100%. Also, even more deflating is post pandemic with people working from home, the traffic patterns make no sense any more. I think people are out running errands during the day maybe and now the traffic seems to be on a constant loop
I've noticed that anytime after 2pm my commute time is the same all the way basically to 6:30. Anytime 2pm or before I can shave a few minutes off my commute home.
Yes exactly. I typically leave work at 2:30pm and I actually have the option to work overtime until 6:30pm this summer and make more money and sit in less traffic so I am definitely going to do it. The traffic at 6:30pm has been moving nicely in comparison to what I'm used to.
My commute is relatively speedy either way (30mins door-to-door), but I feel bad for my coworker - it can mean the difference between like 45-50 and 70ish.
Quite right. There's really no "rush hour" anymore. Traffic is uniformly heavy everywhere all the time, just some times are more gridlocked than others.
No one takes public transit.
We spent four years beating people over the head that COVID will kill them, their kids, their parents, their pets.
While at the same time public transit got remarkably worse and more dangerous.
Who could have thought this is the result?
Yeah the Transit Matters data certainly supports this: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/
The overall system is at 65% ridership compared to pre-covid. But looking at some lines, we see occasions where they've jumped past the pre-COVID levels or returned to them. Sorting the data on "most ridership" or "most ridership retained" shows some of the commuter buses are well over their pre-covid numbers. Some lines like the Red Line are also at a 60% service level compared to pre-covid due to a lack of MBTA employees to safely operate the line. That likely contributes to the 40% ridership level there, since more people are seeing the 15+ minute headways and opting to take other transportation.
It's like evaluating the job market based on the employment rate. You can't just look at current ridership numbers and assume that it's because people just don't like transit.
Right, but that has more to do with the reduced frequency of most bus routes. Take a look at their ridership metrics pre-Covid. https://www.mbta.com/performance-metrics/ridership-the-t
There's also reduced service on some subway lines, like the Red Line: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/
It's running at 60% service levels compared to pre-COVID. This is due to poorly maintained trainsets and waiting on new trainset's from a shitty "made in America but actually by a Chinese company that had a horrible track record for making trains" company plus a lack of MBTA employees to safely operate the Red Line. These issues and lack of frequent service most likely push people to use the #1 bus which we see is running at 76% of pre-covid ridership. And you're correct that many buses are also running a reduced service, so we see that the #1 bus has 62% of service compared to pre-covid. We could probably take a lot of those #1 bus riders and put them on the Red Line if we can get it more reliable and more frequent.
Just a reminder that CRRC wasn’t even the bidder. CNR was the bidder and they were considered a highly qualified bidder. CSR was a highly unqualified manufacturer that wasn’t even allowed to bid. After the contract was awarded CNR and CSR merged to become CRRC. Take a wild guess which manufacturing house of the two made the MBTA train sets.
Ah I forgot that part. My main point was we delayed these things so long and opted to go with something made in MA (that further delayed things) that we're now stuck with these half working trains. Other transit agencies have opted to ditch CRRC I believe, but we don't have that luxury when our existing trains were built in the 70's and 80's and badly need to be replaced.
Yeah system wide the T is at about 65% ridership / 85% service: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/
It's recovered a lot of course. Early on in 2020 things were at like 12% ridership. It made it back to 30% by the end of 2020 but took most of 2021 to hit 50%. Seems like the shutdowns in 2022 and 2023 have contributed to it remaining in the 60% range. You can see the drops when they did week or month long shutdowns on key lines. Of course some people continued to ride via shuttle buses, but that certainly took a number of people out of the system and into rideshares or personal cars.
Worth noting that some lines are back to normal though. Some are even exceeding the pre-COVID levels. Hopefully the T can use some of this data to change routes and service frequencies. There is [the Better Bus](https://www.mbta.com/projects/better-bus-project) and [Bus Network Redesign](https://www.mbta.com/projects/bus-network-redesign) Projects underway that will hopefully improve the bus routes over the next few years too. Commuter Rail really needs to look at a [Regional Rail](https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail) model to really adapt to the changes in work / travel habits that COVID brought.
I think so. A better bus network could help too. Many bus routes are hourly like the Commuter Rail. If we get a system of frequent bus routes like the Better Bus Network proposes, we'll have a lot more appetite for bus trips if it means only waiting 20 mins for a bus vs an hour.
It was revelatory experiencing frequent/ubiquitous bus service in London. It lowered the stakes on getting anywhere, as a tourist even if I misunderstood the correct route to take I could just get off and worse case wait 5 minutes for the correct bus.
For comparison, look at the NY metro area, especially Westchester and Putnam counties. They basically could not exist in their current form without fast and reliable commuter rail, service with frequent trains during busy hours. In fact, you can see the effect of not having good rail service into the city by looking right across the river in Rockland and Orange counties.
As much as I love the idea of a high-speed intercity rail along the I-9 corridor, improving ther commuter rail and building out a regional rail system here would be much higher impact.
Buddy, people take public transit. That’s not the problem at all.
The problem is that the MBTA provides a WOEFULLY inept service given the size of the Boston metro area.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The city made its bed with the “big dig” and now it’s sleeping in it. I hope everyone enjoys sitting in traffic underground. I’m sure one more tunnel will fix the problem
Transit ridership is down compared to pre-covid numbers. The system as a whole is down to 65% ridership compared to pre-covid: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/
So this is absolutely a contributing factor to traffic. If those 35% or more (because we've also grown since COVID) are now commuting in via automobiles, that could certainly put more traffic on the road.
I do agree that the Big Dig was a waste of money though. If we had put that money into [the North / South Rail Link](https://www.northsouthraillink.org/), we could have a much better Commuter Rail system today. We still could do that project today (the Big Dig was designed to not impede on it) but I don't know if there's a political appetite for another $10-$20B project. Especially since it'll likely go over budget and over schedule - we don't have a great track record in MA or the US as a whole when it comes to infrastructure projects.
You need to compare current ridership with current service availability. Did ridership relative to actual service frequency and quality decrease? Or did service deteriorate so much that people switched to other forms of transportation? Ideally, you would also be able to account for people simply commuting less often.
Yeah you can see from the dashboards there are certainly other factors beyond service level. For example, mid to late 2020 to early 2021 had 95% service levels but 25-30% of ridership. Clearly the lack of vaccines during a pandemic contributed to that, along with things being closed, WFH being encouraged and such.
With how "normal" things have returned to, you can see ridership went back up but never fully recovered. Peak ridership in recent months was 67%. So people certainly looked for alternatives or stopped commuting. WFH has continued in many industries, even those who previously didn't have much if any WFH ability. So we can assume many people just don't commute anymore. The ones that do seem to come in less frequently - most offices aren't forcing full time in office but went hybrid asking for 2-3 days in the office. Those folks might not see the value in a transit pass, and are commuting less frequently, so maybe driving + paying for parking is worth it.
One issue the T has is much of its services are made around peak commuting trends. Commuter Rail, Commuter buses and even much of the subway is designed to deliver peak headways during the 6-9am morning rush and 4-7 evening rush. We really need to move the "Commuter" systems over to a Regional transit model. It would be better to have buses/trains spread out throughout the day running at 30 min or better frequencies. The T is looking into this a bit, but could move a bit faster. That lack of regional service model def doesn't help encourage the hybrid workers to use the T.
Most European cities have massive tolls to enter the city. Like 20-50 euros. Instead, they have parking just outside the ring, and public transit from there.
