Post-pandemic work, travel patterns leave questions for longtime summer commuter service: the Chicago Water Taxi
The Chicago Water Taxi, once a mainstay of the city’s downtown commuting options, is working to figure out a new schedule for the third summer in a row as the number of office workers remains low.
Though warm weather has arrived, the taxi’s bright yellow boats aren’t yet up and running. Parent company Wendella Tours and Cruises hopes to operate the boats once again on weekdays — a departure from the past two years, when they have run only on weekends, catering to tourists — but the date service will begin and the schedule remain to be seen, taxi executive Andrew Sargis said.
Behind the taxi’s schedule dilemma is the post-pandemic reality for downtown Chicago: Tourists have returned in force, but office workers haven’t, Sargis said. The taxi company has also faced lingering labor challenges after losing and furloughing employees during the pandemic. While many crew members are in training, it can take years to get the certifications needed to drive a boat, he said.
Chicago office occupancy was about 50% of pre-COVID-19 levels during the last week of May, according to data from Kastle Systems, which measures employee swipes into the buildings and businesses where the security company is present. Even on the busiest days in the middle of the week, that means fewer people downtown, and fewer potential riders for the water taxi.
The company also eyes Metra ridership, and has a water taxi stop between the Metra hubs at the Ogilvie Transportation Center and Chicago Union Station. In April, the most recent month for which data is available, average weekday Metra ridership was about 48% of 2019 levels.
“It has been, for the last few years, a challenge for a private transportation provider,” Sargis said.
In 2019, Chicago Water Taxi carried some 400,000 passengers from March through the end of November. Service was suspended in 2020. Then, with fewer weekday commuters, the water taxi pivoted to focus on tourists in 2021 and 2022, operating for a shorter season and only on weekends.
And in 2022, tourism came back strong, according to numbers made public this month by the city’s tourism arm, Choose Chicago. Nearly 49 million visitors came to Chicago, which was about 80% of 2019 tourism numbers. They generated about 89% of 2019 spending levels, according to Choose Chicago.
More recently, during the first weekend in June, Chicago set an all-time record for most hotel rooms occupied and the most hotel revenue generated, according to Choose Chicago. Visitors flocked to Chicago for three days of Taylor Swift concerts, the James Beard Foundation Awards and the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, occupying an average of 96.8% of the city’s hotel rooms and bringing in $39 million in hotel revenue on Friday and Saturday nights.
In addition to the yellow Chicago Water Taxi, another company, Shoreline Sightseeing, also provides water taxi service on two routes that serve tourism-friendly sites like Navy Pier and the Museum Campus as well as Willis Tower. This year the Shoreline taxis are running seven days a week, generally between 10:30 a.m. and the evening, a company representative said.
Operating the yellow Chicago Water Taxi only on weekends this summer is once again a possibility, Sargis said. But so is operating weekday service. That could mean operating Tuesday through Thursday, when office occupancy is highest, or only during rush hour, or on a different schedule. But service will likely still be pared down from pre-pandemic levels, he said.
In the meantime, the Chicago Water Taxi will run on June 24, for a dragon boat race in Chinatown. No other regular service has yet been scheduled.
“We do want to serve the local Chicagoans somehow, if we can,” he said. “We just have to make sure it’s a sustainable service that we can run consistently and reliably somehow.”
