Public transport in Chicago it is represented mainly by buses and subways. It is managed by the city's transport administration, Chicago Transit Authority (CTA).

Subway Chicago

The Metro consists of 8 lines; Most of the stations are located on the surface of the earth. Ground stops are equipped with cabins to protect passengers from the wind. They have a button that turns on the lights and heating in the cabin in winter.

Most of the stations are equipped with elevators for the disabled, and the most remote ones have special parking for bicycles and cars. Thus, you can leave your transport there, go to the city on business by metro, and when you return back, change to a bicycle/car and go home.

Trains usually consist of 4-8 cars. The exception is the yellow line: trains of 2 cars run on it. Interesting feature Chicago subway is that the cars run not on two, but on three rails. The third is contact; the composition receives energy from it.

If the train is delayed for some reason, it can go in express mode, skipping a number of stations.

The Chicago subway fare is $2.25, with one transfer within 45 minutes costing 25 cents and all subsequent transfers free. In addition, passes are sold for the day, week and month. They cost 5.75, 23 and 86 dollars respectively. These same passes can also be used to travel on buses, since Management Company these types of transport have one.

Below is a map of the Chicago subway. To enlarge the image, click on the picture; for additional enlargement, click on the “Expand to actual size” icon that appears at the bottom of the picture (a square with an arrow).

Buses in Chicago

The city's bus network includes 152 routes. The tickets are similar to those used on the metro.

During the summer season according to popular tourist routes Special free buses run. In Chicago they are called “trolleys,” although they have nothing in common with trolleybuses. They are open seven days a week from 10.00 to 18.00. The interval of their movement is about half an hour.

Water taxi

You can travel along the river by water taxi. An all-day ticket to Chinatown costs $6.

Taxi in Chicago

Local taxis are divided into urban and suburban; working conditions and tariffs vary. Unlike most other American cities, taxi cars in Chicago come in a variety of colors and taxi drivers are not required to wear a uniform.

The cost of boarding is currently 2.3 dollars, then for every 300 meters of travel it is charged 0.2 dollars. The cost of a minute of waiting is 0.3 dollars. Payment is accepted both in cash and by bank card. Taxi drivers usually leave a tip - approximately 10% of the cost of the trip.

You can call a car by phone or “catch” it on the street. A taxi driver is obliged to stop in front of a voting pedestrian, and also does not have the right to refuse a trip to any point in the city. If you need to travel to the suburbs, the price must be agreed upon in advance.

To some points of the city (for example, to the airport), a taxi can be ordered online - to do this, use the search form below:

Fill in the required fields and click Find. A list of possible transfer options for the route you specified will open on a separate page. Having chosen the one that suits you, you can immediately place and pay for your order.

Tourists who want to independently move around Chicago by car can use

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The “Russian” organizer of the illegal taxi scam in Chicago faces 10 years in prison

Alex Ugolnikov is the owner of Seven Amigos Used Cars and vice president of Chicago Elite Cab, which runs the city's medallion taxis and is affiliated with Chicago Carriage Taxi. Photo from politics.suntimes.com

FBI Chicago agents arrested an immigrant from former USSR Alexander (aka Alex) Igolnikov, owner of Seven Amigos Used Cars and vice president of the Chicago Elite Cab corporation, which runs the city's medallion taxis and is affiliated with Chicago Carriage Taxi.

According to the rules of these companies, cars whose registration titles indicate that they have been “restored” or “rebuilt” are prohibited from being used as taxis. And 67-year-old Igolnikov is accused of illegally purchasing blank registration certificates in Indiana and Illinois while selling used cars and releasing at least 180 “restored” cars as taxi “medallions” over three years.

On September 29, Alex Igolnikov was taken to federal court in the Northern District of Illinois, where Magistrate Judge Jeffie Gilbert arraigned him on charges of illegal interstate delivery and possession of counterfeit license plates and released him on $50,000 bail. The charges, which the grand jury confirmed on August 27, threaten Igolnikov with up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, but he is presumed not guilty pending a decision.

