September 28, 1969
Operations began for an extension of the Chicago “L” rapid transit system serving the Windy City and a few of its surrounding suburbs within Cook County, Illinois. (The “L” stands for “elevated.”) The newly completed extension was named after Dan Ryan (1894-1961), who served as a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners between 1923 and 1926 and then again from 1930 until his death. He was the board’s president during the last six years of his life. An expressway in Chicago was also named in honor of Ryan.
“Chicago’s new Dan Ryan rapid transit route will be placed in regular passenger service early today, with the first northbound train scheduled to leave the outer terminal at 95th street at 4:16 a.m.,” reported journalist John Thomas “Tom” Buck (1917-2004) in the September 28, 1969, edition of the Chicago Tribune. “From the city’s downtown, the first southbound Ryan train is scheduled to leave the Adams-Wabash station of the Loop [Chicago central business district] elevated structure at 4:38 a.m.”
This article also quoted George L. DeMent (1904-1971), chairman of the Chicago Transit Board from 1963 until his death, on the large-scale significance of the Ryan branch and another rapid transit extension that would likewise soon be launched. “Rapid transit is certain to play an even greater role than in the past with the start of service on the Ryan route and the pending start on the Kennedy route,” asserted DeMent. “The feeder bus route changes will make this high-speed service convenient to thousands of riders who have not had ready access to rapid transit.”
Since 1993, the Ryan branch has been part of the Red Line of the fourth-largest and third-busiest rapid transit system in the United States. The Ryan branch covers 9.4. miles (15.1 kilometers) altogether and serves a total of nine stations. This route’s northern terminus is Cermak-Chinatown station in Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood. The southern terminus of the Ryan branch is 95th/Dan Ryan station in the city’s Roseland community and in the median of the Dan Ryan Expressway. This station is also the southern terminus of the Red Line, which encompasses a grand total of 21.8 miles (35.1 kilometers) and 33 stations. It is the busiest of the eight lines of the Chicago “L.”
The accompanying photo depicts the section of the Dan Ryan branch that is just south of Garfield station in Chicago’s Fuller Park neighborhood. This picture was taken in 2024.
Photo Credit: Mike Peel (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel and https://www.mikepeel.net/) – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
For more information on the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line of the Chicago “L” rapid transit system, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ryan_branch
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