Boston will have up to $30 million of MBTA cash to work with over the next few years as it looks to expand the network of bus lanes in the city.
“It’s a place you can go and work with the community on something more quickly and for lower cost,” Chris Osgood, the city’s chief of streets, said of bus lanes. “There are obviously still many corridors in front of us where we’re looking to improve.”
The city council this week voted to accept up to $30 million in grants from the MBTA for bus lanes and other bus improvement work. As Osgood said, bus infrastructure has been a focus of the city and the T because it’s much cheaper and easier than adding train routes or capacity, for which major projects can cost in the billions.
The order approved by the council is for “construction and implementation of dedicated bus lanes and similar bus priority measures in various locations within the City of Boston.” Boston Transit Team Director Matt Moran said this money is supposed to last for two or three years of projects.
A T spokesman insisted that this wasn’t simply the cash-strapped transit agency dumping more money over to Boston — it’s meant to be a different way of accounting for for the joint projects Boston and the MBTA have begun doing, as the T owns the buses and the Hub owns the roads.
MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said in a statement, “There are a number of opportunities that have great potential to improve daily bus service for tens of thousands of people. We look forward to working with the City of Boston to plan and implement more projects, pending public engagement processes. This funding agreement is a critical step in allowing us to deliver bus improvement projects in a timely and effective manner.”
The city and the T have partnered to put in bus lanes on Brighton Avenue in Allston, Washington Street in Roslindale, and — in the uniquely Boston style of confusing roads — the city’s other Washington Street in the South End. Officials said the next places the city’s looking are Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan, North Washington Street downtown, Hyde Park Avenue near the Forrest Hills T station and Columbus Avenue, Malcolm X Boulevard and Warren Street in Roxbury.
The T’s currently eying significant service cuts after ridership plummeted during the pandemic, but Osgood said ridership has been more resilient on the bus system than the subways in general, and the lines they’re focusing on for bus lanes are ones that have remained in demand.
Osgood said he didn’t believe there’d been any instance when the city had started down the road toward adding a bus lane only to abort it due to community backlash. He said the city’s first bus lanes have been in places where there’s particularly high bus ridership, so it’s generally been welcomed.
Moran said it’s not yet clear how many projects this new money will go toward funding, though for reference the Brighton Avenue project, which created less than a mile of bus lanes, cost $600,000. He said projects cost more when they require significant changes to the curbs, which Brighton Ave. did not.
The city officials insist that data shows these lanes improving bus service, regulating ride times. Moran said the Brighton Avenue bus lane has seen a 7-8% increase in ridership — though data is “fuzzy,” as it started amid the pandemic — and Roslindale lane, which is a bit older, has seen the higher outliers of commute times largely go away, and about 170 more passengers show up for the morning rush hour.
“If you make the bus more reliable, then more people will be taking the bus,” Osgood said.
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Boston will have access to $30M in MBTA money for bus lanes - Boston Herald
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