Transit Data & Analyses (Service, Ridership, Speed, Demographics, and more)

Teban54

Teban54

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I'm creating a dedicated thread for everyone to share and discuss any data, analyses and visualizations related to transit in metro Boston (or elsewhere!). Currently, they are usually posted in the General MBTA thread, and hence tend to get lost with other discussions.

To be clear, if some analysis pertains strongly to a specific topic (e.g. Commuter Rail ridership growth, or a specific Crazy Transit Pitch you made), feel free to post it there instead. This post is mostly as a "general" data thread for things that don't fit elsewhere.


Examples of topics discussed here: (You don't have to limit to these; also, feel free to suggest more to this list)
  • Service levels, either scheduled or actual
    • e.g. How does the new summer schedule improve or reduce service on various lines? Are they actually meeting the schedules?
  • Ridership
    • e.g. Which bus routes have the highest ridership on weekends? Are more people commuting to Cambridge or from Cambridge via the Red Line?
  • Speed and travel time
    • e.g. How did a slow zone affect travel times? How much more unreliable is the SL5 bus compared to the Orange Line?
  • Demographics
    • e.g. How many people are within a 10-minute walk to each station? What are the densest suburbs that are still not served by public transit?
  • Employment and travel patterns
    • e.g. Where are Kendall's workers located? Which major destinations for Roxbury residents deserve improved one-seat rides? How many riders are using buses for non-commute purposes?

Useful Official Resources: (Feel free to add more)
  • MBTA Open Data Portal - The one-stop solution for most, if not all, official MBTA data. Examples include:
    • Ridership on all modes, sometimes even down to specific stops and trips (e.g. the 7:03 am trip on bus route X)
      • The more detailed ridership data that show each stop's boardings and alightings are usually only available for Fall schedules
      • Monthly ridership data is updated more frequently, although they don't account for transfers
      • Gated Station Entries for rapid transit per day are updated frequently, but they lack data for most Green Line surface stops
    • Headways, arrival/departure times, and travel times for rapid transit and buses (in actual service)
    • Headways for rapid transit (in actual service)
    • Rapid transit stop distances
    • Speed restrictions
    • Service Delivery Policies
    • Various maps: Service areas, Bus Network Redesign archives
  • MBTA Passenger Surveys
    • Detailed demographic surveys of riders, including some unique information such as trip purpose, mode of access, transfers, etc.
    • 2023 Passenger Survey - the most recent version; they plan to release data every year from now onwards
    • 2015-17 Passenger Survey - more detailed but more dated
  • Bus Route Profiles
    • As part of the Better Bus Project and released in 2018, they're extremely informative reports of every single bus route
    • Cover route description, service levels, ridership patterns, reliability, and more
  • 2014 MBTA Blue Book
    • Easy visual lookups for ridership, rolling stock, track schematic, etc.
    • e.g. They have a visual diagram of the subway map with each station's ridership
    • Data is a bit outdated, but I believe this is the most recent Blue Book that's publicly available
  • GTFS Archives
    • Archives of all schedules for various modes dating back to 2009
    • Extremely technical and requires dedicated tools for parsing, though
  • (MassDOT) MassGIS data layers
    • Primarily for geographical data (e.g. maps of routes and stops)
  • U.S. Census Data - for demographics and employment, including:
  • LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES)
    • Employment data with both origin and destination (e.g. How many Chelsea residents work in Longwood?)
    • Most easily accessed with interactive web app OnTheMap
    • Also, while not its intention, OnTheMap is also the most convenient tool that lets you query the population of an arbitrary polygon
  • Massachusetts Interactive Property Map
    • Also useful for measuring ROW widths

Useful Third-Party Resources: (Feel free to add more)
 
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Anyway, getting to the trigger in me making this post:

I was writing some Python scripts to clean up the MBTA Bus Ridership by Time Period, Season, Route/Line, and Stop dataset. (The output CSV files will be shared soon, after I fix some bugs and work on a documentation.)

A by-product is this: List of bus routes with the heaviest weekday ridership in Fall 2024.

1745381636957.png


Biggest surprise to me: SL3 now has the 5th highest ridership systemwide. Even higher than the 1!

Note that this was pre-BNRD (as seen from the 117 existing).
 
I don't know how to describe this, maybe it's "trips generated by sq mile?" but it would be very cool to see how mode-shift or bus-number-shift occurs by making trips have a "lossy" start and end point of about 1/4 mile and show trends somehow via a map.

