CTA Red Line: Normal Service Returns at 4 A.M. Monday — and the Seven-Station Bypass Repeats Next Weekend

North Side Red Line riders get their stations back for the work week. The CTA's weekend bypass — in which Howard-bound trains have run express from Sheridan to Loyola since 10 p.m. Friday, skipping Wilson, Lawrence, Argyle, Berwyn, Bryn Mawr, Thorndale and Granville — ends at 4 a.m. Monday, Nov. 2, according to the CTA's own weekend service notice read by this desk.

The work is track improvement under the Purple Express Improvement Project. Southbound 95th-bound trains were never affected and served every station all weekend. Riders at the bypassed stations have been riding south to Sheridan to transfer north, and Howard-bound riders for those stations have been riding to Howard and doubling back — the transfer pattern the CTA prescribes again for next weekend, because the bypass is not finished: the same express working returns from Friday night, Nov. 6 until Monday morning, Nov. 9.

When the project completes later this fall, the CTA says, Purple Express trains are to provide faster, smoother and more reliable service on the corridor — the payoff the two weekends of bypasses are buying. Separately, the weekend's other Red Line closure is already over: the 63rd Street station on the Dan Ryan branch, closed since early Saturday for Illinois Department of Transportation bridge work, reopened at 6 a.m. Sunday, and Monday also brings the CTA's extra #19 United Center Express service for the evening's United Center event.

For Monday morning's commute, then, the instruction is simple: the Red Line runs its normal pattern from 4 a.m. — and riders who rely on the seven North Side stations should put next weekend, Nov. 6 to 9, in the calendar now, while the same bypass is still avoidable with a Sheridan or Howard transfer.