The Loop (CTA)

The Loop
A Brown Line train passes through Tower 12 as it makes the turn from Van Buren onto Wabash, while an Orange Line train waits for it to clear
Overview
Status	Operational
Locale	Chicago, Illinois, USA
Stations	8
Service
Type	Rapid transit
System	Chicago "L"
Services	Orange Green Purple Brown Pink
Operator(s)	Chicago Transit Authority
Daily ridership	40,341 (average weekday April 2024)[1]
History
Opened	1895–1897; 127 years ago (1897)
Technical
Track length	1.79 miles (2.9 km)
Number of tracks	2
Character	Elevated
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Minimum radius	90 feet (27 m)
Electrification	Third rail, 600 V DC
Route map The Loop highlighted in black Show interactive map Legend Fifth/Lake (closed 1899) Clark/Lake State/Lake Randolph/Wells (closed 1995) Randolph/Wabash (closed 2017) Washington/​Wells Washington/​Wabash Madison/Wells (closed 1994) Madison/Wabash (closed 2015) Adams/Wabash Quincy LaSalle/Van Buren Library Dearborn/Van Buren (closed 1949) Show BSicon diagram map

The Loop (historically Union Loop) is the 1.79-mile-long (2.88 km) circuit of elevated rail that forms the hub of the Chicago "L" system in the United States. As of April 2024, the branch served 40,341 passengers on an average weekday.^[2] The Loop is so named because the elevated tracks loop around a rectangle formed by Lake Street (north side), Wabash Avenue (east), Van Buren Street (south), and Wells Street (west). The railway loop has given its name to Chicago's downtown, which is also known as the Loop.

Transit began to appear in Chicago in the latter half of the 19th century as the city grew rapidly, and rapid transit started to be built in the late 1880s. When the first rapid transit lines opened in the 1890s, they were independently owned and each had terminals that were located immediately outside of Chicago's downtown, where it was considered too expensive and politically inexpedient to build rapid transit. Charles Tyson Yerkes aggregated the competing rapid transit lines and built a loop connecting them, which was constructed and opened in piecemeal fashion between 1895 and 1897, finally completing its last connection in 1900. Upon its completion ridership on the Loop was incredibly high, such that the lines that had closed their terminals outside of downtown had to reopen them to accommodate the surplus rush-hour traffic.

In the latter half of the 20th century, ridership declined and the Loop was threatened with demolition in the 1970s. However, interest in historic preservation increased in the 1980s, and ridership has stabilized since.