(This is totally outside of my wheelhouse but I do get into these rabbit holes sometimes)

I feel like I've seen maps for like Commute Patterns in the Boston Region which are census-tract based, but I'm thinking more about trends by adding/subtracting/modifying service in an area. Especially when considering BNRD, GLX, SLx, "regional rail" and other changes to the network in the last few years. Maybe it's map-quadrant-based? Like number of passenger trips started from x,y and iterated over the general area?

For example, I used to commute to Watertown from the West End. Sometimes I'd take the Red Line to the 71 via Charles/MGH, and then sometimes I'd take the 504 back and then jump on the Orange/Green Line to get to North Station, sometimes I'd even take the 57 to the Green Line if the 504 wait would be too long. It's unfortunate that those trips are all "separate", if you know what I mean. I feel like just capturing the start of a trip (if one can remove all transfers) would be a very interesting map to show increases/decreases in transit usage per "walking" distance of a person's "should-I-take-transit-for-this-trip" decision.

I understand It's ugly because of overlaps (two or more bus/train stations will overlap for example, so you'd have to be clever about displaying/smoothing/weighting), but it just feels like it's hard to talk about the actual network vs the individual routes.
 
Teban54 said:
Somehow, the dataset "MBTA Commuter Rail Ridership by Trip, Season, Route/Line, and Stop" on the MBTA Open Data Portal is broken:

https://mbta-massdot.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/mbta-commuter-rail-ridership-by-trip-season-route-line-and-stop/about

Does anyone have an archive of it when it was still up, or know alternative sources for commuter rail ridership per stop (that's more recent than the 2014 blue book)? I can't seem to find any,
Click to expand...
The 2018 counts are also available here, though I do not know if the 2024 counts are available anywhere else.
 
Vehicle Capacities

I went down the rabbit hole of figuring out vehicle capacities while writing the recent comment about Silver Line Phase III.

Here are the capacity figures for each car that I can find. I've bolded the most reliable figures in my opinion. (Reminder that each Green Line Type 7/8/9 train runs 2 cars, and each HRT train runs 6 cars)

VehicleSeatsPolicy Capacity
(Peak hours)		Crush CapacityUnsure Standards
Bus (40')33-39 [SDP, NE]
38-40 [BB]		50-54 [SDP]
53-56 [BB]		72-75 [BB]
Articulated Bus (60')
(1000s and 1200s: 28, 39, SL4/5)		53-57 [SDP, NE]
57 [BB]		74-79 [SDP]
80 [SDP'17]
79 [BB]		104 [BB]
Articulated Bus (60')
(1100s: SL1/2/3 Dual-Mode, pre-2024)		47, or 38 airport [BB]66, or 53 airport [SDP'17]
65 [BB]		96 [BB]
Articulated Bus (60')
(1294+: SL1/2/3, post-2022)		50-53, or 37 airport [SDP, NE]71-74, or 51 airport [SDP]
Mattapan PCC41 [SDP]
40 [BB]
38-41 [NE]		73 [SDP]
N/A [BB]		130 [BB]
Green Line Type 746 [SDP, BB, NE]100 [SDP]
101 [BB]		269 [BB, Wiki]147 [Wiki]
(is 101+46)
Green Line Type 844 [SDP, BB, NE]100 [SDP]
101 [BB]		199 [BB]
Green Line Type 944 [SDP, NE, Wiki]100 [SDP](199? estimation)221 [CAF]
212 [Wiki]
Green Line Type 1060 [NE](308? interpretation)308 [CAF]
400 [Wiki, Media]
Blue Line35 [SDP, BB, NE]86 [SDP]
95 [BB]		145 [BB]
Orange Line (Old)58 [BB]141 [SDP'17]
131 [BB]		224 [BB]
Orange Line (New)41-44 [SDP, NE]131-139 [SDP]
Red Line (Old)50-62 [SDP]
52-63 [BB]
50-64 [NE]		161-165 [SDP]
167 [BB]		260-277 [BB]
Red Line (New)32-38 [SDP, NE]152-165 [SDP]

[SDP] MBTA Service Delivery Policy, as of Fall 2024; I also references a 2017 SDP archive for retired fleets. It specifies "comfortable" loads as follows:
  • Buses: 1.4 pax/seat during peak hours, and 1.25 pax/seat off-peak (SL buses always follow peak hours)
  • Subway: Number of seats + standing passengers based on floor area: 3 SF/pax during peak, 10 SF/pax off-peak
    • Green Line Types 7/8/9 are lumped together
    • The presented policy capacity figures for GL 7/8/9 also disagree with the methodology: using 44-46 seats and 207 ft^2 of floor area, I calculated a capacity of 113-115, compared to 100 in the SDP. My guess is that they did a manual adjustment downwards.
Note that this document claims that MBTA's 1.4 pax/seat for buses "is stricter than the 1.5-passenger standard respected in parts of the public transit industry".

