The MBTA Bus Network Redesign proposal has been published and the MBTA is soliciting feedback from riders. Here’s the link to the proposal and survey.
Here’s an interactive map of the proposed new routes.
Here’s a brief summary of the changes that eagle eyed Village14 reader James Wang spotted after a quick review.
A lot of express bus service gets cut and replaced with new local services, with 504 and a re-routed 505 providing express service from Newton. The new services are pretty interesting though:
* 60 gets extended to Newton Centre
* There’s a new 53 that runs between Riverside and Brandeis through Auburndale.
* There’s a new 54 that runs from Riverside all the way to Arlington, via Waltham.
* There’s a new 61 that runs along Washington St from Watertown to Waltham
I wish the new 53 had been available when my kid was a student at Brandeis! We live a few blocks from the D line, but there was no feasible way to get home by public transit.
There must be reason there’s no Comm Ave bus that connects Auburndale to Newton Centre or BC (or beyond in both directions) What is it?
I’m a huge fan of any new bus service at all, but that 54 from Riverside to Arlington is a real head-scratcher.
Why would anyone want to go from Riverside to Belmont and Arlington? And why would anyone from Belmont, Arlington, or Waltham want to go to Riverside? The Green Line takes at least 45 minutes from Riverside to Downtown so the Belmonters, Arlingtonians, and Walthamites all have much better options to get into the city than looping all the way out to Riverside on a bus.
Maybe they think people will use the 54 to connect to other bus lines? But nobody wants to take two buses.
If they’re going to go all the way to Arlington then why not have the 54 bus start/end at a real MBTA stop, e.g. Alewife (Red Line) or Tufts/Medford (Green Line Extension)?
Same with the 52 and 59 buses – if they really wanted to make those lines useful then instead of ending in Watertown Square, they’d extend them down Mt. Auburn Street to the Red Line at Harvard Square.
It will be nice to have a real bus line (i.e. not a commuter bus with a limited schedule) that runs up and down Washington with regularity. I think it will be very useful, especially with the new apartments all over Washington.
How about making the 556 an express bus downtown again? This change eliminated my chances of being a bus commuter any more.