The prosecutor's office considers two car dealers from Indiana and one from Illinois to be his accomplices, but they are not listed as defendants and are referred to in the case as “A,” “B,” and “C.” A press release from the prosecutor's office noted that the investigation is ongoing. Igolnikov is represented in court by lawyer Edward Genson, and the prosecution is supported by assistant federal prosecutors Stephen Dollear and Margaret Schneider.

The investigation found that in many cases, Igolnikov agreed with automobile brokers “A,” “B,” and “C” to buy damaged and salvaged cars at auctions on the Internet and deliver them from auction sites in the state of Indiana to the state of Illinois. more specifically, to the garage of Seven Amigos and Chicago Carriage in Chicago near 26th Street and South Wabash Avenue.

In addition to submitting false documents to Indiana authorities regarding the history and damage of these vehicles, Igolnikov and his accomplices forged affidavits (sworn statements) that certified that an Indiana State Trooper had personally inspected the vehicle. In reality, no one inspected these cars, and the false affidavits were signed for payment by a police officer also identified as “A” in the case, police officer “B” and other unnamed persons, including “person C”.

Based on the presented information about towing and vehicle inspections, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles of the State of Indiana issued brokers with clean registration certificates for cars that were previously listed as damaged. In other cases, “unnamed persons” fraudulently obtained registration certificates from the state of Indiana for restored cars and placed “stickers” on the windshields of such cars that concealed the fact that the car was restored.

Alexander Igolnikov bought these cars on behalf of Seven Amigos, Chicago Elite Cab and other companies, and in addition to the negotiated price, he paid the brokers a share for redoing the registration certificates. Having received the restored cars, like almost new ones, Igolnikov and his accomplices issued clean registration certificates for them and registered them for work as city taxis.

The 18-page charge sheet in the case 14 Cr. 484 two episodes are given as examples. In the first case, on September 8, 2009, “person B” bought a car at an online auction for $4,915, and this car went through all the stages of the scam with alteration of the registration certificate and repairs, after which it illegally became a Chicago “medallion” taxi. In the second case, the same thing happened with a car that Igolnikov bought at an online auction on October 22, 2009 for $4,300.

Having learned about the arrest of Alexander Igolnkov, Chicago journalists instantly remembered that he had long been a business partner of another immigrant from the former USSR, Chicagoan Simon Garber. In early 2010, the Chicago Sun Times called him a former Muscovite (“FROM MOSCOW TO N.Y. TO CHICAGO”), but, according to him, Semyon Garber came to the United States from Odessa as a 12-year-old boy in 1977 with his mother, a nurse, and his father. workers.

In an interview with the Russian-language online publication Elegant New York in May 2012, Garber said that his parents were “practically poor” and settled in New York, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, where “Puerto Ricans and Jews from the USSR lived.”

In America, Semyon became Simon, graduated from school and entered the private Farley Dickenson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, working as a taxi driver to pay for his studies. “Then I went to work in a garage,” he said in an interview, “then became a manager, then a partner. Without realizing it, I was studying the “taxi world” step by step, delving into its features, not suspecting that it would become the basis of my well-being, would become a life’s work that would make it possible to realize the American Dream.”

At the age of 20, that is, since 1985, Simon Garber began buying medallions in New York, where, again according to data from four years ago, he had 400 of the 13,237 yellow cabs. In 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported that Simon Garber operated 900 taxis in Moscow. “It all depends on who you know,” he explained to the newspaper at the time. - It is important to have good connections. Life is a two-way street."

As the Russian Novaya Gazeta wrote in May 2010, in 1992, “Garber, by that time already a successful businessman, was introduced to an elegant couple on vacation in Monaco” - they were Russian senator (member of the Federation Council) Vladimir Slutsker and his wife.

