Delvin4519
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MBTA Buses & Infrastructure
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Delvin4519
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I have also updated the 15 minute and 10 minute maps by time of day/week to the Summer 2026 schedule, (and fixed a few bugs).
erf51trains
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Anderson RTC Bus Route
I propose an extention of a bus route to the Anderson RTC (known to the T as Anderson/Woburn). This assumes BNRD, with the 131 being extended to Woburn Center and the 350 being renumbered to the 80.
Option 1:
A bus from Woburn to Anderson RTC via Merrimac Street, New Boston Street, and Presidential Way.
Alternative 1a:
All 134 buses turn off Main Street at Merrimac Street, bypassing some residential neighborhoods in North Woburn.
Alternative 1b:
Alternating 134 buses run to Anderson RTC, with the others following the existing route through North Woburn, providing service to both, albeit at a reduced frequency.
Option 2:
A bus from Woburn to Anderson RTC via Salem Street, Washington Street, and Commerce Way, including Cummings Park and the Woburn Mall, with the 131 and 354 dropping their Bow Street/Pine Street and W Cummings Park deviations.
Alternative 2a:
An extension of the 134 terminating at Wellington, with trips alternating to North Woburn and Anderson RTC, either at current 25 minute combined rush-hour frequency splitting to 50 on the branches, or at 15 minute combined rush-hour frequency splitting to 30 on the branches. (Potentially numbered 135, but running with the 134 to Wellington)
Alternative 2b:
A new bus route (135) terminating at either (1) Woburn Center, or (2) the 4 Corners intersection (Lexington Street and Cambridge Road) to transfer with the 80.
Alternative 2c:
A new bus route (135) terminating at (1) Montvale Avenue for transfers to the 354 and 131, or (2) Haymarket (Express) via Pine Street and Center Street, effectively a revival of the 355. Possibly (1) off-peak and (2) rush hour?
Alternative 2d:
A new bus (135) from Woburn (terminating at (1) Woburn Center, (2) 4 Corners, (3) Montvale Avenue, or (4) Haymarket as described in 2b and 2c respectively), running up Salem Street and Washington street, but instead of Commerce Way, running via Mishawum Road , New Boston Street, and Presidential Way, absorbing the Senior Center deviation from the 134.
For options 2b, 2c, 2d, the 135 could be a contracted bus route by the City of Woburn or Cummings instead of a MBTA route
I propose an extention of a bus route to the Anderson RTC (known to the T as Anderson/Woburn). This assumes BNRD, with the 131 being extended to Woburn Center and the 350 being renumbered to the 80.
Option 1:
A bus from Woburn to Anderson RTC via Merrimac Street, New Boston Street, and Presidential Way.
Alternative 1a:
All 134 buses turn off Main Street at Merrimac Street, bypassing some residential neighborhoods in North Woburn.
Alternative 1b:
Alternating 134 buses run to Anderson RTC, with the others following the existing route through North Woburn, providing service to both, albeit at a reduced frequency.
Option 2:
A bus from Woburn to Anderson RTC via Salem Street, Washington Street, and Commerce Way, including Cummings Park and the Woburn Mall, with the 131 and 354 dropping their Bow Street/Pine Street and W Cummings Park deviations.
Alternative 2a:
An extension of the 134 terminating at Wellington, with trips alternating to North Woburn and Anderson RTC, either at current 25 minute combined rush-hour frequency splitting to 50 on the branches, or at 15 minute combined rush-hour frequency splitting to 30 on the branches. (Potentially numbered 135, but running with the 134 to Wellington)
Alternative 2b:
A new bus route (135) terminating at either (1) Woburn Center, or (2) the 4 Corners intersection (Lexington Street and Cambridge Road) to transfer with the 80.
Alternative 2c:
A new bus route (135) terminating at (1) Montvale Avenue for transfers to the 354 and 131, or (2) Haymarket (Express) via Pine Street and Center Street, effectively a revival of the 355. Possibly (1) off-peak and (2) rush hour?
Alternative 2d:
A new bus (135) from Woburn (terminating at (1) Woburn Center, (2) 4 Corners, (3) Montvale Avenue, or (4) Haymarket as described in 2b and 2c respectively), running up Salem Street and Washington street, but instead of Commerce Way, running via Mishawum Road , New Boston Street, and Presidential Way, absorbing the Senior Center deviation from the 134.
