Late night T service take 2

[bigeman312]

Anyone know what the 15 busiest bus lines are?

Key Bus Route Map

As well as the Silver Line busses which are not considered "key bus routes," as they should be, but rather they are considered subway service.

The 4 T lines/all branches/Ashmont-Mattapan Line/Silver Line/Key bus routes will provide service until 3 a.m. to every Boston neighborhood except West Roxbury, and also provide service to the municipalities of Braintree, Quincy, Milton, Brookline, Newton, Watertown, Belmont, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Malden, Everett (tangentially), Chelsea and Revere. This program is going to work tremendously!

 

[jdrinboston]

Key Bus Route Map

As well as the Silver Line busses which are not considered "key bus routes," as they should be, but rather they are considered subway service.

The 4 T lines/all branches/Ashmont-Mattapan Line/Silver Line/Key bus routes will provide service until 3 a.m. to every Boston neighborhood except West Roxbury, and also provide service to the municipalities of Braintree, Quincy, Milton, Brookline, Newton, Watertown, Belmont, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Malden, Everett (tangentially), Chelsea and Revere. This program is going to work tremendously!

I'm surprised that none of the bus routes in Somerville are considered "key routes" I'm thinking the route that goes down Broadway through Ball Square/Winter Hill to Sullivan Square. The number escapes me.

 

[radioI84]

In addition to the Key Bus routes, they should run the following buses as well:

9 City Point-Copley
(to serve parts of South Boston further from Broadway)
31 Forest Hills-Mattapan
(Very busy bus route, valuable connection of Forest Hills to Blue Hill Ave)
34 Forest Hills-Dedham Line via Washington Street OR
36 Forest Hills-Charles River via Belgrade Ave
(Debatable I know, but both these buses have significant ridership and this would give service to West Roxbury)
70 Central Square, Cambridge-Cedarwood (End the route at Waltham Square)
(Anyone who has seen this bus at night knows it's always packed)
86 Cleveland Circle-Sullivan via Harvard
(Gives Union Square, Somerville service and connects Harvard and Cambridge to Brighton)
88 Lechmere-Clarendon Hill via Highland Ave and Davis
(Connects Somerville)
89 Sullivan-Davis via Broadway
(Also connects Somerville but different parts)
104 Malden-Sullivan via Broadway (Everett)
(Similar to the 70, this bus along with its counterpart the 109 are ALWAYS packed at night)
240 Ashmont-Crawford Square, Randolph
(Similarly always packed at night)
441/442 Wonderland-Central Square, Lynn via Lynnway
455 Wonderland-Salem Depot via Central Square, Lynn
(These two are debatable too, but connecting Lynn to Wonderland should be a priority, these buses have healthy ridership, and a late night connection to Salem State and Salem Center would be a great thing. The 455 is preferable but the 441/442 should be a minimum, it is a rather quick route.)

While I know this service is more for and will appeal more to the late night party crowd, that doesn't mean it can't also serve the working class as well, which the 31, 34, 36, 70, 89, 104, 240 and the North Shore buses certainly would.

Edit: Added the 240

 

[davem]

Somehow, I just realized that NONE of the busses through Somerville are Key Routes. Ugh. There's going to be a lot of people taking cabs from Lechmere/Central/Sullivan/etc. GLX can't come soon enough.

They could extend the 66 to Sullivan, the 77 or 73 to Lechmere, and the 57 to Waltham. That would cover a decent chunk of the gaps. Hopefully they are looking at extending / modifying some of the key routes at night to cover dead zones. Overall though, awesome news!

 

[underground]

I'm surprised that none of tthe bus routes in Somerville are considered "key routes" I'm thinking the route that goes down Broadway through Ball Square/Winter Hill to Sullivan Square. The number escapes me.

I think the issue is that entire area gets a ton of riders, but they're spread over a couple of bus routes so they don't turn up as high usage when the T just looks at line by line numbers. Just a guess though. I could imagine combining the 89, 95, and 101 would get you a top 15 line easy.

 

[MBTAddict]

In addition to the Key Bus routes, they should run the following buses as well:

9 City Point-Copley
(to serve parts of South Boston further from Broadway)
31 Forest Hills-Mattapan
(Very busy bus route, valuable connection of Forest Hills to Blue Hill Ave)
34 Forest Hills-Dedham Line via Washington Street OR
36 Forest Hills-Charles River via Belgrade Ave
(Debatable I know, but both these buses have significant ridership and this would give service to West Roxbury)
70 Central Square, Cambridge-Cedarwood (End the route at Waltham Square)
(Anyone who has seen this bus at night knows it's always packed)
86 Cleveland Circle-Sullivan via Harvard
(Gives Union Square, Somerville service and connects Harvard and Cambridge to Brighton)
88 Lechmere-Clarendon Hill via Highland Ave and Davis
(Connects Somerville)
89 Sullivan-Davis via Broadway
(Also connects Somerville but different parts)
104 Malden-Sullivan via Broadway (Everett)
(Similar to the 70, this bus along with its counterpart the 109 are ALWAYS packed at night)
240 Ashmont-Crawford Square, Randolph
(Similarly always packed at night)
441/442 Wonderland-Central Square, Lynn via Lynnway
455 Wonderland-Salem Depot via Central Square, Lynn
(These two are debatable too, but connecting Lynn to Wonderland should be a priority, these buses have healthy ridership, and a late night connection to Salem State and Salem Center would be a great thing. The 455 is preferable but the 441/442 should be a minimum, it is a rather quick route.)

