Chicago Ridehail Charts - Geography

Last updated

August 4, 2026

Introduction

This set of charts uses the Chicago Trips data set to check monthly trends. To make the analysis more tractable, it uses the trips on the first Thursday of each month as representative of the whole month.

It hopes to capture both sudden changes and continuing trends in the overall ridehail landscape in Chicago. The data set does not include earnings data or driver time spent en route to pick up passengers or waiting for a trip request.

Community Area map

Thanks to Daryn Ramsden’s geojson representation of Community Areas, we can display the community areas as a map. It shows how trips are concentrated in the downtown area and at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Figure 1

Trips by Community Area

Chicago has 77 community areas, listed here. Chicago trip data is broken down by community area.

Figure 2

Downtown and elsewhere

We can identify a small set of community areas as “downtown”: these are community areas 8 (Near North Side), 28 (Near West Side), 32 (Loop), and 33 (Near South Side).

Covid caused a shift away from downtown, but downtown remains responsible for about a third of all trips.