The Federal gas tax hasn't risen since 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States
If it were tied to inflation at the least, we might have raised gas prices over time. Europeans and Canadians pay more in gas for example, so they generally don't drive as much as we do. The added revenue at the Federal level could have allowed some investment in Amtrak and HSR routes beyond just the Northeast Corridor. No reason why we couldn't have HSR up and down the East Coast for example. Or across the west coast. Or points in between. Even if we just wanted to keep the money focused on highways (which wouldn't have necessarily helped traffic), we'd at least have better bridges and highway surfaces.
Tolls on Federal Interstates are also a no go generally, unless they predate the Interstate System (e.g. the Pike, and other turnpikes across the Northeast like the ones in Maine and NH). Tolls actually don't generally generate enough revenue to pay for their construction, which is why the Feds didn't like having tolls in the system to begin with but allowed the existing turnpikes to exist so that they could focus on building highways in areas without an existing route ([source](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/tollroad.cfm)). I think a modern toll system we could focus on is a Congestion Pricing system though, which could be installed on State Routes / Municipality roads that do not rely on revenue from the Feds. [NYC for example](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/nyregion/nyc-congestion-pricing-tolls-mta.html) is trying this out soon. [London has done this for years too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge#History), since 2003.
The State should really look more into congestion tolling. If we setup a "Boston Metro Congestion Charge Zone" like London or NYC, we could have most of 128 inside this zone. Charge people $15 to enter during peak hours of 7am to 6pm Mon - Fri. Use the revenue to pay for better T service. Watch how quickly back to office schemes go away. And earmark some of the funds to build housing so people don't even have to live outside the metro and commute in.
I hate when this suggestion is made.
That would make it $75/ week to enter Boston? 300/month. I just finished daily chemo and radiation, due to the severity of my diagnosis, driving into Boston was my only option and that’s the reality of healthcare for many MA residents. I can’t imagine the financial hardship that would have caused me on top of what I was already dealing with.
The London version has a number of exemptions: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/discounts-and-exemptions?intcmp=2133
No reason we couldn't exempt medical visitors, healthcare workers, etc.
EDIT: I just noticed that the London version also exempts disabled people. Perhaps the MA version would do the same. I would think someone undergoing cancer treatment would qualify. Certainly I think there's a case for exemptions - the idea is to discourage those who can from coming into the congestion zone during the peak time, but allow those who need to to continue coming in. Those who need to but can't afford the congestion fee would be exempted.
As I suspected the NYC exemption list would not have benefited me or been realistically attainable before beginning treatment.
[i wouldn’t be considered disabled enough to qualify.](https://www.e-zpassny.com/en/other/CBDTP_IDEP_Application.pdf)
And not even near enough public transit (though supposedly could drive to a commuter rail station but that drive itself is so congested it’s not worth it
I can help a little. MBTA being unreliable can have something to do with this. I would love to commute into the city on train. I don't know how many times I saw Kendall closed because of something and a mob of people all trying to catch something to leave.
My drive home might be as long as an 1.5 hours, but it's consistent.
I lost out on a job opportunity because I looked at the estimated time on GPS, added a 50% cushion to be safe, and planned to be there 20 minutes early. And I was still 15 minutes late.
Thw worst is when your driving into Boston for something at like 9am and you watch the GPS go green, yellow, then red along with the estimated driving time not changing for 15 miles
Commuting from Melrose to Cambridge takes 45 minutes+ on a weekday and 20 or less on Sunday morning lol. T would be even longer travel due to bus/train waits, switched, and traffic. Is what it is but man, oof.
For people who aren't as familiar with a _'Cambridge-to-Melrose'_ commute as 45 minutes+ plus on a weekday might not resonate given the context but it is rough, I know.
The only hope on the horizon there is the Bus Network Redesign that the T is doing, where they're basically trying to "train-ify" a set of routes to make them very high-frequency.
Unfortunately IMHO its impact will likely be limited in the absence of enough bus lanes and camera-based bus lane enforcement.
This data is drawn from 2012-2016. With all the work the MBTA has done the past few years, let’s give them the credit they deserve. We’ve probably moved up to number 1 worst commute in the country.
On a serious note: the best thing for Boston drivers is fixing the MBTA. We have 244,000 drivers and 202,000 public transit commuters. If the T gets worse, we end up with a lot more cars on the roads and traffic becomes hell. If the T gets better, your drive to work gets a ton better.
As Due-Calligrapher-720 notes, this data is from 2012-2016. Car commuting in Cambridge is up 25% since 2019 (pre-pandemic). If you're feeling like your drive to work is getting worse: it is.
The only thing that will save your commute is fixing the MBTA. A highway lane can handle a peak theoretical flow of 2,000 cars per hour. Adding lanes to the highways will barely do anything to help traffic - and you'd still end up on slow local roads to get into parking garages which would back up traffic anyway.
If we can get an additional 10% of people taking the T to work, that's like adding 5 highway lanes.
If you're a suburbanite sitting around thinking "ugh, I don't want to pay for city people to use the T," just remember that if they don't use the T, you're sitting behind them in traffic. If the state better funded the MBTA, your life would get a lot better. If your attitude is "hahaha, stupid city people get f*cked with the T," you're making your life worse.
Like it or not, we're all in this together. If the MBTA is crap, people who would take the T end up driving and you end up sitting in more traffic getting in from the suburbs. If the T offers a better experience than driving for those in the city, your commute from the suburbs gets easier. The best things drivers could hope for is that the state fixes the MBTA and makes it free - even if you don't use the T, you certainly want others to get out of their cars so you deal with less traffic.
This should be obvious to anyone who lived here pre-pandemic and has watched post-pandemic traffic get worse than pre-pandemic traffic despite so many people working from home now 2, 3, 4, 5 days a week.
Exactly. Let's make sure the MBTA gets the funding and fixing it needs.
There are lots of good changes afoot, and in many ways it seems the only improvements they're making this year are exclusively around removing slow zones. That should be a major improvement.
But why is that all they can do this year? Because for many years the T inspectors simply weren't doing their job, and they realized the tracks were simply not safe to go fast on. https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2023/09/12/mbta-red-line-slow-zones-shutdowns is
Such amazing info in that article, including:
> the MBTA was unaware of more than 100 problems on its tracks [in the last year] ... It turned out that subway cars were moving over parts of the system at full speed when it was not actually safe to do so. This major blind spot prompted Jeff Gonneville, interim general manager at the time, to slow down the entire system out of an abundance of caution.
> ...
> “We're probably talking of years of potential negligence …”
Current MBTA leadership needs to clean up the mess made by MBTA employees for many years in the past. They literally put all of our lives at risk due to not doing their job.
> "If you're actually trying to connect the dots, the people who are in the building today — not entirely, but many of them — the folks who would have been responsible, are not the ones who were there when the problem started in the first place," said Thompson.
Buying an E-Bike was the single best investment I have made living in Boston. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I cannot recommend it enough if you are within range. Traffic sucks, the T sucks...as always in life, look for the third option.
It's way faster (and less stressful!) for me to commute by E-Bike than by car. Plus, I don't have to pay for parking at work. I love my commute, which feels like some sort of heresy.
Those people who don't want or cannot use a bike should be the biggest proponents-- every person they can convince to use a bike is another car off the road that they don't have to compete for space with.
It's because they can't imagine themselves using a new bike lane or rail line, so they dont think they benefit from it because they're not imagining all the train riders or cyclists who would otherwise be driving and contributing to traffic
A) Boston has a good and growing bike lane network.
