there was a time you could get there from here

Have you ever asked yourself why can't I get a bus to someplace in the Boston area? Chances are at one time you could but local bus service in the suburbs has deteriorated or vanished completely since the T took control of things over 40 years ago.

Changes to Transit Service in the MBTA District 1964-Present (PDF) by Jonathan Belcher details everything that has happened with transit in the Boston area since the MBTA took control and historical data from before. Any question you may have about Boston transit routes can be found in its 317 pages and is updated as of the end of 2006. It is important to note that is was not the MBTA that abolished 24 hour service on the system, that had been done in 1960 by the MTA. Until then you could go to Haymarket Station and catch buses all night to all sections of the city and as far away as Arlington and Belmont. The MTA was scrapped for money in those days and the owners of Boston's taxi companies had great influence. New England Telephone alone used to send hundreds of operators and other employees home by cab each night and many other companies did so as well. Not having all night public transportation made it impossible for the companies to abandon the practice and the cab companies made huge profits. Today, because of the current contract with the T's drivers union it would nearly impossible to run all night service at a manageable cost as the ill fated Night Owl experiment that ended in 2005 proved. Drivers were paid double time for trips starting after 2 AM which meant it was costing the T $7.53 on average to transport a Night Owl customer, compared with only $1.37 for a daytime bus rider. Late night service will not happen unless the wording in the contract with the drivers is changed. We can only hope.

When the MBTA was created in 1964 it merged the operations of several transit companies and railroads into one authority that was designed to move people in and out of Boston. It's creation was spawned by the fear that the railroads of the time, the Boston & Maine, New York Central and the New Haven would abolish all commuter rail service in and out of Boston. There was good reason to worry as the New Haven had shut down the Old Colony Lines in 1959 the day after the Southeast Expressway opened and the Boston & Albany division of the New York Central had closed the Highland Branch to Newton in 1958. The MBTA's predecessor the Metropolitan Transit Authority acted quickly and converted the Highland Branch into a streetcar line (D-Riverside) and reopened it one year later. The MTA itself had been formed in 1947 to take over the assets and debts of the Boston Elevated Railway which had been a public-private operation since 1917 when the Massachusetts Legislature passed the "Public Control Act" which guaranteed public transportation to the citizens of Boston. The MTA was limited to serving the citizens fo the original 14 cities and towns in Metropolitan Boston: Arlington, Belmont, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Medford, Milton, Newton, Revere, Somerville, and Watertown. Under this system the commuter rail could not be saved unless the authority was expanded to include more cities and towns. The legislature went to work to solve the problem....


It was decided that the Greater Boston urban core mass transportation system be greatly expanded to reach out and to intergrate its mass transit services with those existing throughout the Greater Boston Massachusetts metropolitan area. The new MBTA or "T" would now serve 78 cities and towns in Eastern Massachusetts. The T would quickly enter into compacts with the railroads that would subsidize commuter rail operations and also absorbed 2 major surburban bus companies, the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway and the Middlesex and Boston Street Railway. The MBTA did not aquire the Boston & Worcester Street Railway which was taken over by a Boston sightseeing company Gray Line and today there is limited bus service along Route 9 because of this.

It didn't take long for the T to start slashing bus routes it took over and Mr. Belcher looks at this in great detail. Some cities (Lowell, Lawrence and Brockton) rebelled at the fees demanded to supply service and simply told the T they could do better themselves. One town Maynard demanded to be removed from the MBTA territory and was allowed to do so and the town has had virtually no public transportation since. Maynard had lost its direct bus service to Harvard Square in 1970 when the Town of Lincoln no longer wanted service by bus being content with commuter rail.
The T was able to abolish many bus lines it had taken over claiming low ridership but they had made the schedules on these lines so unreasonable that people stopped using them. One prime example had been the Commonwealth Avenue bus in Newton that connected Norumbega Park in Auburndale with the B Line at Boston College which the T took over in 1972 and abolished 4 years later. The T doomed the line by refusing to extend it to Riverside Station thus not providing an easy connection for Newton riders. There are many other examples of this slash and burn approach the T took 30 years ago towards buses as it strived to keep commuter rail afloat.

The T continues to look at bus service today as a necessary evil and does little to try and improve routing that could enhance service. A prime example of the T's attitude towards bus service can be found in the Town of Woburn. In 2001 the T opened the Anderson Regional Transportation Center just off Interstate-93 as an intermodal bus and commuter rail transfer station. Anderson provides rail service to Boston, Lowell and to New Hampshire and Maine on Amtrak's Downeaster service. From Anderson you can board buses that will take you to both Logan and the Manchester-Boston airports. In fact the Manchester Airport shuttle is FREE for ticketed passengers and also runs to the Sullivan T station in Charlestown and runs 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. (novel concept). So how do I get to Anderson by T bus?

You can't.

A quick glance at the T system map shows 3 routes that could have been extended to Anderson, the 134,136 and 137. It also may have been possible to adjust the 350 route from Alewife to connect with LRTA at Anderson instead of the Burlington/Billerica line. By routing buses to terminate at Anderson it would allow riders from Woburn, Reading, Stoneham, Winchester and other towns easy access to other transportation services. But no that makes too much sense. If you live in Woburn where the station is the only way you can get there is by cab or walk.

The problem is the T simply isn't flexible when it comes to adjusting bus routes some of which haven't changed from the streetcar lines they were 100 years ago. A prime example of this is the 99 route which runs from Wellington Station to the Boston Regional Medical Center in Stoneham. The hospital closed in 1999 yet the T continues to run buses 7 days a week to the front door where the line ends. While there are plans to develop the property it has been tied up for years but meanwhile the shuttered building gets bus service 7 days a week from 6AM to Midnight. Has it ever dawned on the T to perhaps terminate the line elsewhere in Stoneham or Melrose?

One more example on how the T just won't change to reflect changing patterns in commuter movement.15 years ago the Cambrigeside Galleria opened and ridership to Lechmere increased dramaticly but the T only routed one Green Line route to Lechmere, terminating another at North Station and 2 at Government Center. In 1997 the North Station turnaround was closed because of construction of the new Green Line station underground and the T then routed 2 lines to Lechmere. However when the new underground station opened the T went back to the way things were before the mall opened after riders were used to more frequent service. I suspect the reason they did so was to justify the expensive underground turnaround that they built under Causeway Street which was designed before the mall opened. Trains running to Lechmere now are usually overcrowded nights and especially weekends when the Science Museum gets heavy traffic. Routing 2 lines there is a no brainer but the T does as it pleases.

People change, the city changes but the T just doesn't adapt. We will never see bus service like it was in 1964 but we certainly can improve on what is offered now. The bus should come to the people, not the other way around. The taxpayers of Massachusetts have paid a huge price in restoring Commuter Rail to the South Shore (Greenbush alone is close to $500 million) for a service the T estimates will have 4200 passengers per weekday in 2010. I fully agree that Commuter Rail is needed but we need to see more funding for the unsexy bus too. The T has never understood that to take the train you have to get to the station. Parking lots fill up quickly and that forces many commuters to drive instead defeating the entire purpose. We need more feeder bus routes to the rail stations something that is done well by New Jersey Transit and Connecticut Transit.

Would love your comments on this.