Route 332 bus at North Riverside Mall. (Photo by Igor Studenkov/for Chronicle Media)

Pace is increasing service on six routes throughout the Chicagoland region, significantly improving evening and weekend service.

This summer, the suburban bus agency increased service on two west suburban north-south routes — Route 330, which serves the La Grange Road/Mannheim Road corridor, and Route 331, which serves the 5^th Avenue/Cumberland Avenue corridor.

The latest improvements, which were announced during Pace Board of Directors’ Oct. 16 meetings, follow the same general pattern of beefing up non-rush-hour schedules.

The routes are spread out geographically — two of them are in Lake County, two in south suburban Cook County and two in the western suburbs. Most notably, Route 563, the only Pace route to serve the Naval Station Great Lakes in the City of North Chicago, will be getting weekend service.

The announcement comes as Pace ridership continues growing, something that bus agency executive director Melinda Metzger attributed to several factors, including “with increasing our frequency and weekend service on the busiest corridors.”

As of September 2024, its overall ridership is at 89 percent of the pre-pandemic ridership.

Route 564 bus passes through North Chicago on its way to downtown Waukegan. (Photo by Igor Studenkov/for Chronicle Media)

Metzger told the board that extending service hours worked well for Pace.

“A lot of the feedback we’re getting from customers is our buses don’t stay out early enough in the morning to be useful to them and late at night,” she said. “So, we try to expand that out as we can. Where we’ve done it, it’s working successfully, so we want to continue to that, and we’ll bring it back to the board with ridership numbers.”

The service changes will take effect on Dec. 8. Pace will be looking at the ridership numbers over the next few months. If the changes bring in enough ridership to justify keeping them around, Pace Board of Directors will be asked to vote on making them permanent.

Lake County

Route 563 runs between Waukegan and North Chicago, mostly on or near Sheridan Road. Aside from the naval base, currently U.S. Navy’s only boot camp, it serves Abbott Labs and Roseland Franklin University Clinics.

Under the new weekend schedules, the route will operate between 9 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., with buses running every hour. On Sundays and federal holidays, the route will operate between 10 a.m. and 7: 30 p.m., with the buses running 60 to 80 minutes.

Eastbound Route 364 bus bay at the Harvey Transportation Center. (Photo by Igor Studenkov/for Chronicle Media)

Erik Llewellyn, Pace’s chief planning officer, said that “most recruits on the base do not have a car and have limited options for traveling off the base.

“Given this unmet need, weekend service on Route 563 will allow for improved access to the base and the surrounding area,” he said.

Llewellyn said that, on weekends, the route will make an extra stop at the Great Lakes Commissary specifically to serve the recruits.

Route 564 serves southwest Waukegan and North Chicago. It was one of the routes that had its service cut early in the pandemic. But ridership has grown by more than 20 percent this year, leading Pace to restore the pre-pandemic weekday schedule. The route will now start operating at 5:56 a.m. — about 2½  hours earlier than it does now — and stop 42 minutes later than it does now, at 6:47 p.m.

“We’re [currently] starting much later in the morning, and it’s not early enough for people to take advantage of that service.” Llewellyn told the board, adding that it also makes it easier for riders to transfer to other buses and Metra trains.

Pace Director Christopher Canning, who represents Cook County North Shore suburbs, wondered why, given the demand at the naval base, they couldn’t increase Route 563’s service.

“[The base] got a lot of people coming and going — we got 60-90 minute frequency,” he said.

Llewellyn responded that it has to do with transfers to other Waukegan area bus routes.

“That one route on its own wouldn’t necessarily generate ridership to support service,” he said. “We need to make connections with other rail lines as well as bus routes that exist in that area.”

Metzger said that Pace is interested in additional improvements in the long run — it’s just the question of hiring more bus drivers and working with the Navy. Pace had to hire one extra driver to increase service, but greater frequencies would require more.

Southland

Route 350 runs between the edge of downtown Hammond, Indiana and Harvey Transportation Center, a major southern Cook County Pace/Metra transit hub, mostly traveling along Sibley Boulevard. The route will start running around 30 minutes earlier on weekdays, at 5:14 a.m. Weekend service will start at 5:15 a.m. — almost an hour and a half earlier than the Saturday service currently starts, and 3½ hours earlier than the Sunday service currently starts. Sunday service frequency will also increase to 30 minutes at some times of day.

“Sibley Boulevard is a very productive corridor, with high level of low-income and minority riders that warrant additional service,” Llewellyn said.

Route 364 runs between Hammond and Orland Park Mall, mostly along or near 159th Street. The weekend operating hours will be extended. On Saturdays, the route will start operating 45 minutes earlier than it does now, at 5:28 a.m., and end 40 minutes later, at 10:29 p.m. On Sundays, it will start at 5:27 a.m., almost three hours earlier than it does now, and end at 10 p.m., more than two hours later than it does now. Sunday service frequency will also increase to an average of 30-60 minutes, from once every hour.

While many weekend buses currently don’t enter Hammond, Llewellyn said that all weekend buses will.

“Route 564 is a key east-west route in Cook County that links up multiple bus and rail lines that warrants additional service to improve regional connectivity,” he said.

The route stops at Harvey Transportation center and passes near Rock Island District Line train’s Oak Forest station. Orland Park Mall is a regional transportation hub. Weekend buses stop at South Shore Line’s Hegewisch station.

At Hammond, riders can transfer to three Gary Public Transportation Corporation regional routes.

Llewellyn said that one of the major reasons for extending evening hours was to allow riders to transfer to Route 352, which serves the Halsted Street corridor. It is Pace’s highest-ridership route and the only one to operate 24/7.

“A number of our routes just end too early to make convenient connections late at night for people trying to get back from work, or trying to get to work,” he said. “And so, extending the hours of service allows the opportunity for people to do that.”

Western suburbs

The two west suburban routes getting service improvements have several things in common. They are east-west routes serving west suburban Cook and DuPage counties, and they both serve corridors that, under Pace’s long-term plan, are expected to get Arterial Rapid Transit “Pulse” express bus service.

Route 301 runs between Forest Park Blue Line ‘L’ terminal and Union Pacific West Metra Line’s Wheaton station on weekdays, primarily traveling along Roosevelt Road. Some rush hour buses continue to DuPage County Judicial Center. On weekends, the route only goes as far as Oakbrook Center. The route is one of the three routes serving Hines medical campus. Pace will increase Sunday service frequency, which will go from between 45 and 60 minutes to between 30 and 60 minutes. Service will start almost an hour earlier, at 6:12 a.m. and end almost an hour later, at 8:03 p.m.

“The current level of service on the weekend is not sufficient for the continued development of this key transit corridor,” Llewellyn said.

Route 332 runs between 54^th/Cermak Pink Line ‘L’ station in Cicero and the Oakbrook Mall, primarily traveling along Cermak Road/22^nd Street corridor. On weekdays, rush hour service frequency will increase from every 20 minutes to every 15 minutes. But the biggest change will be on Sunday. The service frequency will go up from 30 to 60 minutes to 20 to 60 minutes. The service will start almost an hour earlier, at 5 a.m., and end two hours later, at 12:20 a.m.

Llewellyn said that it is one of the routes that doesn’t “operate the desired level of service, especially on weekends, needed to support current and future service.”

Canning wondered why the service improvements kick in on Dec. 8 as opposed to two weeks earlier, to capitalize on Thanksgiving shopping. Metzger said that it has to do with bus tracking data Pace shares with apps and services such as Googlemaps — updating them takes time, and any earlier would be too soon.

“In the past, we could vary and change the dates [of service launches],” she said. “The problem is technology.”