For options 2b, 2c, 2d, the 135 could be a contracted bus route by the City of Woburn or Cummings instead of a MBTA route
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erf51trains
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I just realized that this is basically what the MBTA wanted to do with the initial BNRD plan
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bweiss1967
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Now that the BEBs with left-hand doors are starting to appear with some regularity on runs that go through Harvard, does anyone have a sense when the T will start to run the outbound 71 and 73 on the lower busway? The strange go-north-to-turn-around-and-go-through-the-Square-at-street-level route has definitely lost its charm!
I've been a little surprised to see the electric buses on the 74 and 75, perhaps even more than on the 71 and 73, despite the fact that the left-side door is basically irrelevant on those routes.
I've been a little surprised to see the electric buses on the 74 and 75, perhaps even more than on the 71 and 73, despite the fact that the left-side door is basically irrelevant on those routes.
F-Line to Dudley
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North Cambridge garage still isn't open, so they aren't running a full-enough fleet of BEB's to take over 100% of those routes and diesel-hybrids are still load-bearing for them at this time. Charlestown garage, where the fleet is temporarily based, only has a couple charging bays.
Yeah, that was an inexplicable update to the original plan. Why have the terminus at a dusty turnaround in a low density area just over the Wilmington line instead of at a major regional transportation center less than a mile away with connections to several other modes and is surrounded by hundreds of apartments and businesses? It makes little sense. Maybe plans will change once the new New Boston Street bridge is completed, but in the meantime they should stick to the original plan.
When this came out, I also suggested extending the terminus of the 131 bus from Woburn Center either to Chestnut and Cambridge Streets in Burlington via Winn St -which would provide new service between Burlington and Woburn centers via Winnmere, which is relatively densely populated- to meet the MBTA's 350 and 354 and the LRTA's 13 and 21 buses (the 21 is the LRTA's new hourly route from Wilmington Depot to the Burlington Mall and Lahey Clinic via LaCascia's Bakery (aka Chestnut and Cambridge) and Burlington Center), or extending it to Woburn Four Corners to meet the 350 to make better connections between the Malden/Everett/Revere area and jobs in Burlington.
When this came out, I also suggested extending the terminus of the 131 bus from Woburn Center either to Chestnut and Cambridge Streets in Burlington via Winn St -which would provide new service between Burlington and Woburn centers via Winnmere, which is relatively densely populated- to meet the MBTA's 350 and 354 and the LRTA's 13 and 21 buses (the 21 is the LRTA's new hourly route from Wilmington Depot to the Burlington Mall and Lahey Clinic via LaCascia's Bakery (aka Chestnut and Cambridge) and Burlington Center), or extending it to Woburn Four Corners to meet the 350 to make better connections between the Malden/Everett/Revere area and jobs in Burlington.
BeansTheCat
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Updates to the Blue Hill Avenue center bus lanes and road redesign. No full roll plan yet, but there's enough information to get a good understand of what will be there.
www.dotnews.com
Blue Hill Ave. overhaul gets fresh design pitch ahead of community meetings - Dorchester Reporter
City and MBTA officials have a substantially revised plan for the $163 million reconstruction of Blue Hill Avenue to show the public in a series of four meetings that start next week.
www.dotnews.com
The revised proposal shown to The Reporter on Thursday differs significantly from the conceptual design first shown publicly two years ago in multiple ways:
• The new design scales back and consolidates the proposed bike infrastructure. Instead of separate northbound and southbound bike lanes along most of Blue Hill Avenue, the new plan calls for a two-way, sidewalk-level path on the west side of the street, running from Woodhaven Street a half mile north of Mattapan Square and ending at Franklin Park. Officials said the change frees up space for more parking and vehicle travel lanes. The bike path would not continue through every part of the corridor, including Mattapan Square. As Mayor Wu noted, “there are really no bike facilities anywhere along Blue Hill Avenue today,” adding that the project would be “not only protecting them but actually creating them.”
• More than 70 percent of the corridor would now have at least two general-purpose travel lanes in each direction. In lower-volume areas, one lane could be used at certain times for parking and at peak periods for moving traffic. The previous design would have reduced traffic to one lane in a direction on certain stretches.
• It adds 42 new parking spaces along the corridor, a benefit achieved by moving bus stop zones away from curbs.