[BB] 2014 MBTA Blue Book's Fleet Rosters for buses and rapid transit.
  • Buses:
    • Planning capacity: 1.4 passengers per seat (pax/seat)
    • Crush capacity: Number of seats + standing passengers based on floor area: 2 square feet per passenger (SF/pax)
  • Rapid Transit:
    • Crush capacity: 1.5 SF/pax, except GL Type 8 (1.35 SF/pax)
    • Policy capacity was not defined in the Blue Book, but their numbers match [SDP]
These numbers largely agree with SDP, with minor differences for rapid transit.

[NE] NETransit roster page, as of 2025. This only has the number of seats, and I mostly used it for cross-referencing.

[CAF] CAF's information page of Boston LRVs (archived, referenced on Wikipedia). It includes brief technical data for both Type 9s and Type 10s.

[Wiki] Wikipedia pages for Type 7, Type 8, Type 9 and Type 10.

[Media] The only reference for Type 10 having a capacity of 400 that I can find, other than Wikipedia, is this Boston.com article.

Difference between the two types of capacities: (This document is helpful)
  • Policy capacity is apparently MBTA's own standard for comfortable loads. However, vehicles can go over policy capacity, and on the most crowded buses and trains, they do so regularly.
  • Crush capacity is the physical limit of the vehicle. It's the absolute maximum of how many people can fit. Achieving it sometimes requires pushing people into cars in Japanese style.
It's unclear to me which one is used in planning processes, either by MBTA or other agencies. This appendix on South Station Expansion apparently used the more conservative policy capacities, and made an explicit note of this fact.

For easy reference, here are rough estimates of capacities per (train) set:

VehiclePolicy Capacity (Peak hours)Crush Capacity
Bus (40')5475
Articulated Bus (60')74104
GL Type 7/8/9 (2-car)200398
GL Type 10 (2-car)?716-800?
Blue Line516870
Orange Line8101344
Red Line9511611
(Note: 1-car Type 10s will be run in the short- and medium-term)

My remaining questions, if anyone can answer them:
  1. Do we have more accurate capacity figures for Type 10s? There's a huge discrepancy between 308 (from the manufacturer, CAF) vs. 400 (from the media). And are these closer to policy capacities or crush capacities?
    (I currently interpreted them as crush, as they're clearly from the manufacturer and aligns more closely with the widespread claim of "twice the capacity of today's cars" that way.)
  2. Which of these two types of capacity figures is typically used in planning processes?
  3. Why did Wikipedia list the number 147 (presumably 46+101) for GL Type 7? I assume that the editor thought 101 refers to standing capacity only, but replicating the T's formula gave me 113, as I showed above. ( @The EGE Was that Wikipedia edit done by you?)
 
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Preliminary analysis: Ridership of Longwood Medical Area (LMA), and patterns for the Green Line D/E branches

Here are some ridership patterns from Fall 2024 data, which surprised me:
  • People are commuting to LMA differently than how they go back home from LMA -- they use the Green Line more for trips to LMA, but not from LMA
  • From downtown to LMA, the E is more popular, but the D still has decent ridership
  • From LMA back to downtown, when forced to make a choice, more riders choose the E -- and the D gets very low ridership
1748456254234.png


(Keep in mind, the Green Line's ridership data may not be super reliable especially at surface stations.)