“After some time,” Novaya Gazeta wrote, “Garber fell into the social circle of high-ranking Russian officials.” Slutsker then had assets in taxi companies, and Garber opened his own business in Moscow, the closed joint-stock company Moscow Taxi, with partners Eduard Sheinin and Igor Bakunenko. By 1996, the Moscow Taxi fleet consisted of 200 cars. Sheinin said about himself that in the mid-70s he immigrated from Kharkov to New York, worked there as a taxi driver for eight years, and after the collapse of the USSR ended up in Moscow.

In 2001, Simon Garber was introduced in Moscow to Patrick Daley, the son of the mayor of Chicago, with whom then Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov was friends. A year later, Garber began buying taxi licenses in Chicago, but, as the Chicago Sun Times noted, there was no special treatment for him in the city council, where the “medallions” were sold.

Now, the newspaper wrote, Simon Garber owns Chicago taxis and, in his words, has created the city's largest “taxi empire,” although there are twice as many “yellow cabs” in Chicago.

“With his appearance,” the newspaper wrote, “the price of a taxi medallion jumped by almost 400%, at the same time enormously enriching him and his partners. The cost of each medallion of 6,700 taxis licensed by the City Council reached $190,000, and Garber owned 831 medallions, of which 797 were purchased since 2002 for $52 million, and in 2010 were worth $150 million.”

As a result of this aggression, there were 25% fewer solo taxi drivers in Chicago, who preferred to sell their “medallions” to Garber and lease cars from him for $92 a day. According to the newspaper's estimates, Simon Graber and his associates earned more than $24 million a year from this. In 2008, Garber was awarded the award for being the largest taxi operator in North America. In the first 9 months of 2009, despite the general decline of the economy, Garber and his partners bought 68 medallions, paying more than $9.1 million.

In 2010, the city authorities of Chicago conducted a large-scale operation to combat the illegal use of “restored” cars in taxis, that is, the very thing that Alexander Igolnkov allegedly did. The operation was not a criminal prosecution and resulted in fines totaling more than $800 thousand.

It was established that Simon Garber's companies owned 183 such cars, including former police patrol cars that were involved in an accident and were written off as beyond repair.

Simon Garber was not prosecuted for this, but in March 2011 he and his company agreed to a fine of $1 million. Garber and his partners, including Alexander Igolnikov, faced fines of more than $9 million, but the case was reached in an agreement under which he agreed to replace 600 of his 800 burgundy taxis with “hybrids” - cars whose engines run on more than one energy source .

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The “Russian” organizer of the illegal taxi scam in Chicago faces 10 years in prison

Agents of the Chicago FBI office arrested an immigrant from the former USSR, Alex Igolnikov, owner of the Seven Amigos Used Cars company and vice president of the Chicago Elite Cab corporation, which manages the operation of the city's medallion taxis...
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Easily!

Have you ever been on a tour of Chicago – the “Windy City”? This is an amazing metropolis; it is rightly called the capital of the Midwest. Everyone will find something in Chicago that will make them want to come back here.

Excursions around Chicago with us are always interesting!
It's no secret that comfort during a trip is not the last element of a pleasant holiday. Our company has made sure that you feel at ease and at ease.

The main direction of our activity is conducting. However, if you are interested in any other request, we are always open for effective communication!

TOP 5 Excursions in Chicago

Weather in Chicago, USA

We We do not act according to an emasculated standard, any excursion option can change flexibly according to your preferences.

We will spend more time on some attractions, and less on others. We will change the route, walk somewhere and stay for a photo session for the period of time you wish.

What will we show on the excursion to Chicago?
Do you prefer to find out all the most interesting things about the city you are visiting as soon as possible? Then this is exactly what you expect from your trip. We will explore the majestic Chicago City Hall building, take a ride along the theatrical Broadway, and be sure to take a photo near the famous Cloud Gate Bean.
Are you a connoisseur of exquisite architecture and antiques? In this case, we recommend going to

I flew home last night and took a taxi from the airport. I ordered a car, I'm waiting. Here they tell you: “a car number such and such will drive up to you, wait at the exit from the terminal there.” You stand and try not to forget the license plate number of the car, peering at all the passing cars from the company you ordered. This one arrived: with my name, simple and convenient.