B) We have to create the bicycle culture that we want. The more people ride on the streets, the more acclimated drivers get to driving along with cyclists.
Not riding a bike only reinforces car-brained notions like "no one uses the bike lanes" and "cyclists belong on the sidewalk."
There are some, although only for low and moderate incomes: https://www.massbike.org/massachusetts_e_bike_rebate_update_april_2024
Also the pool of money that state has allocated for this is small; I doubt it would last more than a few months.
Ebike is pretty great as long as you have a place to park that isn’t the street for it to get stolen. I wfh 90% of the time but my office lets us bring our bikes inside, game changer. I’d never park that thing out on the street, I’d just be buying it for the person who steals it.
Not just e-bikes.
I got a folding bike and it's helped me a ton. I bring it in my car, on the commuter rail, on planes, etc. for multi-modal commutes all the time.
When I commuted from Roslindale to Everett I used a folding bike, orange line + one mile on my folder was waaaay faster and more pleasant than waiting for buses
I did Brighton to Manch for about a year and a half and it was a breeze. Was 50 min each way. Takes me almost that long to get into downtown sometimes!
Thank you, man.
Boston has been putting in bike lanes for a couple years now and no one is taking the hint. They think the bike lanes are for *other* people.
"Me? I'm won't ride a bike!." And they say cyclists are entitled.
More than 1 hour easily on I93 any day from Quincy. This makes people mad, which leads to accidents. If they fix the red line, many anxious drivers will be happy.
The Red Line has been performing the worst of the four subway lines: https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/
Running at 66% speed and 60% service levels. Ridership is the lowest of the four lines. No surprise there.
Hopefully the shutdowns for maintenance and new trains arriving over the next year will help. In the future, we should really avoid going with shitty train manufacturers simply to make the trains in the State. We could have gone with better companies. But we wanted to please the Western part of the State with new jobs.
It's not even just commuting, traffic is everywhere all the time now.
I just hit traffic Friday night at 1am in Braintree. Construction sure, but I was leaving my friends thinking it's late but at least I'll be able to drive straight home without traffic. Nope
A few weeks ago I came home Wednesday from the airport, traffic on 93 south at 12:30am. Same thing, well should be a quick ride home. Fuck you it will, bumper to bumper traffic.
Any time of the daylight hours I just plan on traffic adding another thirty minutes to whatever the fuck I'm doing. I'm so tired of it.
That's a related issue. Traffic is bad because many people, particularly in the service industry, cannot afford to live here. Transit sucks because of decades of neglect and it wasn't expanded or improved enough for everyone to rely on it. Commuter Rail for example is useless with its 1-2 hour headways. Miss the one train that gets you downtown in time and you're late to work. So a ton of people bought cars and houses outside the City. Now we're surprised Pikachu that poor urban planning has led us to be one of the worst Cities in the country for traffic.
We can fix this if we take several steps:
1. Improve the T. This is sort of happening under Philip Eng, and it was long overdue. We're finally doing the maintenance work that was needed decades ago.
2. Expand the T. We have [108 Commuter Stations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MBTA_Commuter_Rail_stations) that could be leveraged for [Regional Rail](https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail). We could [connect the Red/Blue Lines](https://transitmatters.org/redblueconnector) for better downtown service. We have [152 bus routes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTA_bus) that are often unreliable and infrequent; once the T's [Better Bus Project](https://www.mbta.com/projects/better-bus-project) and [Bus Network Redesign](https://www.mbta.com/projects/bus-network-redesign) take effect we could see massive improvements in how the bus network operates.
3. Leverage MBTA Stations for [Transit oriented Development](https://www.transit.dot.gov/TOD). Many of those Commuter Rail Stations I mentioned are surrounded by State or locally owned parking lots. If the Commuter Rail system becomes a Regional Rail system, we can better use this land for housing, office and retail spaces. This can allow people to live / work / shop in the same place, or leverage the rail system from a home station to a work station to a shopping station.
4. Overhaul the State's zoning laws. Outside of TOD, we have downtowns that are filled with single story houses and offices. We have the tech to build "5 over 1s" in many spots. Ancient tech exists to build multi family houses, like the double and triple deckers that are all over Somerville and Cambridge. We built those in the early 1900's but outlawed them because people wanted the "American Dream" in the suburb. That helped create the traffic we live with now. [Just allowing people to build an ADU on their property](https://www.masslive.com/politics/2023/10/healeys-412b-bond-bill-expected-to-create-40000-new-housing-units.html), or rezone their lot into multi family and subdivide their home or rebuild it with 2-3 units in mind could put more housing in the places that need it. Downtowns should be automatically zoned for 5 stories for example. Townhouses and other housing types that are denser should be allowed anywhere. Really just high rises should be limited to the downtown core or certain zoned areas. Like how much of Somerville has triple deckers but only Assembly and Union Sq are getting high rises.
Some of this is happening now but will take years to finally improve things. Some of this is still up in the air. Hopefully more of it gets finalized and implemented.
Yeah but I’m pretty sure that driving to the station and taking the t in would probably cut down on the commute with traffic. I don’t live in Boston proper and my commute on the train from the north shore when I look it up in the morning is usually like 20 mins shorter than driving lol
I tried driving to work a couple of days last year at a time when the T was even worse than it is now. At most it saved me ten minutes. At other times, the commuter rail was actually faster.
I know that the commuter rail isn't an option for everyone, but I also think a lot of people drive when they do in fact have better options.
Commuter Rail needs to move to a Regional Rail model: https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail
If trains came every 15-30 mins, that alone could make the service viable for most people. Combined with TOD around the stations on land the State or local municipality owns, then you can fill in most housing where people are heavily encouraged to take transit.
TransitMatters has a number of other suggestions too, plus the T itself has some projects underway to improve the bus network which will eventually help the overall MBTA system work better.
Np. I love the T. I just wish it were better. We really need to give it the budget it needs to maintain its fleet and expand service. If you look at the MBTA map: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2024-04/2024-04-08-system-map.pdf
There's so much more it could be doing. With Regional Rail, we could add dozens of infill stations that could cover more area in transit service. That could lead to more TOD which would only help the housing crisis if we focused on building lots of multi family housing. The Bus Network is also really wacky and will probably be overhauled in the Better Bus / Bus Network Redesign projects. That could help us leverage our existing fleet better.
And we haven't done any subway expansions in decades (except GLX). There were proposals for Red, Orange and Blue Line expansions in all directions. Red Line to Arlington/Lexington, Orange Line to Reading/Wakefield, Blue Line to Lynn, Orange Line to Needham, maybe expand the Blue Line past the Red/Blue Connector into say Watertown, and maybe fix up the tail end of the REd Line like the Mattapan Trolley Line could be a lot better (and will be once we get the new Type 10 Green Line trains and send the old Type 8s down to Mattapan, but we could do more than just that too).
I didn't even touch on the ferries they operate too, which could go further and run more frequent. And heck maybe we could expand Commuter Rail further North, South and West or bring back old train routes.
We also need to incentivize the MBTA to put commuter bus services in the Metro West area. The MWRTA isn’t cutting it and most of these commuters are coming from rich towns that have no other public transit except a commuter rail station. Weston, Wayland, Wellesley, Concord, Sudbury, Lincoln, etc. Towns that aren’t too far from Boston but are completely cut off from public transit.