Badusername
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Those stretches with two lanes, angled parking, and no bike lane are going to be nightmarish for cyclists. Also expect a lot of pedestrians hit in the double threat crosswalks throughout the corridor. Still an improvement over what's there, but another disappointment from the Wu admin.Updates to the Blue Hill Avenue center bus lanes and road redesign. No full roll plan yet, but there's enough information to get a good understand of what will be there.
Blue Hill Ave. overhaul gets fresh design pitch ahead of community meetings - Dorchester Reporter
City and MBTA officials have a substantially revised plan for the $163 million reconstruction of Blue Hill Avenue to show the public in a series of four meetings that start next week.
Charlie_mta
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At least they kept the center-running bus lanes, which preserves space for a future LRV line. But the new plan does give way too much to the pro-parking NIMBYs.Updates to the Blue Hill Avenue center bus lanes and road redesign. No full roll plan yet, but there's enough information to get a good understand of what will be there.
Blue Hill Ave. overhaul gets fresh design pitch ahead of community meetings - Dorchester Reporter
City and MBTA officials have a substantially revised plan for the $163 million reconstruction of Blue Hill Avenue to show the public in a series of four meetings that start next week.
Charlie_mta
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Would the absence of bike lanes, and the installation of dedicated bus lanes, encourage bicyclists to (illegally) use the new bus lanes? I know that's what I would probably do, just to take my chances with the occasional bus rather than be mixed into the constant car/truck traffic.
F-Line to Dudley
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Who is this revision even placating? The opposition led by Culpepper, Worrell, et al. want the whole damn thing scalped because of extremism against any parking or lane reductions whatsoever. They're not going to be swayed at all by this or any other attempt at compromise. The thing has been so debated-to-death that there aren't many true fence-sitters left. It's certainly not going to wow the supporters who want complete streets.
I somewhat doubt any faction was forcing a bike-poorer revision. This may just be the version that Wu's office truly wants to self-advocate for, with the runup to it being some sort of kabuki dance. Which is enormously disappointing.
I somewhat doubt any faction was forcing a bike-poorer revision. This may just be the version that Wu's office truly wants to self-advocate for, with the runup to it being some sort of kabuki dance. Which is enormously disappointing.
cubbe8
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Full roll plan. 2 way cycle track from Woodhaven to American Legion, the a shared use path the rest of the way.
It's such a weird "compromise". They've made it impossible for bikers to get to shops in Mattapan Square and they've consolidated bike baths to one side. Sucks, but not the end of the world if there are alternate slow street connections to Neponset path + Cummins (I think I remember seeing a planned bike connection from Mattapan station to Babson). There is a little bit more parking and some really weird configurations like pick up/ drop off lanes and legally parking in the median during church hours? I have no clue how that can be considered safe or respected. And there is like 1 intersection removed around Grove Hall?
This won't make the noise go away. Those opposed to the redesgin are fundamentally against the entire point of this improvement and they are in the minority of local residents regardless. This will only give more time to stir up "community tension" headlines and add no new info on top of the hundreds of pre-existing data points/community feedback. The city should be less cowardly and just do what is provably best for safety, health, accesibility, and efficiency of BHA over trying to please a group that is ideologically opposed to safe streets. In what world does Wu win over a group that is actively alligning with Trump to cut funding to their own neighborhood?
BeansTheCat
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This new design is technically an increase parking over existing conditions. While it probably won't mollify many people, it will be a constant talking point the city uses to shut down opposition. I agree that this is an awful way to design infrastructure and most of the safe cycling/complete street groups will be either disappointed or openly hostile to it. But I also have a feeling there won't be any more major design changes after this. Just some tweaks at the edges and maybe cleaning up some intersections. I'd be stunned if bike lanes are put back in all the way to Mattapan Square
subway1500
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As always, thanks Delvin for staying on top of the T's extremely slow post-COVID recovery for bus service, as posted in the general MassDOT thread.
Unfortunately, there are some notable service cuts, as was the case with the past few schedules. These 2 stand out the most to me, as both are high-ridership routes that have somehow gotten on the T's "bad side" and received significant service cuts:
34/34E is now scheduled for a coordinated 15min headway during PM peak, i.e., 4 trips/hour. In 2019, the 34 ran every 11min, and the 34E separately ran every 20min (express FH to Lagrange St) during the PM peak, which is ~8.5 trips/hour. That's a 50%+ service cut, despite the fact that both demand and demographics along this corridor have not meaningfully shifted since 7 years ago. With this change, I think the scheduling team needs to stand at Forest Hills during the PM rush and observe the crush-loaded buses in-person, especially when a trip runs 15min late and forces half an hour of arriving OL passengers onto a single bus...
