Chicago Averages 1 Bus Collision Per Day

The Chicago Transit Authority averages one bus accident every day.

That’s according to records compiled for the Chicago Tribune by the Federal Transit Administration.

The CTA’s bus fleet logged more than 9.3 million runs last year. And the federal records show CTA buses have been involved in more collisions annually since 2008 than buses operated by the nine other largest public bus systems in the United States.

But CTA officials point out that there is some good news. The number of CTA bus runs between collisions has increased in the last four years, and that indicates that drivers are logging more miles between accidents. On average, one crash occurred for every 34,566 trips made in 2009 _ marking a 9 percent improvement over 2008.