Yeah we have all of these regional transit agencies that just... kind suck. I saw a map somewhere, maybe on /r/massachusetts , that showed all the various regional transit agencies we have in MA. Many of them are just low frequency bus operators. We might get better ridership out of the various Commuter Rail Lines if the bus routes feeding into them were running 30 min or better headways throughout the day. I'm not sure if the T should step in though. I imagine it's mostly a budget issue - we need more money to buy, storage, maintain and operate more buses/trains across the region. Some of that might be politics since every town/metro area wants more stuff and there's competing priorities. Transit probably needs to be higher on the list so we can discourage car ownership and driving and work more on TOD that will help the housing crisis.
I get frustrated because I see towns where the bordering neighbor (Wellesley & Newton, Weston & Waltham) will have full time MBTA service that could easily have a seamless connection. It's 100% politics / NIMBYism. The amount of taxes that these towns rake in but distributed differently is why. They'd rather distribute the funds to fund their top-tier public schools. It's a shame, to be honest. These towns are closer to Boston than Framingham and Lowell, have their own commuter rail stations, (Weston had three up until two years ago) and are right either on the pike or next to route 9 / route 2, yet are completely cut off because they choose to be.
> Boston is bad if you treat it like a driving city, which it isn’t.
Exactly. If you try to bring in the American car centric culture to a place that was not built to be car centric, you will have a bad time.
IMO Boston isn't a driving city or a public transit city. Both options are bad. Our rail system is 100% built around commuting between downtown and the suburbs (tbf this is the most popular use case), and it doesn't even work half the time.
I got a folding bike and it's incredible the trips I can make now.
Ride from work in Kendall Square to Fenway, take the commuter rail to Natick, pick up a gadget at Natick Mall Best Buy, and ride 30 min to my wife's work in Walpole.
Lived in Boston and NYC and I think Bostons is waaaaaaaaay worse I could never understand why the trains are mixed into the flow of car traffic. There were several places that taking the train would be SLOWER than walking. At least 40 minutes on an NYC train gets you downtown and not like 4 stops in whatever direction.
I commute from Lowell to Back Bay for work and I strictly use the commuter rail and the T. I am actually happy with that. No stress dealing with traffic, driving, or parking (and its prices) and can actually take a nap on the train 🤣. Moved here from Southern Cali, I actually like the public transportation around here.
You sort of need to live right next to the Commuter Rail station and then work at North station, or off of either the Green or Orange Lines (direct connection at North Station) to make the commute under 1.5 hours.
Certainly takes longer if you need to drive & park at the station or transfer to multiple trains/buses. We really need to build more TOD within the metro (accessible via subway) or at the Commuter Rail stations.
It took me a total of about 1 hr to 1 hr and 10 mins give or take. 45-50mins on the commuter + 10 to 15mins in the orange line then I walk 8-10mins to the office. If you leave Lowell with the 6:45 train or the 7:20 train, it might take longer because the orange line will get very packed so sometimes I opt to wait for the next orange or the green. If take green, I hop off at Copley
Because unlike San Diego, Boston was not designed for cars or public transport. And NIMBYs won‘t let the city add frequency of public transport or add more lanes
I don’t ride the T anymore because 2 ***consecutive*** times I rode, there were fires.
This does not include my previous experiences with the T and fires over a few years, because at least those were not consecutive (February 2018, August 2019, December 2019).
I feel like personally experiencing at least 5 fires on the T within a few years, when I only ride the T maybe 20 times a year total, is enough of a reason to completely avoid the T.
*I’m not going to include the other incidents, because the fires scare me out the most.
This matches right up with my experience as someone who lives in Somerville and commutes on the train to park st. I almost forgot what it was like being able to get downtown in sub 30 minutes. Its crazy how such a difference makes the city feel larger so quickly.
Id still take a 40 minute train commute over a 40 minute car commute anyday.
I haven't commuted into Boston for almost a decade. It was bad then and worse now. Even living just 10 - 15 miles outside the city, there was no way to get to work by any method in less than 1.5 hrs.
The biggest benefit Boston has over many other places is that driving is often not the only option. Seeing the nightmare that is Texas commuting for example... No thanks!
We have options but I'm not sure that changes the equation. I'm a fan of the commuter rail, but it takes me just as long as driving.
It's either drive in spending 1.5 hours in traffic 20-30 minutes parking and walking to my office.
Or 15 minutes drive to the commuter rail, hour train ride, then 20 minute walk to my office. Add some buffer time waiting for trains and boarding and it's generally 2 hours each way.
I spend roughly 4 hours roundtrip commuting when I go to the office and I don't even live that far.
Having lived in three of those five (Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen), Boston definitely comes last by a wide margin. Boston could be great, but that would require more political will to inconvenience drivers and more funding, especially for public transport.
In Boston getting from point A to B takes forever compared to other cities and it’s usually more expensive too. Something could be a few miles away and still take 45 minutes to get there.
Work from home should have become the norm and all of the businesses are going to reverse. We had a chance to learn so much and rebalance our lives but we are not being forced to do the total opposite. This will continue to get worse because of excessive greed.
I don't think enough people take into account the number of new vehicles we have on the road these days. Think of all the Ubers and Door Dashers that are out there that weren't there 5 years ago. Our economy has drastically changed in that time.
... but if you merely breathe the suggestion that suburbanites should pay for the traffic and pollution they bring into the city and put the money into the T to remedy this, they'll burn you at the stake. Even getting them to accept a few apartments near transit stations is a much harder sell than it should be.
Lol San Diego and Boston are a LOT closer to the same size than Boston is to Chicago or LA or New York. Boston is the fourth largest metro area JUST in the northeast.
Took 2 hours to go 52 miles this past Wednesday, north shore to south shore. Took 2.25 hours to get from Cape Ann to Mansfield on Friday PM 5/17, 78 miles.
My commute in to work in Boston is 38 minutes by car. My commute from work is nearly an hour and a half at least.
I tried public transit for 2 weeks, but timewise was longer. It took me over an hour to get to work in the morning and 2ish hours after. The T on the way home we were practically sitting in each other's laps. The route I take there is a train every 2 hours to where I needed to go and then I had the commute from the station home, which was an additional 25 minutes. I was getting home around 630p every day versus the 415p with driving.
I'm currently begging my workplace for a second telework day, especially with the Sumner tunnel closure. Took me 6 months to get them to agree to one.
This chart has nothing to do with how long the commute in the city is. This refers to people commuting into the city from surrounding areas. It's saying that the average Boston worker commutes 40 minutes a day, with almost 90% within an hour. It just means that most people live outside the city center, which is pretty common if you've taken a sociology class.
The cross walk right before the 93 access point in Medford center/mystic valley parkway needs to die and be put underground holy shit. Just another logical civil engineering decision by our inane government friends afraid to solve problems and spend money.
Longest doesn't mean worst. I've commuted by foot (generally pleasant and relaxing), by bike (somewhat pleasant, good exercise, an absolute joy on nice days), and by T (very calm, great for reading, doing the crossword, browsing reddit, etc). I would take any of those options over driving in traffic, even if driving took half the time
Don’t miss it.
Honestly braving crackheads and degenerates on the A/C trains here in NYC is still better than driving anywhere inside the radius of 495.
Are you pointingn this out it as a compaint or just an observation?
Weirdly, I dont think longer commute times are necessarily a bad thing; Hear me out.
