Miller Lite offers free, safe transit in Chicago this New Year's Eve
The beer brand's decade-old partnership with the CTA gave riders free buses and trains from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., part of a program Molson Coors says has provided more than eight million free rides nationally.
Miller Lite and the Chicago Transit Authority offered free rides on CTA buses and trains from 10 p.m. on December 31, 2021 to 4 a.m. on New Year's Day, continuing a local partnership that began in 2012, according to a release covered by the Daily Herald.
"The New Year's Eve Free Rides partnership is an important initiative to us, and we look forward to continuing the tradition this New Year's Eve," said Stina Fish, CTA Manager of Business Development. Molson Coors, Miller Lite's parent company, also framed the program as part of its responsible-drinking messaging: "Our Free Rides program is just one of many ways Molson Coors helps others celebrate responsibly," said Tami Garrison, the company's Community Affairs Director.
The program was not unique to Chicago that year. The same Daily Herald coverage notes Miller Lite extended free transit to five other metro areas for the same New Year's Eve: Denver, Milwaukee, Dallas, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Phoenix.
The scale of the program
Since the Chicago partnership began in 2012, the program had provided 892,404 free local rides as of the 2021 announcement. Nationally, Miller Lite's Free Rides initiative -- running for more than three decades -- had provided over eight million free rides since its inception, according to the release.
How riders could use it
Riders were directed to plan routes ahead of time at www.transitchicago.com to make use of the free window on both bus and rail lines systemwide. The available coverage does not specify whether any CTA lines or stations were excluded from the free-ride window.
A recurring, multi-decade partnership
The 2021 free-ride window was not a one-off promotion but part of an arrangement CTA has run with Miller Lite for years around New Year's Eve, according to CTA's own press materials and separate ABC7 Chicago coverage. Under the deal, Miller Lite pays a fee that covers the cost of rides taken during the promotional window and helps offset CTA's operating costs for running service through the overnight hours, rather than riders receiving a fare waiver with no cost recovery to the transit agency.
CTA and Molson Coors have continued the partnership in years since, with CTA press releases in subsequent New Year's periods again framing the free window as a safety measure timed to the same 10 p.m.-to-4 a.m. period as the 2021 edition, according to CTA's press office. NBC Chicago and ABC7 Chicago also reported CTA paired the Miller Lite-sponsored bus and train window with a separate free-ride offer from Metra, the regional rail service, extending the free-transit option beyond CTA's own system on the same night in later years of the tradition.
The program's roots go back to 1988
Chicago's arrangement is one piece of a national Molson Coors initiative that predates it by decades. The Free Rides program began in 1988, according to Molson Coors' own promotional materials, and by the time of more recent New Year's Eve editions the company said it was approaching 9 million free rides provided since the program's inception -- a figure that has climbed from the roughly 8 million cited at the time of the 2021 Chicago release covered by the Daily Herald. Molson Coors said it activates the program with different brands depending on regional consumer affinity, with Miller Lite and Coors Light both used across a rotating list of markets that in recent years has included Milwaukee, Chicago, Charlotte, Washington D.C., Denver, Dallas and Phoenix -- and, outside the New Year's window, the company has extended free-ride offers to St. Patrick's Day in some cities as well.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by the Daily Herald. It restores a story originally published on this site in December 2021; figures are as reported at the time.