Key figures from the table, and how they support the patterns listed above:
  • All 4 stations have huge discrepancies between boardings and alightings, as seen from direction "BOTH"
  • Red: Westbound (WB) trips from downtown to LMA
    • The E gets more riders (900+ per stop)
    • The D has less riders, but still decent (557 at Longwood, or 28% of the E's two stops)
  • Blue: Eastbound (EB) trips from LMA to downtown
    • The E gets fewer riders (500-700 per stop, 63% of westbound), but still respectable
    • The D almost loses its entire ridership at Longwood: Only 169 riders (30% of westbound D's 557 riders, and 14% of eastbound E)
  • Green: Trips between the D's Longwood and points further west (Brookline, Reservoir, Newton, Riverside)
    • Lower demand than from downtown, unsurprisingly
    • But amazingly, for trips from LMA, it surpasses downtown-bound demand (401 vs. 169)
Note that these observations also apply to the D's Fenway station, even though it's typically not considered as serving the LMA (and likely has its unique catchment area).

Why? Here are my best guesses:


1. Reliability vs. convenience matters differently for AM and PM peaks.

While this is not yet supported by concrete data, my conjecture is that people generally value more about timing (shorter and more reliable trips) when reporting to work, and more about convenience (shorter walks, getting a seat) when getting home from work. This could mean that more riders may prefer "Green Line + walking" to LMA, but "LMA shuttle + Orange Line" from LMA. If true, this would explain the asymmetric usage on both branches.

This alone wouldn't explain the difference between the D and E branches, however. So...


2. The walk from the D branch to LMA buildings doesn't seem pleasant, even if it's fine distance-wise.

It takes 760 ft from the D station's southern exits to the intersection of Longwood Ave @ Riverway, the western edge of LMA. Much of it is just crossing the Muddy River.

From the E branch, the same 760 ft almost gets you to Harvard Medical School (Tugo Circle / Ave Louis Pasteur), starting from either the LMA or Brigham Circle stations. HMS is also very much an important part of LMA, and a destination itself, compared to the Riverway area.

(Interestingly, the official Urban Ring Phase 3 proposal placed the LMA BRT/subway stations at Tugo Circle, instead of further west towards Brookline Ave.)
Source: The Urban Ring Major Investment Study, Chapter 3, Page 34.

1748463907996.png


Appendix E provides explanations and station design sketches in Section 5.24 and Figure 39:

1748464038380.png


1748464168490.png


I was not able to find any explanations of why this station site was chosen and what other alternatives were considered.

LMA walking.png


In addition, the experience of crossing Riverway (the road) from the D branch may not be ideal. This street view is looking east on Longwood Ave; even with maximally convenient alignments of pedestrian crossings, this still involves crossing the auto-centric Riverway, and waiting for a full-pedestrian traffic signal. On the other hand, the 760' walks from the E branch go through more urbanized and less auto-centric areas.

1748464506911.png



3. Non-hospital destinations are further east.

While the LMA hospitals are the main employers and non-employment destinations, there are many academic institutions further east: Harvard Medical School, MassArt, Wentworth, Boston Latin School, and Simmons University. They're all centered around Huntington Ave east of the hospitals, and thus much more likely to contribute to the E branch's ridership than the D. The only outlier is Emmanuel College in the middle of the D and E branches.

School activity at the E's LMA stop is indeed significant. The 2015-17 passenger survey gives us the following, and shows that almost 20% of trips at LMA station (E) are for school: (Granted, this is pre-Covid)

Trip purposeHome-based workHome-based schoolHome-based social activityHome-based otherNon-home-based
Longwood Medical Area (E)123447393252463
Brigham Circle (E)13643460209301
Longwood (D)14413220122203
Fenway (D)1500100166272262


4. You may be more likely to get a seat on the inbound E.

During a typical PM peak in Fall 2024, the E branch transports 341 riders from Fenwood Rd eastwards; that number is 566 on the D branch past Brookline Village. You'll likely find an emptier train at Brigham Circle (E) than at Longwood (D).

(A caveat is that the E branch gets just as crowded between Brigham Circle and LMA, with 565 riders being transported across all trips.)
 
Last edited:
Teban54 said:
Preliminary analysis: Ridership of Longwood Medical Area (LMA), and patterns for the Green Line D/E branches

Here are some ridership patterns from Fall 2024 data, which surprised me:
  • People are commuting to LMA differently than how they go back home from LMA -- they use the Green Line more for trips to LMA, but not from LMA
  • From downtown to LMA, the E is more popular, but the D still has decent ridership
  • From LMA back to downtown, when forced to make a choice, more riders choose the E -- and the D gets very low ridership
View attachment 63527

(Keep in mind, the Green Line's ridership data may not be super reliable especially at surface stations.)

