#74 Fullerton Bus

really? really bus? do you love to make me late for school constantly?
when are you coming? you don’t know? great. i’ll just freeze my ass off waiting for you here. wait. you’re not coming? cool i’ll just walk.
this is how it goes every other time. luckily i catch it at ashland and fullerton so it’s only a few blocks to the el. but it’s winter man. come on.
i will say that miraculously almost each time i get off the el to go home the bus is just waiting there. so +1 star for that.
but it’s crowded and it smells.

I am running out of time for this Internet session. But I must rate the #74 Fullerton bus. As you might have read in my other reviews, I frequently visit a tavern along this route (Liars’ Club, Mc Dunna’s, Lions’ Head, O’Malley’s West, Quenchers).
Its last westbound run is at 12:40 am seven days a week. That arrives too late for me to transfer to the #54 Cicero bus, but it will get me to a route where I can catch another route going north (Western, Pulaski).
This route is served from the Chicago Ave. garage. This garage is the largest which has no routes on the CTABustRacker system. I figure that the next round of expansion will address this. The Chicago Ave. garage has different buses than the Forest Glen garage (which supplies the #77 Belmont route). You’ll find buses with more transverse seats, including in the elevated part at the rear (which is where I prefer to sit or stand). The bus stop chime is a ‘dong’ rather than a ‘ding’.
The #74 route is dependable. I point out that this is one of the few CTA routes (similar to the #80 Irving Park) which will have a different westbound terminus depending on the time of day, and in which those buses are interspersed amongst the others. Because it doesn’t have a definitive stop along the Blue Line «L», it does not get as crushed as adjacent east — west routes.

I used to live in Logan Square and my friends that I partied with lived at Clark/​Fullerton. I cannot tell you how many times the #74 got me home safe and sound. Except for one time when I fell asleep and woke up at Central and Fullerton. I’m like «fuck!» so I get off and turns out it must have been the last run because no bus came going back east.
If you don’t know, Central is 5600 West and I lived at 2800 West. That’s 28 city blocks, which translates into 4 miles! No problem, I’ll hail a cab. Who am I kidding? Like cabs are going to be a dime a dozen in a working class residential neighborhood at 2am on a Tuesday! But, I FOUND A CAB !!! And I had no money!!! I walked home.
#74, for this occurance, I’ll never forget you for your engine humming putting me to sleep! =)

This bus has always been there for me, even when I didn’t expect it to be. The route extends pretty far too (except if you’re going to NEO at Clark & Fullerton, you’ll have to walk a little ways since the bus only goes to Halsted).
I’m very impressed with the service on this bus. It doesn’t run 24-​hours but it runs late (until about 1:30am on part of the line, most of the line stops about midnight).
This bus provides excellent, service. And it even has a Broadways song named after it!