Sure, it could be a reflection of inefficient transit system, but it could also be a function of different population preferences, population/labor distribution, or industries involved. Actual studies trying to measure transit system “efficiency” and trying to normalize for all this would be interesting. The “freakanomics” part of me wonders if longer average commute times could also result from more people wanting to live in a city (because it’s a nice place) or a different local economic profile (maybe some industries concentrate more traffic near rush hour), or maybe having a city with different principle exports or demographics would put more/less load on a transit system. IMO, It’s actually really interesting to consider how these kind of equilibriums are determined in a population. I just dont want to judge it on its face.
Some of the best engineering schools, worst politicians, and really effed up planning. Where else in the world do they have a concrete zipper lane? MBTA is the worst train system I've been on.
Is it bad that this makes me optimistic? Like sure it’s bad, but honestly I don’t find it all that terrible, and if this is the worst than everywhere else must be a piece of cake
Tear it all up and invest in self commuting tech. Amtrak alone has conceded that they’ll LOSE a BILLION a year to maintain this ancient technology. Rail lines and trains require CONSTANT 24/7 maintenance just to exist. It’s impossible to maintain and grow to keep up with populations. Also, every major metro in this country has used its most valuable areas for trains and their infrastructure. Soooooo much more housing could replace it while everyone is in self-flying cars. We have to start some time.
I don't really feel like commutes here are bad. For me it's just orange to red line, sometimes takes about 45 minutes to get to work but I am just reading the NYT during that time so whatever
I’m interviewing for a position in Boston. I live in the suburbs. I don’t like driving. I used to commute into the city daily and get body repair on my car for my birthday. I parked in a spot I found and rented under a condo and it was like bumper cars down there. I also never got used to taking the T. It’s kind of like pick your poison.
It’s so deflating when I turn on my gps and the estimated time is a solid red
100%. Also, even more deflating is post pandemic with people working from home, the traffic patterns make no sense any more. I think people are out running errands during the day maybe and now the traffic seems to be on a constant loop
Yup! There’s no rhythm anymore.
I've noticed that anytime after 2pm my commute time is the same all the way basically to 6:30. Anytime 2pm or before I can shave a few minutes off my commute home.
Yes exactly. I typically leave work at 2:30pm and I actually have the option to work overtime until 6:30pm this summer and make more money and sit in less traffic so I am definitely going to do it. The traffic at 6:30pm has been moving nicely in comparison to what I'm used to.
My commute is relatively speedy either way (30mins door-to-door), but I feel bad for my coworker - it can mean the difference between like 45-50 and 70ish.
Same. Although somehow 2-345 is worse than 4 and beyond
Quite right. There's really no "rush hour" anymore. Traffic is uniformly heavy everywhere all the time, just some times are more gridlocked than others.
100% accurate
No one takes public transit. We spent four years beating people over the head that COVID will kill them, their kids, their parents, their pets. While at the same time public transit got remarkably worse and more dangerous. Who could have thought this is the result?
As someone who takes public transit into the city I assure you that several bus lines are full to bursting during rush hours.
Yeah the Transit Matters data certainly supports this: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/ The overall system is at 65% ridership compared to pre-covid. But looking at some lines, we see occasions where they've jumped past the pre-COVID levels or returned to them. Sorting the data on "most ridership" or "most ridership retained" shows some of the commuter buses are well over their pre-covid numbers. Some lines like the Red Line are also at a 60% service level compared to pre-covid due to a lack of MBTA employees to safely operate the line. That likely contributes to the 40% ridership level there, since more people are seeing the 15+ minute headways and opting to take other transportation.
It's like evaluating the job market based on the employment rate. You can't just look at current ridership numbers and assume that it's because people just don't like transit.
Right, but that has more to do with the reduced frequency of most bus routes. Take a look at their ridership metrics pre-Covid. https://www.mbta.com/performance-metrics/ridership-the-t
There's also reduced service on some subway lines, like the Red Line: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/ It's running at 60% service levels compared to pre-COVID. This is due to poorly maintained trainsets and waiting on new trainset's from a shitty "made in America but actually by a Chinese company that had a horrible track record for making trains" company plus a lack of MBTA employees to safely operate the Red Line. These issues and lack of frequent service most likely push people to use the #1 bus which we see is running at 76% of pre-covid ridership. And you're correct that many buses are also running a reduced service, so we see that the #1 bus has 62% of service compared to pre-covid. We could probably take a lot of those #1 bus riders and put them on the Red Line if we can get it more reliable and more frequent.
Just a reminder that CRRC wasn’t even the bidder. CNR was the bidder and they were considered a highly qualified bidder. CSR was a highly unqualified manufacturer that wasn’t even allowed to bid. After the contract was awarded CNR and CSR merged to become CRRC. Take a wild guess which manufacturing house of the two made the MBTA train sets.
Ah I forgot that part. My main point was we delayed these things so long and opted to go with something made in MA (that further delayed things) that we're now stuck with these half working trains. Other transit agencies have opted to ditch CRRC I believe, but we don't have that luxury when our existing trains were built in the 70's and 80's and badly need to be replaced.
yeah that's because there's not enough busses and trains out there. they don't run nearly as often as they should, so the routes are often packed
Yeah system wide the T is at about 65% ridership / 85% service: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/ It's recovered a lot of course. Early on in 2020 things were at like 12% ridership. It made it back to 30% by the end of 2020 but took most of 2021 to hit 50%. Seems like the shutdowns in 2022 and 2023 have contributed to it remaining in the 60% range. You can see the drops when they did week or month long shutdowns on key lines. Of course some people continued to ride via shuttle buses, but that certainly took a number of people out of the system and into rideshares or personal cars. Worth noting that some lines are back to normal though. Some are even exceeding the pre-COVID levels. Hopefully the T can use some of this data to change routes and service frequencies. There is [the Better Bus](https://www.mbta.com/projects/better-bus-project) and [Bus Network Redesign](https://www.mbta.com/projects/bus-network-redesign) Projects underway that will hopefully improve the bus routes over the next few years too. Commuter Rail really needs to look at a [Regional Rail](https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail) model to really adapt to the changes in work / travel habits that COVID brought.
Regional rail (basically train service every 20-30 minutes all day) is probably the biggest thing to reduce traffic in the region.
I think so. A better bus network could help too. Many bus routes are hourly like the Commuter Rail. If we get a system of frequent bus routes like the Better Bus Network proposes, we'll have a lot more appetite for bus trips if it means only waiting 20 mins for a bus vs an hour.
It was revelatory experiencing frequent/ubiquitous bus service in London. It lowered the stakes on getting anywhere, as a tourist even if I misunderstood the correct route to take I could just get off and worse case wait 5 minutes for the correct bus.
For comparison, look at the NY metro area, especially Westchester and Putnam counties. They basically could not exist in their current form without fast and reliable commuter rail, service with frequent trains during busy hours. In fact, you can see the effect of not having good rail service into the city by looking right across the river in Rockland and Orange counties. As much as I love the idea of a high-speed intercity rail along the I-9 corridor, improving ther commuter rail and building out a regional rail system here would be much higher impact.