Key figures from the table, and how they support the patterns listed above:
  • All 4 stations have huge discrepancies between boardings and alightings, as seen from direction "BOTH"
  • Red: Westbound (WB) trips from downtown to LMA
    • The E gets more riders (900+ per stop)
    • The D has less riders, but still decent (557 at Longwood, or 28% of the E's two stops)
  • Blue: Eastbound (EB) trips from LMA to downtown
    • The E gets fewer riders (500-700 per stop, 63% of westbound), but still respectable
    • The D almost loses its entire ridership at Longwood: Only 169 riders (30% of westbound D's 557 riders, and 14% of eastbound E)
  • Green: Trips between the D's Longwood and points further west (Brookline, Reservoir, Newton, Riverside)
    • Lower demand than from downtown, unsurprisingly
    • But amazingly, for trips from LMA, it surpasses downtown-bound demand (401 vs. 169)
Note that these observations also apply to the D's Fenway station, even though it's typically not considered as serving the LMA (and likely has its unique catchment area).

Why? Here are my best guesses:


1. Reliability vs. convenience matters differently for AM and PM peaks.

While this is not yet supported by concrete data, my conjecture is that people generally value more about timing (shorter and more reliable trips) when reporting to work, and more about convenience (shorter walks, getting a seat) when getting home from work. This could mean that more riders may prefer "Green Line + walking" to LMA, but "LMA shuttle + Orange Line" from LMA. If true, this would explain the asymmetric usage on both branches.

This alone wouldn't explain the difference between the D and E branches, however. So...


2. The walk from the D branch to LMA buildings doesn't seem pleasant, even if it's fine distance-wise.

It takes 760 ft from the D station's southern exits to the intersection of Longwood Ave @ Riverway, the western edge of LMA. Much of it is just crossing the Muddy River.

From the E branch, the same 760 ft almost gets you to Harvard Medical School (Tugo Circle / Ave Louis Pasteur), starting from either the LMA or Brigham Circle stations. HMS is also very much an important part of LMA, and a destination itself, compared to the Riverway area.

(Interestingly, the official Urban Ring Phase 3 proposal placed the LMA BRT/subway stations at Tugo Circle, instead of further west towards Brookline Ave.)
Source: The Urban Ring Major Investment Study, Chapter 3, Page 34.

View attachment 63534

Appendix E provides explanations and station design sketches in Section 5.24 and Figure 39:

View attachment 63535

View attachment 63536

I was not able to find any explanations of why this station site was chosen and what other alternatives were considered.

View attachment 63528

In addition, the experience of crossing Riverway (the road) from the D branch may not be ideal. This street view is looking east on Longwood Ave; even with maximally convenient alignments of pedestrian crossings, this still involves crossing the auto-centric Riverway, and waiting for a full-pedestrian traffic signal. On the other hand, the 760' walks from the E branch go through more urbanized and less auto-centric areas.

View attachment 63538


3. Non-hospital destinations are further east.

While the LMA hospitals are the main employers and non-employment destinations, there are many academic institutions further east: Harvard Medical School, MassArt, Wentworth, Boston Latin School, and Simmons University. They're all centered around Huntington Ave east of the hospitals, and thus much more likely to contribute to the E branch's ridership than the D. The only outlier is Emmanuel College in the middle of the D and E branches.

School activity at the E's LMA stop is indeed significant. The 2015-17 passenger survey gives us the following, and shows that almost 20% of trips at LMA station (E) are for school: (Granted, this is pre-Covid)

Trip purposeHome-based workHome-based schoolHome-based social activityHome-based otherNon-home-based
Longwood Medical Area (E)123447393252463
Brigham Circle (E)13643460209301
Longwood (D)14413220122203
Fenway (D)1500100166272262


4. You may be more likely to get a seat on the inbound E.

During a typical PM peak in Fall 2024, the E branch transports 341 riders from Fenwood Rd eastwards; that number is 566 on the D branch past Brookline Village. You'll likely find an emptier train at Brigham Circle (E) than at Longwood (D).

(A caveat is that the E branch gets just as crowded between Brigham Circle and LMA, with 565 riders being transported across all trips.)
Click to expand...
So measuring distance from the various T stops to somewhat arbitrary points within the Longwood area is interesting and normalizing, but I wonder if the real figure of merit from each T stop is how far you are from the nearest entrance to one of the hospital complex habitrails. Each of the campuses at Longwood has a substantial internal (weather protected) connection infrastructure.

