Re: Winter 2023 service changes
The MBTA has listed some routes as "routes with departure time changes", but in actuallity, the MBTA has cut and reduced bus service frequency for several routes. The MBTA should be listing routes as "reduced frequency" if the total number of trips in a single direction, or both, per day, has decreased. However, the MBTA does not do this.
I went through much of the route PDFs for bus routes listed under "departure time changes":
* Route 90 is not seeing increased weekday service frequency; instead, the 6:30 a.m. trip was shifted to 6:05 a.m. Span of service did increase, but there is now a 1 hour 5 minute gap between the first 2 outbound trips. As such, span of service increased by decreasing service frequency.
* Route 14 will see a 6% Saturday service cut. (eliminated 1 trip)
* Route 19 will see a 3% weekday service cut. (eliminated 1 trip)
* Route 26 will see a 8% weekday service cut in the inbound direction. (eliminated 3 trips)
* Route 29 will see a 15% Saturday service cut. (eliminated 1 inbound trip and 2 outbound trips)
* Route 41 will see a 15% weekday service cut. (eliminated 4 trips)
* Route 91 will see a 10% weekday service cut. (eliminated 3 trips)
* Route 100 will see a 11% weekday service cut. (eliminated 5 inbound trips and 4 outbound trips)
* Route 354 will see a 13% weekday service cut. (eliminated 3 inbound trips and 1 outbound trip)
* Route 501 will see a 16% weekday service cut. (eliminated 5 trips)
All of this is in addition to reduced service and decreased frequencies for the 1, 66, 77, 78, 80, 94, 101, 104, and 109 bus routes.
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While the MBTA website may list 3 routes as with "increased service", and 9 routes with "decreased service". What actually changed is that only 2 routes see an additional trip or two. This coming winter, the MBTA has slashed service on 19 bus routes, or about 12% of all the bus routes across the whole MBTA system; seeing service cuts and reduced frequency of about 8-15% each.
This continues the disturbing trend since spring 2020, of the MBTA cutting frequencies and reducing bus service. Since fall 2021, the MBTA has cut service continously over the past year in consecutive, each successive season. This is the 5th quarterly service change uninterrupted with service reductions.