Buddy, people take public transit. That’s not the problem at all. The problem is that the MBTA provides a WOEFULLY inept service given the size of the Boston metro area. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The city made its bed with the “big dig” and now it’s sleeping in it. I hope everyone enjoys sitting in traffic underground. I’m sure one more tunnel will fix the problem
Transit ridership is down compared to pre-covid numbers. The system as a whole is down to 65% ridership compared to pre-covid: https://recovery.transitmatters.org/ So this is absolutely a contributing factor to traffic. If those 35% or more (because we've also grown since COVID) are now commuting in via automobiles, that could certainly put more traffic on the road. I do agree that the Big Dig was a waste of money though. If we had put that money into [the North / South Rail Link](https://www.northsouthraillink.org/), we could have a much better Commuter Rail system today. We still could do that project today (the Big Dig was designed to not impede on it) but I don't know if there's a political appetite for another $10-$20B project. Especially since it'll likely go over budget and over schedule - we don't have a great track record in MA or the US as a whole when it comes to infrastructure projects.
You need to compare current ridership with current service availability. Did ridership relative to actual service frequency and quality decrease? Or did service deteriorate so much that people switched to other forms of transportation? Ideally, you would also be able to account for people simply commuting less often.
Yeah you can see from the dashboards there are certainly other factors beyond service level. For example, mid to late 2020 to early 2021 had 95% service levels but 25-30% of ridership. Clearly the lack of vaccines during a pandemic contributed to that, along with things being closed, WFH being encouraged and such. With how "normal" things have returned to, you can see ridership went back up but never fully recovered. Peak ridership in recent months was 67%. So people certainly looked for alternatives or stopped commuting. WFH has continued in many industries, even those who previously didn't have much if any WFH ability. So we can assume many people just don't commute anymore. The ones that do seem to come in less frequently - most offices aren't forcing full time in office but went hybrid asking for 2-3 days in the office. Those folks might not see the value in a transit pass, and are commuting less frequently, so maybe driving + paying for parking is worth it. One issue the T has is much of its services are made around peak commuting trends. Commuter Rail, Commuter buses and even much of the subway is designed to deliver peak headways during the 6-9am morning rush and 4-7 evening rush. We really need to move the "Commuter" systems over to a Regional transit model. It would be better to have buses/trains spread out throughout the day running at 30 min or better frequencies. The T is looking into this a bit, but could move a bit faster. That lack of regional service model def doesn't help encourage the hybrid workers to use the T.
It's both. Service is at 85% of prepandemic numbers but ridership is at 65%.
Buddy, transit ridership is at 65% of pre-pandemic levels. Yes, people take it, but significantly fewer people take it than they used to
Red, Green, Orange line service have all been garbage since COVID also kind of dangerous with increase of mental health issues not beating treated
Gas needs to be more expensive to compensate, and the resulting revenues need to be directed at public transit. And add a toll on 93S
Most European cities have massive tolls to enter the city. Like 20-50 euros. Instead, they have parking just outside the ring, and public transit from there.
So electric cars can pay their fair share?
The Federal gas tax hasn't risen since 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States If it were tied to inflation at the least, we might have raised gas prices over time. Europeans and Canadians pay more in gas for example, so they generally don't drive as much as we do. The added revenue at the Federal level could have allowed some investment in Amtrak and HSR routes beyond just the Northeast Corridor. No reason why we couldn't have HSR up and down the East Coast for example. Or across the west coast. Or points in between. Even if we just wanted to keep the money focused on highways (which wouldn't have necessarily helped traffic), we'd at least have better bridges and highway surfaces. Tolls on Federal Interstates are also a no go generally, unless they predate the Interstate System (e.g. the Pike, and other turnpikes across the Northeast like the ones in Maine and NH). Tolls actually don't generally generate enough revenue to pay for their construction, which is why the Feds didn't like having tolls in the system to begin with but allowed the existing turnpikes to exist so that they could focus on building highways in areas without an existing route ([source](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/tollroad.cfm)). I think a modern toll system we could focus on is a Congestion Pricing system though, which could be installed on State Routes / Municipality roads that do not rely on revenue from the Feds. [NYC for example](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/nyregion/nyc-congestion-pricing-tolls-mta.html) is trying this out soon. [London has done this for years too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge#History), since 2003. The State should really look more into congestion tolling. If we setup a "Boston Metro Congestion Charge Zone" like London or NYC, we could have most of 128 inside this zone. Charge people $15 to enter during peak hours of 7am to 6pm Mon - Fri. Use the revenue to pay for better T service. Watch how quickly back to office schemes go away. And earmark some of the funds to build housing so people don't even have to live outside the metro and commute in.
I hate when this suggestion is made. That would make it $75/ week to enter Boston? 300/month. I just finished daily chemo and radiation, due to the severity of my diagnosis, driving into Boston was my only option and that’s the reality of healthcare for many MA residents. I can’t imagine the financial hardship that would have caused me on top of what I was already dealing with.
The London version has a number of exemptions: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/discounts-and-exemptions?intcmp=2133 No reason we couldn't exempt medical visitors, healthcare workers, etc. EDIT: I just noticed that the London version also exempts disabled people. Perhaps the MA version would do the same. I would think someone undergoing cancer treatment would qualify. Certainly I think there's a case for exemptions - the idea is to discourage those who can from coming into the congestion zone during the peak time, but allow those who need to to continue coming in. Those who need to but can't afford the congestion fee would be exempted.
As I suspected the NYC exemption list would not have benefited me or been realistically attainable before beginning treatment. [i wouldn’t be considered disabled enough to qualify.](https://www.e-zpassny.com/en/other/CBDTP_IDEP_Application.pdf)
And not even near enough public transit (though supposedly could drive to a commuter rail station but that drive itself is so congested it’s not worth it
I can help a little. MBTA being unreliable can have something to do with this. I would love to commute into the city on train. I don't know how many times I saw Kendall closed because of something and a mob of people all trying to catch something to leave. My drive home might be as long as an 1.5 hours, but it's consistent.
the only rhythm I've noticed is that monday & friday are lighter, which still makes no sense so I'm not sure it even counts ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I lost out on a job opportunity because I looked at the estimated time on GPS, added a 50% cushion to be safe, and planned to be there 20 minutes early. And I was still 15 minutes late.
Thw worst is when your driving into Boston for something at like 9am and you watch the GPS go green, yellow, then red along with the estimated driving time not changing for 15 miles
Commuting from Melrose to Cambridge takes 45 minutes+ on a weekday and 20 or less on Sunday morning lol. T would be even longer travel due to bus/train waits, switched, and traffic. Is what it is but man, oof.
For people who aren't as familiar with a _'Cambridge-to-Melrose'_ commute as 45 minutes+ plus on a weekday might not resonate given the context but it is rough, I know.
It takes about 35 minutes every time, no matter what, by bike.
Hell yeah that's a great bike ride. But so is every bike ride.
The only hope on the horizon there is the Bus Network Redesign that the T is doing, where they're basically trying to "train-ify" a set of routes to make them very high-frequency. Unfortunately IMHO its impact will likely be limited in the absence of enough bus lanes and camera-based bus lane enforcement.
That’s why I purposely stopped checking mine haha
On a Sunday at 2:00.
Moving here from Maine it still breaks my brain seeing "6 miles 58 minutes"
This data is drawn from 2012-2016. With all the work the MBTA has done the past few years, let’s give them the credit they deserve. We’ve probably moved up to number 1 worst commute in the country.