By the way, about the taxi system in Chicago. She's pretty stupid, in my opinion. The city and suburbs are divided into zones that are served by different companies. All airports serve them, but depending on the purpose of the trip, you need to choose different companies. If you caught a taxi (not through the dispatcher, but simply raised your hand) from the “suburban” zone and asked to take you to the city center, then the trip will cost 1.5 times more expensive compared to the price of a taxi from the “urban” zone..... .

I used one taxi company for quite a long time: 303 Taxi. It’s easy to order online, clean cars, and often pleasant drivers. But lately I have stopped liking them. Almost every driver (100% if Russian-speaking) persuades you to take his personal phone number, like “call me personally, without registering with the dispatcher, I will wait for you right at the terminal, .....”. I tried this a couple of times in the past. He said that I was arriving at such and such a time, be ready.... I called, the driver answered that he had been waiting for me all day, but now something urgently happened to him and he was sent somewhere, but now he will arrive best friend Vasya, who will take me even better and further. Vasya appears after half an hour (usually a car ordered through the dispatcher appears at the terminal after 10 minutes), then upon arriving home he begins to tell how difficult his life is: children, wife, mother-in-law, dog, like, well, how he can’t take less than the official amount (we have a standard price for travel to/from the airport to each of the suburbs). The same eggs, only in profile. Why the hell do I need this?

The last trip finished me off early on Monday morning. Company 303 sends potential passengers coupons ($2-$3 off) and I used them all the time, adding the difference to the tip of the driver. So the driver (it was my aunt) started telling me that their bosses give out coupons, but don’t compensate the drivers for them (why would you care if I add the difference to your tip), then another story began about children and her and her husband working hard (as if no one else works in Chicago except them). In general, they bothered me a little and I decided not to call them again. I switch to “American Taxi”, especially since they greet you directly personally!

That's all for today. Have a great weekend and see you!

A2B.ru offers to order a transfer "Chicago" on the route Chicago - airport or train station and back. Searching for a car with a driver is done automatically and takes only a few seconds.

How to order a transfer "Chicago"

Step 1. Select the direction of travel using the search form: transfer to the airport or transfer from the airport.
Indication of a specific airport, for example: Chicago O'Hare. When searching for an airport transfer, you can enter an IATA code, for example ORD for Chicago O'Hare Airport. Step 2.
Selecting a car class depending on the requirements for the number of passengers and vehicle equipment. Typically, a car with a driver is presented in the “Standard”, “Business” and “Executive” classes. Step 3.
Indication of additional trip parameters, such as: destination or pickup address of the car with a driver within the city of Chicago, time and flight number, personal data and the inscription on the sign at the meeting. Step 4. The final cost of the transfer can be paid in one of the following ways: credit card

VISA or Mastercard, PayPal.

You can be sure that they will certainly meet you, help you carry your luggage, and the trip itself will be comfortable! the site offers fixed prices for transfers to Chicago and other areas of the USA.

How to get to Chicago?

If you need a cheap way to get to Chicago, use the website service to search and filter taxi offers in Chicago and nearby areas. When displaying available Chicago taxi rental options, make sure your route is correct using the dots on the map.

If you have a trip planned in advance, you can pre-order a taxi at a cheaper price. Using search results and sorting, select the cheapest taxi from the list and place your order. Fix the price and pay the cost of the taxi at the time of order. The taxi driver will meet you with a sign or at the hotel.

Rent a bus and minibus in Chicago

Along with regular transfers, the service website allows you to rent buses in Chicago in advance with a capacity of up to 44 passenger seats. For small groups, renting a minibus or minivan with a capacity of 3 to 18 passengers is suitable.