Practical

Getting Around Chicago: The 'L' Train Guide

The hub for all 8 individual line guides — the crawlable, linkable version of the homepage's "Pick your stop" neighborhood mosaic.

By the Extra Chicago editorial team·Updated Oct 20264 min read·2 sections

A CTA 'L' train in motion on elevated tracks in downtown Chicago

Photo: Brandon Mowinkel / Unsplash

The short version

✓The CTA 'L''s first line opened in 1892, making it one of the oldest rapid-transit systems in the United States — and "the Loop," downtown Chicago's own name for itself, is most commonly traced to the elevated tracks that still ring it, completed in 1897.
✓Eight color-coded lines — Red, Blue, Brown, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple, Yellow — radiate out from that downtown Loop to reach nearly every neighborhood worth a visitor's time.
✓Every one of the 8 line guides below links every neighborhood it serves, and every neighborhood links back — full bidirectional coverage, not a one-way index.
✓It's a genuine long-tail idea most competing city guides skip entirely: a standalone, in-depth page for each individual transit line rather than one generic "how to ride the L" paragraph.
✓This hub covers the system basics — fares, hours, transfers — so each line guide can stay focused on its own route and its own neighborhoods.

Eight lines, one Loop

The CTA 'L''s first line opened in 1892 — one of the oldest rapid-transit systems anywhere in the United States — and it's still the fastest way to read the city. "The Loop" — downtown Chicago's own name for itself — is most commonly traced to the elevated tracks that circle it, completed in 1897: Lake, Wabash, Van Buren and Wells form a literal loop the trains still run today, and every one of the system's eight lines either terminates there or passes straight through it. (A rival, older theory traces the name to an 1880s cable-car turnaround loop — like a lot of Chicago nomenclature, the exact origin is debated rather than settled.) Eight color-coded lines fan out from that downtown core — Red, Blue, Brown, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple and Yellow — reaching neighborhoods as different as Wrigleyville and Pilsen, Wicker Park and O'Hare, and a northern suburb like Evanston. Learn the Loop and you've learned the map's center of gravity; everything else is a spoke off it.

That's the organizing idea behind this guide: one page per line, each written the way you'd actually plan a trip — which neighborhoods it reaches, how it compares to its neighbors, and what makes it worth riding rather than a taxi or rideshare. The Red and Blue Lines are the two to know first, since they're the only lines running 24 hours a day; the rest keep more conventional hours that are worth checking before you plan a late-night connection around them. Pair this hub with the Ventra Card Guide for the fare side of things, and with the neighborhood profiles themselves — every one of them is tagged by the line that reaches it, so you can plan a day around a single line rather than zig-zagging across downtown.

A CTA subway train pulling into a Chicago station platform with waiting passengers

Ventra Card Guide

The fare card that covers every line below, plus buses and Metra.

lighted roadway surrounded with buildings

Chicago Neighborhoods Guide

Every neighborhood here is tagged by the 'L' line that reaches it.

Pick your line

Not all eight lines play the same role. Red and Blue are, as of this writing, the only two lines that run 24 hours — the CTA has announced plans to extend the Orange Line to round-the-clock service sometime in 2026, so verify the current lineup at transitchicago.com if overnight service matters to your trip. Red and Blue also carry the heaviest ridership — Red is the busiest line in the system end to end, Blue is the only one that runs direct to O'Hare. Brown, Green, Orange, Pink and Purple keep more conventional daytime-into-evening hours, each built around a specific slice of the city: Brown loops above the North Side to Lincoln Park and Lakeview, Green links the West Loop to the South Side, Orange runs straight to Midway, Pink threads through Pilsen and Little Village, and Purple reaches north to Evanston with a rush-hour express into downtown. Yellow is the outlier — a short, genuinely minor shuttle between Skokie and the Red Line, worth knowing about rather than planning a trip around.

Use the line guides below to plan by geography rather than by guesswork: pick the neighborhoods you want to see, then pick the line, or two, that gets you there without a transfer. Every guide flags current fares and hours as something to verify at transitchicago.com rather than a fixed number, since both shift more often than a printed guide can keep up with. The CTA's real-time arrival predictions and official system map are worth bookmarking before you land, and a loaded Ventra card — or a tapped contactless bank card, which now works directly at most readers — is the only other thing you need before you start riding.

Red and Blue: the only 24-hour lines as of this writing, and the busiest and most airport-connected respectively — the Orange Line is slated to join them on 24-hour service sometime in 2026.
Brown, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple: daytime-into-evening service, each anchored to a different slice of the city.
Yellow: a short, honestly minor Skokie shuttle — useful to know about, rarely worth planning a trip around.