Check out this guide to public transportation in Newton

by | Dec 17, 2018 | MBTA | 10 comments

Check out this handy guide to all the various public transportation options in Newton.

10 Comments

  1. Lucia
    Lucia on December 17, 2018 at 7:51 pm

    Thank you Jane Hanser for creating it and Nicole Freedman for getting it up on the City website! Right under: How Do I – Find – Public Transportation.

    Stay tuned – we’re working on a public meeting with the MBTA Better Bus unit in February “to discuss proposals to update and modernize existing routes, and how Newton riders might be affected.”

  2. John Pelletier
    John Pelletier on December 17, 2018 at 8:39 pm

    I will be working on some nice GIS maps over the holiday break to help out on visualization better as well 🙂 Yay Jane for just doing it! There will be more edits and updates but we need something to start with and its nuts that it took a private resident to do it!

  3. Claire
    Claire on December 17, 2018 at 8:45 pm

    I think it would be helpful to point out that the #60 bus goes right t0 the bustling Longwood Medical Center area

  4. Jane Hanser
    Jane Hanser on December 17, 2018 at 10:11 pm

    Thank you, Lucia, for putting this up on Village14 for greater public access. Thanks, Lucia and John, for your enthusiasm.

    Claire, looks like we’re doing some beta testing right here on Village 14. That’s good. I like the Longwood Medical Center suggestion. As John said, I’m a private citizen doing this on my time, but I did take a moment just now to write to the city’s webmaster to ask her to make this insertion because, being a medical center, people need to know how to – and that they can – get there by bus. That’s the whole point of this! (I also noticed a bad link and requested that correction too.) Check back in a few days.

    Also I feel appreciation to the city’s webmaster for her role in working with me on this and all the many small revisions it takes to make this page so useful to the public and easy to use.

  5. Claire
    Claire on December 17, 2018 at 10:21 pm

    Thanks for incorporating that Jane. Longwood is also a major employment center for many who live in Newton

  6. Jane Hanser
    Jane Hanser on December 17, 2018 at 11:31 pm

    Claire, even better. Then it can be used regularly as a form of transportation to work and back. Do people ever use the shopping plaza to park their cars then take the bus?

  7. Norman
    Norman on December 18, 2018 at 6:25 am

    The guide was helpful but in reality only the 52 bus and the 59 bus routes circuit through the heart of the city, the other bus routes only briefly cross the boundary and outer periphery.

  8. Doug C
    Doug C on December 18, 2018 at 7:56 am

    The guide is missing one of my regular options: the 505 Bus. It runs from Waltham, through Auburndale down Comm Ave, to the Pike and to downtown.

  9. Lucia
    Lucia on December 18, 2018 at 10:55 am

    Norman, I agree and I hope by meeting with MBTA’s Better Bus team we can get better #59 & #52 service.

    #59, in particular, runs past areas where a lot of new development is going in – Northland, Orr, Haywood House and our old development Avalon. Plus it connects the Watertown Yard MBTA depot with Newton Highlands T and the Needham Commuter Rail. And it goes past Newton North and the Library.

    I think if it was a reliable route, with 15 min instead of 30 to 45 min between buses, it would be used more and maybe even reduce traffic.

  10. Jane Hanser
    Jane Hanser on December 18, 2018 at 6:52 pm

    Claire,

    The city webmaster has already gotten that onto the city website! Take a look.

    We also added some description to the 60 bus route and added two bus lines previously left out: the 501 and 503, both of which go from Brighton to Oak Sq and on to Hunnewell Hill and finally express into Boston. Anything else is going to have to wait til next year! The city webmaster has been really great – we started from nothing and look what we’ve done! – and I’m just going to, until next year, keep a record of anything we might do differently (like possibly embellishing the description of route 59 bus) and take a break.

    There’s a lot more bus service than I had previously known about, and I’m hoping that this site makes it easier for others to have that same experience and to be able to quickly access the routes and timetables. I’ve also learned that for sure there are gaps in bus service which I know Lucia is working hard on.

    Thanks to Mayor Fuller and Nicole Freedman for opening up resources to accomplish this big step forward.