Related to the above, two suggestions for Delvin's map and table: (1) the 34/34E fall schedule is still showing some >20min gaps on Sunday that are not filled by the 40 or 50, so the 15-20min map designation is a bit too generous,
(Edited based on Delvin's response below)
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Delvin4519
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The 214/216 had 75 trips pre-COVID weekdays and 46 on Saturdays. These are the values used to calculate pre-COVID percentages for the 214/216 bus. The current 216 bus includes both the 214 and 216.
There is not much of a service cut for the 214/216. The pre-COVID schedule called for every 16 minute interpeak midday service between 10:30am-3:00pm and hourly evening service after 6:30pm. The current schedule calls for service every 15 minutes midday and every 25 minutes in the evening after 8pm.
The loss of trips between 7:00am-9:00am and 4:00pm-6:30pm is counteracted by an additional 1.5 tph after 6:30pm. Additionally daytime service extends from 6:30pm to 8:00pm, so you get 4 extra trips between 6:30pm-8:00pm. Weekday evening service on the 214/216 is more than doubled at around 240% pre-COVID levels.
There is no 60% service cut on the 214/216, the service cut is only 8% on weekdays. Saturdays still have a heavy service cut about 40% and the MBTA has not yet restored Saturday service.
Mind if I ask a question about general methodology here? When you say the T is operating N% of its pre-COVID bus service, it appears that you're generally reading across the total local trips line. Can I ask why that line and trip count generally as a metric, rather than another metric? In my view a fair number of bus service changes wouldn't be captured in a trip count, such as additional bus service provided by new route mileage (104) or lost through truncation (86), or other changes to the service pattern that can leave the number and frequency alone, like eliminating short turns (87) or destination changes (65). The new 216 is kinda a perfect example of a replacement route that is a lot longer than the separate 214/216 it replaced, despite its modest frequency decreases. Are you applying any adjustment for route miles lost or gained?
If we were to, for example use your bus service hours metric, the MBTA exceeded 2019 service levels starting with the July schedule. The metric I've personally been using, the NTDs vehicle revenue mileage, would also say that the T, in total, operated more bus service beginning in July than the same month in 2019. That doesn't mean the T is perfect, or that service levels on some corridors is adequate, but agency wide?
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subway1500
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I stand corrected on the 214/216! Did not realize that pre-COVID weekend service already ran as a single route; will update my previous post accordingly.
The reason I keep harping about the 34/34E is a T document from late 2023, which calls for a significant service reduction along Washington St south of Forest Hills during all service periods. This file is very much live and can be found mid-page here: https://www.mbta.com/projects/transit-priority-strategy (under "Bus Priority Vision and Corridor Profiles").
If I am interpreting this correctly, for the first row (Forest Hills to Roslindale Sq), the T is planning toward a "forever" future-state that includes:
- AM/PM peak: 23 trips/hour (-11 tph vs baseline, i.e., 32% service cut)
- Full day: 268 trips/day (-67 trips/day vs baseline, i.e., 20% service cut)
And one last thing, to give credit where it's due: the T is finally restoring the 34's weekend late-night trips, running at 1:15am on Sat (instead of 12:50am), and 12:45am / 1:19am on Sun (instead of 12:17am). Those trips were cut in Fall 2025 without any mention on the quarterly schedule changes page - or for that matter, the PDF schedule card itself.
Delvin4519
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Trip count is most useful for individual routes, the thing people care about is the headway wait time between trips, or the number of trips operated per day.
For the 86/109 issue, users that had their bus number changed would be best represented by using the 86 pre-COVID number and the 109 current service number.
For the 214/216, the frequency difference you would use the combined number if in the trunk; or the split routes on the branches.
At the system level it does get messy; but it is the only metric that I can update quickly. other metrics are much slower and more delayed to update. And for that matter the TransitMatters COVID recovery dashboard is also measuring total trip count.
And one thing; if a route is extended; using the same service hours would cause a frequency decrease that trip count would capture very well; but service hours would remain silent on that issue. The only way to ensure no reduction in trip count or frequency cuts is to run more service hours and more service mileage.