While I know this service is more for and will appeal more to the late night party crowd, that doesn't mean it can't also serve the working class as well, which the 31, 34, 36, 70, 89, 104, 240 and the North Shore buses certainly would.

Edit: Added the 240

yes, it would be great if it was more than subway+key bus routes, but let's not get greedy here.

I agree that this is gonna shift from pilot to regular operating procedure very quickly. Then we can revisit a further expansion.

 

[George_Apley]

They could extend the 66 to Sullivan, the 77 or 73 to Lechmere, and the 57 to Waltham. That would cover a decent chunk of the gaps. Hopefully they are looking at extending / modifying some of the key routes at night to cover dead zones. Overall though, awesome news!

Yes, I don't mean to only gripe. It is great news! I just wish my apartment was covered by the busses lol.

 

[belmont square]

I think the issue is that entire area gets a ton of riders, but they're spread over a couple of bus routes so they don't turn up as high usage when the T just looks at line by line numbers. Just a guess though. I could imagine combining the 89, 95, and 101 would get you a top 15 line easy.

I think the reality is there just isn't a high level of bus ridership in Somerville when compared to the other parts of the system served by Key Bus Routes. You could make the same argument about the 15, 22, 23 and 28 getting a ton of riders collectively but being spread out across multiple routes, except that each of them actually is a top-15 ridership route on its own.

In fact, the next three highest ridership routes that cross the Blue Hill Ave corridor (16, 21, and 31) all have higher ridership than any of the Somerville routes identified above.

It may just be perspective--this board is probably more skewed to Somerville than it is Mattapan/Dorchester. Somerville ommissions seem like a big deal, when in fact the decision to omit these routes is rational and clearly supported by ridership statistics. (That's not to say that certain populations might use late night transit in greater #s than they use normal service, but clearly the MBTA is extending service along the corridors that get the greatest use during normal service).

 

[Matthew]

Somerville has a lot of bus routes but they all radiate diffusely outwards from points like Davis, Union or Sullivan. There's nothing like the Rt 1 corridor. And low frequency creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of low ridership. It's hard to overestimate how much the GLX will radically improve transportation in Somerville.

I would say that when considering these late night service expansions, try to keep in mind the amount of service-hours you're adding. It's easy to say "extend the 66 to Sullivan" but what does that mean in terms of number of driver-hours and fuel-miles? It will cost more. And who knows if they've renegotiated that overtime pay bonus sticking point. We don't want this service to drown itself on cost of labor.

 

[MBTAddict]

The only addition that I think would be awesome to add though I admit beforehand having zero idea about if it could work at all: a new bus service that mimics the GLX.

Again, it's probably stupid and couldn't work, but I feel like if this Governor were at the beginning of his term it's the kinda thing that would generate a lot of good will.

 

[Matthew]

I think it's been discussed as a possible mitigation item for missing the GLX deadline, but I'm not sure how the bus would be routed. More of a GLX thread issue.

 

[jass]

Its still odd to me that the CT routes arent "key routes" considering that they were phase 1 of the urban ring.

Phase 2, by the way, which was making those routes more useful, never happened.

 

[JohnAKeith]

Only one I think needs to be added asap is #9. Seems it would be heavily used ... although people in Boston Proper would have to pick it up at Copley or Albany St, so "Downtown" isn't close.

 

[wicked]

People drink on Boylston and Newbury streets, too.

 

[JohnAKeith]

Top 50 bus lines as of 2010 per MBTA. (Don't they publish a Blue Book every year??)

 

[Matthew]

The 9 was part of the 2001 Night Owl rollout but it was dropped early on, for whatever reason.

The Blue Book is supposed to come out every so often but has not been republished since May of 2011 if I recall right, and that one was with 2010 data. And many of the bus numbers come from surveys conducted since 2006 or so.

There is another source of bus ridership data, which is found tucked away in a corner of the MBTA website, called "bus RPI": http://mbta.com/fares_and_passes/charlie/?id=25140

 

[Ron Newman]

The only addition that I think would be awesome to add though I admit beforehand having zero idea about if it could work at all: a new bus service that mimics the GLX.

That would be, more or less, the #80 bus.

 

[jass]

Rather than looking at the standard ridership list, it would make more sense to factor in the 15 busiest bus routes from 10pm to close and from 4am to 6am.

Those would theoretically be the ones that already attract night riders.

IE: If route x is super busy from noon to 5pm, but dead from 9pm to midnight....then skip it.


What also needs to happen is for Sunday service to begin at 5am rather than past 6am. The subway is standing room only at the time, almost all working class folks just trying to get home or to their job.

 

[HenryAlan]

Well shit, nice. Call it the "DC solution."

One problem is that it still doesn't help the night shift workers as much. Still need to think about that some more.

The other problem is that it doesn't consider heavily utilized bus corridors that happen to be served by multiple routes, rather than a single "popular" route.

 

[Matthew]

I'm guessing you're thinking of Roslindale.

Maybe once the Belmont NIMBYs scream about late night 73 service the T can simply redirect those bus-hours down to where they'll be appreciated instead.