been an 840% increase in mobile usage.

Roxann Galvan General Manager, Treasury Operations