Given Boston weather -- getting from the T to inside the hospital internal hallway system may be the most important distance that determines whether one uses the T or not. For example the walk from Brigham Circle to the closest entrance to the BWH internal hallway system is only about 100 ft.

Similar considerations may apply to potential D line T users accessing the BIDMC or Boston Children's campuses.
 
JeffDowntown said:
So measuring distance from the various T stops to somewhat arbitrary points within the Longwood area is interesting and normalizing, but I wonder if the real figure of merit from each T stop is how far you are from the nearest entrance to one of the hospital complex habitrails. Each of the campuses at Longwood has a substantial internal (weather protected) connection infrastructure.

Given Boston weather -- getting from the T to inside the hospital internal hallway system may be the most important distance that determines whether one uses the T or not. For example the walk from Brigham Circle to the closest entrance to the BWH internal hallway system is only about 100 ft.

Similar considerations may apply to potential D line T users accessing the BIDMC or Boston Children's campuses.
Click to expand...
FWIW, I actually spent considerable time in early 2024 visiting the LMA buildings in person and mapping the various exits, with exactly this goal in mind -- figuring out the "nearest exits" for each. Hopefully I can find time to finish up the analysis soon...
 
Teban54 said:
FWIW, I actually spent considerable time in early 2024 visiting the LMA buildings in person and mapping the various exits, with exactly this goal in mind -- figuring out the "nearest exits" for each. Hopefully I can find time to finish up the analysis soon...
Click to expand...
Raises the question for a location like Longwood -- to encourage T use, should there be a concerted public effort to extend the habitrails to closer to the T stops.
 
Teban54 said:
Preliminary analysis: Ridership of Longwood Medical Area (LMA), and patterns for the Green Line D/E branches

Here are some ridership patterns from Fall 2024 data, which surprised me:
  • People are commuting to LMA differently than how they go back home from LMA -- they use the Green Line more for trips to LMA, but not from LMA
  • From downtown to LMA, the E is more popular, but the D still has decent ridership
  • From LMA back to downtown, when forced to make a choice, more riders choose the E -- and the D gets very low ridership
View attachment 63527

(Keep in mind, the Green Line's ridership data may not be super reliable especially at surface stations.)

Key figures from the table, and how they support the patterns listed above:
  • All 4 stations have huge discrepancies between boardings and alightings, as seen from direction "BOTH"
  • Red: Westbound (WB) trips from downtown to LMA
    • The E gets more riders (900+ per stop)
    • The D has less riders, but still decent (557 at Longwood, or 28% of the E's two stops)
  • Blue: Eastbound (EB) trips from LMA to downtown
    • The E gets fewer riders (500-700 per stop, 63% of westbound), but still respectable
    • The D almost loses its entire ridership at Longwood: Only 169 riders (30% of westbound D's 557 riders, and 14% of eastbound E)
  • Green: Trips between the D's Longwood and points further west (Brookline, Reservoir, Newton, Riverside)
    • Lower demand than from downtown, unsurprisingly
    • But amazingly, for trips from LMA, it surpasses downtown-bound demand (401 vs. 169)
Note that these observations also apply to the D's Fenway station, even though it's typically not considered as serving the LMA (and likely has its unique catchment area).

Why? Here are my best guesses:


1. Reliability vs. convenience matters differently for AM and PM peaks.

While this is not yet supported by concrete data, my conjecture is that people generally value more about timing (shorter and more reliable trips) when reporting to work, and more about convenience (shorter walks, getting a seat) when getting home from work. This could mean that more riders may prefer "Green Line + walking" to LMA, but "LMA shuttle + Orange Line" from LMA. If true, this would explain the asymmetric usage on both branches.

This alone wouldn't explain the difference between the D and E branches, however. So...


2. The walk from the D branch to LMA buildings doesn't seem pleasant, even if it's fine distance-wise.

It takes 760 ft from the D station's southern exits to the intersection of Longwood Ave @ Riverway, the western edge of LMA. Much of it is just crossing the Muddy River.

From the E branch, the same 760 ft almost gets you to Harvard Medical School (Tugo Circle / Ave Louis Pasteur), starting from either the LMA or Brigham Circle stations. HMS is also very much an important part of LMA, and a destination itself, compared to the Riverway area.