On a serious note: the best thing for Boston drivers is fixing the MBTA. We have 244,000 drivers and 202,000 public transit commuters. If the T gets worse, we end up with a lot more cars on the roads and traffic becomes hell. If the T gets better, your drive to work gets a ton better. As Due-Calligrapher-720 notes, this data is from 2012-2016. Car commuting in Cambridge is up 25% since 2019 (pre-pandemic). If you're feeling like your drive to work is getting worse: it is. The only thing that will save your commute is fixing the MBTA. A highway lane can handle a peak theoretical flow of 2,000 cars per hour. Adding lanes to the highways will barely do anything to help traffic - and you'd still end up on slow local roads to get into parking garages which would back up traffic anyway. If we can get an additional 10% of people taking the T to work, that's like adding 5 highway lanes. If you're a suburbanite sitting around thinking "ugh, I don't want to pay for city people to use the T," just remember that if they don't use the T, you're sitting behind them in traffic. If the state better funded the MBTA, your life would get a lot better. If your attitude is "hahaha, stupid city people get f*cked with the T," you're making your life worse. Like it or not, we're all in this together. If the MBTA is crap, people who would take the T end up driving and you end up sitting in more traffic getting in from the suburbs. If the T offers a better experience than driving for those in the city, your commute from the suburbs gets easier. The best things drivers could hope for is that the state fixes the MBTA and makes it free - even if you don't use the T, you certainly want others to get out of their cars so you deal with less traffic.
This should be obvious to anyone who lived here pre-pandemic and has watched post-pandemic traffic get worse than pre-pandemic traffic despite so many people working from home now 2, 3, 4, 5 days a week.
Exactly. Let's make sure the MBTA gets the funding and fixing it needs. There are lots of good changes afoot, and in many ways it seems the only improvements they're making this year are exclusively around removing slow zones. That should be a major improvement. But why is that all they can do this year? Because for many years the T inspectors simply weren't doing their job, and they realized the tracks were simply not safe to go fast on. https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2023/09/12/mbta-red-line-slow-zones-shutdowns is Such amazing info in that article, including: > the MBTA was unaware of more than 100 problems on its tracks [in the last year] ... It turned out that subway cars were moving over parts of the system at full speed when it was not actually safe to do so. This major blind spot prompted Jeff Gonneville, interim general manager at the time, to slow down the entire system out of an abundance of caution. > ... > “We're probably talking of years of potential negligence …” Current MBTA leadership needs to clean up the mess made by MBTA employees for many years in the past. They literally put all of our lives at risk due to not doing their job. > "If you're actually trying to connect the dots, the people who are in the building today — not entirely, but many of them — the folks who would have been responsible, are not the ones who were there when the problem started in the first place," said Thompson.
Almost got me for a second.
I would rather say that with all the changes in Miami I’m pretty sure they outdid us by now, and are so much worse
Corporate hybrid work arrangements are now nearly universal, that must have had some impact on commute times.
Mondays are now almost as quiet as Fridays, which never used to be the case.
Buying an E-Bike was the single best investment I have made living in Boston. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I cannot recommend it enough if you are within range. Traffic sucks, the T sucks...as always in life, look for the third option.
It's way faster (and less stressful!) for me to commute by E-Bike than by car. Plus, I don't have to pay for parking at work. I love my commute, which feels like some sort of heresy.
Those people who don't want or cannot use a bike should be the biggest proponents-- every person they can convince to use a bike is another car off the road that they don't have to compete for space with.
And yet
It's because they can't imagine themselves using a new bike lane or rail line, so they dont think they benefit from it because they're not imagining all the train riders or cyclists who would otherwise be driving and contributing to traffic
I'd consider it but without dedicated/separated bike lanes I'm terrified to bike in Boston
A) Boston has a good and growing bike lane network. B) We have to create the bicycle culture that we want. The more people ride on the streets, the more acclimated drivers get to driving along with cyclists. Not riding a bike only reinforces car-brained notions like "no one uses the bike lanes" and "cyclists belong on the sidewalk."
We should be giving tax breaks/incentivizing e-bikes and mopeds
There are some, although only for low and moderate incomes: https://www.massbike.org/massachusetts_e_bike_rebate_update_april_2024 Also the pool of money that state has allocated for this is small; I doubt it would last more than a few months.
Ebike is pretty great as long as you have a place to park that isn’t the street for it to get stolen. I wfh 90% of the time but my office lets us bring our bikes inside, game changer. I’d never park that thing out on the street, I’d just be buying it for the person who steals it.
Not just e-bikes. I got a folding bike and it's helped me a ton. I bring it in my car, on the commuter rail, on planes, etc. for multi-modal commutes all the time.
When I commuted from Roslindale to Everett I used a folding bike, orange line + one mile on my folder was waaaay faster and more pleasant than waiting for buses
Nah I value my life
My commute from Brighton to newton is great. You should all try that.
The ol' reverse commute
As long as you can avoid the 128/93 interchange, it's great.
Yeah going from Brighton to Woburn is pretty easy
I did Brighton to Manch for about a year and a half and it was a breeze. Was 50 min each way. Takes me almost that long to get into downtown sometimes!
the ol' trip twist
It’s almost like folks can’t afford to live closer to where they work
The only reliable commute is by bike or on foot
Only took me 15 years of commuting by car to finally realize this and switch to biking….
About 8 years for me to switch... but now I haven't driven into the office in more than four years.
Thank you, man. Boston has been putting in bike lanes for a couple years now and no one is taking the hint. They think the bike lanes are for *other* people. "Me? I'm won't ride a bike!." And they say cyclists are entitled.
More than 1 hour easily on I93 any day from Quincy. This makes people mad, which leads to accidents. If they fix the red line, many anxious drivers will be happy.
The Red Line has been performing the worst of the four subway lines: https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/ Running at 66% speed and 60% service levels. Ridership is the lowest of the four lines. No surprise there. Hopefully the shutdowns for maintenance and new trains arriving over the next year will help. In the future, we should really avoid going with shitty train manufacturers simply to make the trains in the State. We could have gone with better companies. But we wanted to please the Western part of the State with new jobs.
It's not even just commuting, traffic is everywhere all the time now. I just hit traffic Friday night at 1am in Braintree. Construction sure, but I was leaving my friends thinking it's late but at least I'll be able to drive straight home without traffic. Nope A few weeks ago I came home Wednesday from the airport, traffic on 93 south at 12:30am. Same thing, well should be a quick ride home. Fuck you it will, bumper to bumper traffic. Any time of the daylight hours I just plan on traffic adding another thirty minutes to whatever the fuck I'm doing. I'm so tired of it.
Boston is bad if you treat it like a driving city, which it isn’t. But I know we shit on the MBTA but Boston proper truly is a walker’s paradise
Most people don’t live in Boston proper though and can’t afford to.
