The Chicago Water Taxi will again operate on a limited schedule this summer, as fewer office workers are downtown to commute by boat along the Chicago River, an executive said.
Instead, shifting its focus to tourists, the water taxi will operate only on Saturdays and Sundays. It will also make fewer stops once it gets up and running, likely later this month, said Andrew Sargis, chief of operations for the taxi, which is owned by boat tour company Wendella Tours and Cruises.
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The limited schedule and stops mirror the water taxi’s operations in 2021 but are a departure from pre-pandemic, when the taxi also ran on weekdays and operated more than eight months of the year.
“We’re not planning to end water taxi service, we just need people to be working downtown for us to be able to run during the weekdays,” Sargis said.
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The taxi will make four stops this season: in Chinatown; at Madison Street between Ogilvie Transportation Center and Chicago Union Station, which are large Metra commuter terminals; along the Riverwalk between Clark and LaSalle streets; and at Michigan Avenue.
The taxi will not be stopping at Goose Island or Chicago Avenue, which had also been stops pre-pandemic, Sargis said.
He expects the taxi to begin running in mid- or late June, slightly earlier than it began running last year. It will run at least until Labor Day, and possibly longer, he said.
Before the pandemic, the taxi ran from March through the end of November, shuttling some 400,000 riders around downtown in 2019, Sargis said. It didn’t operate in 2020, and in 2021, running a limited weekend schedule during a shorter season, it carried about 15,000 riders.
Another company, Shoreline Sightseeing, also operates a water taxi with two routes, one along the lake and one along the river. Before the pandemic the taxi operated seven days a week, but a company representative said taxis are now mainly running on the weekend — the lake route Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and the river route Saturdays and Sundays — but run on some weekdays as staffing allows. The company intends to run a regular weekday schedule at some point during the summer, she said.
The Chicago Water Taxi operated by Wendella relied on crowded rush hour service on weekdays, Sargis said. Without large numbers of Metra commuters getting off trains at Ogilvie and Union Station and onto boats, the weekday service isn’t feasible.
Instead, with its current schedule, the taxi is targeting tourists. Stops at Michigan Avenue, the Riverwalk and in Chinatown were popular with downtown visitors last summer, Sargis said.
It seems to the company that downtown tourists have returned faster than commuters, Sargis said. Even for those office workers who have returned, commuting habits have changed.
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Metra ridership remains less than half of pre-pandemic levels, as the rail service has tweaked schedules, added service and offered lower pass prices, anticipating new commuting habits and looking to draw back more riders. Ridership across the system on a recent weekday was about 40% of the May 2019 weekday average, the agency has said.
Office occupancy in the Loop in April was above 40% of 2019 levels, according to data from the Loop Alliance.
The Chicago Water Taxi is continuing to maintain all its boats, and hopes to slowly rebuild weekday service in future years.
“We are planning on, prepared and ready, to resume weekday service at some point in the future when market conditions allow,” Sargis said. “But right now, to be honest, we don’t know when that is, and we don’t know if it’ll ever happen.”
sfreishtat@chicagotribune.com
