That's pretty poor ridership for the level of service, no? I know the 104 is kind of leading some TOD coming down the road, do we know what they were aiming for in terms of ridership?
MBTA Buses & Infrastructure
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That's pretty poor ridership for the level of service, no? I know the 104 is kind of leading some TOD coming down the road, do we know what they were aiming for in terms of ridership?
Koopzilla24
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Last available data for the 104/109 combined via Transitmatters was 7,775 second week of October '24. 1400 is 18% of that from one segment of one of those routes so that's pretty good. Almost 1 in 5 riders. Though I'd assume the ridership from the separated and consolidated routes would be higher lowering the percent a few.
themissinglink
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Mayor Wu says city will remove bus lane on Boylston Street in Back Bay - The Boston Globe
The bus lane was installed in 2022 as a temporary measure for shuttle buses during an Orange Line shutdown and was made permanent last summer.
www.bostonglobe.com
Boylston had too many lanes but it was a pretty drastic change to do both bike lanes and bus lanes on a road that is always choked with traffic. Whether or not it is a good idea from a technocratic standpoint, one must also consider other factors. I hope she can pull this revision off without Kraft being able to claim she's only doing it because of him.Mayor Wu says city will remove bus lane on Boylston Street in Back Bay - The Boston Globe
The bus lane was installed in 2022 as a temporary measure for shuttle buses during an Orange Line shutdown and was made permanent last summer.
themissinglink
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Too late:
Boston Mayor Wu ditched a controversial bus lane. ‘Curious timing,’ Kraft fires back
A week after challenger Josh Kraft hit Mayor Michelle Wu over her development of bus and bike lanes, the mayor announced the removal of a particularly controversial bus lane in Back Bay.
www.masslive.com
F-Line to Dudley
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Uhhh....the only other candidate in the race is crowing that he 'accomplished' something over what Wu just did with this one lane. What exactly is the choice here? "I'm mad that this one lane got removed, so I'm gonna vote for the guy who wants to get rid of all of them." How does that wash?
It’s very early in the race, and people will probably forget. But it might have been wiser to just not budge at all, since capitulating these days is as good as an admission of guilt.Too late:
Boston Mayor Wu ditched a controversial bus lane. ‘Curious timing,’ Kraft fires back
A week after challenger Josh Kraft hit Mayor Michelle Wu over her development of bus and bike lanes, the mayor announced the removal of a particularly controversial bus lane in Back Bay.
There's still time for some DSA folks to get ideas - this, the failure to get property taxes set with Southie's Napoleon, what else is she going to backtrack on? White Stadium?
She needs to marshal the real “community” instead of the loudest screamers who falsely claim to represent it. I don’t think I’ve seen a single media article that actually just goes down to Egleston Square and asks passersby what they thing of the stadium project. It’s all just interviews of the angry.
I think it's ok to admit that the bus lane wasn't working as intended. It was always full of cars. It's tough to have a bus lane when it's plagued by double parking. You could say more enforcement was needed, but it gets to a point where the level of effort to keep it clear doesn't match the benefit it was providing.
Delvin4519
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Took forever to get the new update:
Also the open data portal excel file has 1,590 in the spreadsheet download, as of February 8th, 2025.
And yet weekday service hours are still 8% below pre-COVID levels, and weekday scheduled trips are still 14% below pre-COVID. (Alongside Saturday scheduled trips 6% below pre-COVID).
Still annoying the T isn't stating how many vacancies they're at now. They'll still using wildily different metrics so we're never sure why service levels haven't recovered yet. (Plus the insane decision to cut the graph at mid-2022/2023 rather than extending it to mid-2021 or late-2019, we can't tell what we've lost!!!)
Also the open data portal excel file has 1,590 in the spreadsheet download, as of February 8th, 2025.
And yet weekday service hours are still 8% below pre-COVID levels, and weekday scheduled trips are still 14% below pre-COVID. (Alongside Saturday scheduled trips 6% below pre-COVID).
Still annoying the T isn't stating how many vacancies they're at now. They'll still using wildily different metrics so we're never sure why service levels haven't recovered yet. (Plus the insane decision to cut the graph at mid-2022/2023 rather than extending it to mid-2021 or late-2019, we can't tell what we've lost!!!)
themissinglink
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Here are the winners of Boston's first-ever participatory budgeting cycle
Five projects (plus a bonus) were selected through Boston's new participatory budgeting process, which allowed any resident over the age of 11 to vote on how to spend $2 million. Here's a look at the winning ideas, from rat-proof trash cans to community gardens to bus stop benches.
www.wbur.org
themissinglink
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Transit advocates call for Wu to keep Back Bay bus lane
The nonprofit TransitMatters says the dedicated bus lane has been a success and the city should reconsider its plan to dismantle it.
www.wgbh.org
bigeman312
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I wish transit advocates would instead point to the failure of allowing people to park vehicles in the bus lane, this severely curtailing its utility. There is a failure and it’s a lack of enforcement. In practice, it’s just a parking lane that’s painted red.Transit advocates call for Wu to keep Back Bay bus lane
The nonprofit TransitMatters says the dedicated bus lane has been a success and the city should reconsider its plan to dismantle it.
HenryAlan
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Agreed. And I might be a minority on this, but I think the argument TM is making here is not persuasive. They point out percentage time improvement on a very short segment of bus lane, but the actual time savings is measured in seconds. If somebody told me I had to pick a bus lane to eliminate, based on the data, it would be the one on Boylston St.
I don't think that's the right way to consider it. If you look at any short stretch of bus lane, you'd find it only saves seconds. But string those together, and it's real time savings. It looks like in the AM rush hour, buses saved a full minute going between Dartmouth and Berkeley -- just two blocks! That's pretty big. It was able to pull that off with a total lack of bus-only enforcement. I wish we could find ten more short stretches along these bus routes where we could save a full minute. I think it'd be hard to find time savings this good just about anywhere else.
Also, TM points out that the bus lane would compliment other bus improvements the T has been working and, and should do here, like transit signal priority. (Plus, again, actual bus-only enforcement)
North Shore
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I drive this stretch of Boylston a couple of times a week, often between 5:30 and 6:00 pm. The single biggest thing that would help this beleaguered street would be for BTD to a have a dedicated force towing every single double parked car in front of the restaurants. That would alleviate the need for vehicles to drive in the bus lane as the roadway effectively becomes a single lane at best.
That, and ticketing all the food delivery scooters who haphazardly use the bike lanes before cutting into the road.
lainpimicaja
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I don't think anyone is saying that enforcement isn't needed (the TransitMatter post stresses that it is). Cities and the T haven't had the power to do automated / camera-based enforcement like New York, DC, Philly, Chicago, LA, SF, etc. have until January. That's the part that makes the Mayor's decision especially bad for bus service. It doesn't bode well for transit projects in Boston if the City is now running away from projects at the very time when they should be working to apply this new enforcement tool.
We can debate if saving 60 seconds is / isn't significant, but that overlooks the fact that if there's no priority, buses will just get stuck in traffic and get slower, less effective at moving lots of people. It's a way of preserving the service quality, not just saving time (which this project was).
We can debate if saving 60 seconds is / isn't significant, but that overlooks the fact that if there's no priority, buses will just get stuck in traffic and get slower, less effective at moving lots of people. It's a way of preserving the service quality, not just saving time (which this project was).