(Interestingly, the official Urban Ring Phase 3 proposal placed the LMA BRT/subway stations at Tugo Circle, instead of further west towards Brookline Ave.)
Source: The Urban Ring Major Investment Study, Chapter 3, Page 34.

View attachment 63534

Appendix E provides explanations and station design sketches in Section 5.24 and Figure 39:

View attachment 63535

View attachment 63536

I was not able to find any explanations of why this station site was chosen and what other alternatives were considered.

View attachment 63528

In addition, the experience of crossing Riverway (the road) from the D branch may not be ideal. This street view is looking east on Longwood Ave; even with maximally convenient alignments of pedestrian crossings, this still involves crossing the auto-centric Riverway, and waiting for a full-pedestrian traffic signal. On the other hand, the 760' walks from the E branch go through more urbanized and less auto-centric areas.

View attachment 63538


3. Non-hospital destinations are further east.

While the LMA hospitals are the main employers and non-employment destinations, there are many academic institutions further east: Harvard Medical School, MassArt, Wentworth, Boston Latin School, and Simmons University. They're all centered around Huntington Ave east of the hospitals, and thus much more likely to contribute to the E branch's ridership than the D. The only outlier is Emmanuel College in the middle of the D and E branches.

School activity at the E's LMA stop is indeed significant. The 2015-17 passenger survey gives us the following, and shows that almost 20% of trips at LMA station (E) are for school: (Granted, this is pre-Covid)

Trip purposeHome-based workHome-based schoolHome-based social activityHome-based otherNon-home-based
Longwood Medical Area (E)123447393252463
Brigham Circle (E)13643460209301
Longwood (D)14413220122203
Fenway (D)1500100166272262


4. You may be more likely to get a seat on the inbound E.

During a typical PM peak in Fall 2024, the E branch transports 341 riders from Fenwood Rd eastwards; that number is 566 on the D branch past Brookline Village. You'll likely find an emptier train at Brigham Circle (E) than at Longwood (D).

(A caveat is that the E branch gets just as crowded between Brigham Circle and LMA, with 565 riders being transported across all trips.)
Click to expand...
This has already come up a bit, but I think if you want to figure out how people get to/from Longwood, you really also need to look at the buses. In the other thread, @JeffDowntown pointed out the substantial shuttle system. There are also all the MBTA buses. There are seven that go down Brookline Ave, making it one of the densest bus corridors in the whole MBTA network. You could also count the buses on Huntington; the 39 for sure, and maybe a couple stops of the 66 as well.

For most neighborhoods with rapid transit access, just counting train ridership is probably adequate, and the added bus numbers end up marginal. Longwood is a spot where rapid transit access is a little wonky, and buses (both public and private) end up doing a lot of heavy lifting.
 
ritchiew said:
This has already come up a bit, but I think if you want to figure out how people get to/from Longwood, you really also need to look at the buses. In the other thread, @JeffDowntown pointed out the substantial shuttle system. There are also all the MBTA buses. There are seven that go down Brookline Ave, making it one of the densest bus corridors in the whole MBTA network. You could also count the buses on Huntington; the 39 for sure, and maybe a couple stops of the 66 as well.

For most neighborhoods with rapid transit access, just counting train ridership is probably adequate, and the added bus numbers end up marginal. Longwood is a spot where rapid transit access is a little wonky, and buses (both public and private) end up doing a lot of heavy lifting.
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Longwood is also an unusual location in terms of transit goals. You are not really trying to get everyone out of their cars, but rather you are trying to reserve car access for the people who really need it (many patients).

So the goal is to get employees and visitors using transit, while reserving the limited car access capacity for the patients who really need the access.
 
Teban54 said:
Somehow, the dataset "MBTA Commuter Rail Ridership by Trip, Season, Route/Line, and Stop" on the MBTA Open Data Portal is broken:

https://mbta-massdot.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/mbta-commuter-rail-ridership-by-trip-season-route-line-and-stop/about

Does anyone have an archive of it when it was still up, or know alternative sources for commuter rail ridership per stop (that's more recent than the 2014 blue book)? I can't seem to find any,
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TrolleybusFoaming said:
The 2018 counts are also available here, though I do not know if the 2024 counts are available anywhere else.
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The "MBTA Commuter Rail Ridership by Trip, Season, Route Line, and Stop" dataset has now been fixed.

Anyone who wants to analyze Fairmount Line ridership boosts after frequency improvements, the floor is yours!
 
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