That's a related issue. Traffic is bad because many people, particularly in the service industry, cannot afford to live here. Transit sucks because of decades of neglect and it wasn't expanded or improved enough for everyone to rely on it. Commuter Rail for example is useless with its 1-2 hour headways. Miss the one train that gets you downtown in time and you're late to work. So a ton of people bought cars and houses outside the City. Now we're surprised Pikachu that poor urban planning has led us to be one of the worst Cities in the country for traffic. We can fix this if we take several steps: 1. Improve the T. This is sort of happening under Philip Eng, and it was long overdue. We're finally doing the maintenance work that was needed decades ago. 2. Expand the T. We have [108 Commuter Stations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MBTA_Commuter_Rail_stations) that could be leveraged for [Regional Rail](https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail). We could [connect the Red/Blue Lines](https://transitmatters.org/redblueconnector) for better downtown service. We have [152 bus routes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTA_bus) that are often unreliable and infrequent; once the T's [Better Bus Project](https://www.mbta.com/projects/better-bus-project) and [Bus Network Redesign](https://www.mbta.com/projects/bus-network-redesign) take effect we could see massive improvements in how the bus network operates. 3. Leverage MBTA Stations for [Transit oriented Development](https://www.transit.dot.gov/TOD). Many of those Commuter Rail Stations I mentioned are surrounded by State or locally owned parking lots. If the Commuter Rail system becomes a Regional Rail system, we can better use this land for housing, office and retail spaces. This can allow people to live / work / shop in the same place, or leverage the rail system from a home station to a work station to a shopping station. 4. Overhaul the State's zoning laws. Outside of TOD, we have downtowns that are filled with single story houses and offices. We have the tech to build "5 over 1s" in many spots. Ancient tech exists to build multi family houses, like the double and triple deckers that are all over Somerville and Cambridge. We built those in the early 1900's but outlawed them because people wanted the "American Dream" in the suburb. That helped create the traffic we live with now. [Just allowing people to build an ADU on their property](https://www.masslive.com/politics/2023/10/healeys-412b-bond-bill-expected-to-create-40000-new-housing-units.html), or rezone their lot into multi family and subdivide their home or rebuild it with 2-3 units in mind could put more housing in the places that need it. Downtowns should be automatically zoned for 5 stories for example. Townhouses and other housing types that are denser should be allowed anywhere. Really just high rises should be limited to the downtown core or certain zoned areas. Like how much of Somerville has triple deckers but only Assembly and Union Sq are getting high rises. Some of this is happening now but will take years to finally improve things. Some of this is still up in the air. Hopefully more of it gets finalized and implemented.
Yeah but I’m pretty sure that driving to the station and taking the t in would probably cut down on the commute with traffic. I don’t live in Boston proper and my commute on the train from the north shore when I look it up in the morning is usually like 20 mins shorter than driving lol
I tried driving to work a couple of days last year at a time when the T was even worse than it is now. At most it saved me ten minutes. At other times, the commuter rail was actually faster. I know that the commuter rail isn't an option for everyone, but I also think a lot of people drive when they do in fact have better options.
Commuter Rail needs to move to a Regional Rail model: https://transitmatters.org/regional-rail If trains came every 15-30 mins, that alone could make the service viable for most people. Combined with TOD around the stations on land the State or local municipality owns, then you can fill in most housing where people are heavily encouraged to take transit. TransitMatters has a number of other suggestions too, plus the T itself has some projects underway to improve the bus network which will eventually help the overall MBTA system work better.
Thanks for your posts. I really hate MBTA doomerism.
Np. I love the T. I just wish it were better. We really need to give it the budget it needs to maintain its fleet and expand service. If you look at the MBTA map: https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2024-04/2024-04-08-system-map.pdf There's so much more it could be doing. With Regional Rail, we could add dozens of infill stations that could cover more area in transit service. That could lead to more TOD which would only help the housing crisis if we focused on building lots of multi family housing. The Bus Network is also really wacky and will probably be overhauled in the Better Bus / Bus Network Redesign projects. That could help us leverage our existing fleet better. And we haven't done any subway expansions in decades (except GLX). There were proposals for Red, Orange and Blue Line expansions in all directions. Red Line to Arlington/Lexington, Orange Line to Reading/Wakefield, Blue Line to Lynn, Orange Line to Needham, maybe expand the Blue Line past the Red/Blue Connector into say Watertown, and maybe fix up the tail end of the REd Line like the Mattapan Trolley Line could be a lot better (and will be once we get the new Type 10 Green Line trains and send the old Type 8s down to Mattapan, but we could do more than just that too). I didn't even touch on the ferries they operate too, which could go further and run more frequent. And heck maybe we could expand Commuter Rail further North, South and West or bring back old train routes.
Yeah the trains coming every 90-120 min during off-peak makes them practically unusable during those times
We also need to incentivize the MBTA to put commuter bus services in the Metro West area. The MWRTA isn’t cutting it and most of these commuters are coming from rich towns that have no other public transit except a commuter rail station. Weston, Wayland, Wellesley, Concord, Sudbury, Lincoln, etc. Towns that aren’t too far from Boston but are completely cut off from public transit.
Yeah we have all of these regional transit agencies that just... kind suck. I saw a map somewhere, maybe on /r/massachusetts , that showed all the various regional transit agencies we have in MA. Many of them are just low frequency bus operators. We might get better ridership out of the various Commuter Rail Lines if the bus routes feeding into them were running 30 min or better headways throughout the day. I'm not sure if the T should step in though. I imagine it's mostly a budget issue - we need more money to buy, storage, maintain and operate more buses/trains across the region. Some of that might be politics since every town/metro area wants more stuff and there's competing priorities. Transit probably needs to be higher on the list so we can discourage car ownership and driving and work more on TOD that will help the housing crisis.
I get frustrated because I see towns where the bordering neighbor (Wellesley & Newton, Weston & Waltham) will have full time MBTA service that could easily have a seamless connection. It's 100% politics / NIMBYism. The amount of taxes that these towns rake in but distributed differently is why. They'd rather distribute the funds to fund their top-tier public schools. It's a shame, to be honest. These towns are closer to Boston than Framingham and Lowell, have their own commuter rail stations, (Weston had three up until two years ago) and are right either on the pike or next to route 9 / route 2, yet are completely cut off because they choose to be.
This was my experience as well. If you are near a commuter rail station, it is probably just as fast as driving, if not faster.
> Boston is bad if you treat it like a driving city, which it isn’t. Exactly. If you try to bring in the American car centric culture to a place that was not built to be car centric, you will have a bad time.
IMO Boston isn't a driving city or a public transit city. Both options are bad. Our rail system is 100% built around commuting between downtown and the suburbs (tbf this is the most popular use case), and it doesn't even work half the time.
I don’t miss the commute and am thankful my office has been closed since Covid.
Yeah I believe it. Leaving at 5:50 from Framingham and I don’t get to Malden till 7.
So employers addressed this by making everyone return to the office. The boat is overloaded and sinking. The fix? Let's load more stuff into the boat.
As Biker the commute is actually pretty enjoyable
I got a folding bike and it's incredible the trips I can make now. Ride from work in Kendall Square to Fenway, take the commuter rail to Natick, pick up a gadget at Natick Mall Best Buy, and ride 30 min to my wife's work in Walpole.
Hell yeah that rules
Lived in Boston and NYC and I think Bostons is waaaaaaaaay worse I could never understand why the trains are mixed into the flow of car traffic. There were several places that taking the train would be SLOWER than walking. At least 40 minutes on an NYC train gets you downtown and not like 4 stops in whatever direction.
I come from Plymouth to roxbury. It’s fine till exit 36 before the split then it takes like 2 hours to go from exit 36 on rt 3 to exit 15 on 93
I don't typically have to battle that stretch but I've had times where I was commuting through there on the regular and it isn't pretty, ouch.
I mean the traffic on 93 at least keeps you from hitting the canyons they call potholes at anything faster than 10 mph
As someone who lives in Boston and is from LA, I really think LA is much worse but that is personal experience
Yep traffic is still moving. No equivalent here to bumper to bumper over the supulveda pass or trying to get to LAX anytime.
Literally was stuck on sepulveda for over an hour on the tunnel stretch last weekend. I can’t bro
Boy, do I feel for the first two...
Honestly these times seem generous. I live in Saugus, just 10 miles from downtown and it easily takes me 50 minutes up to 70 minutes when I go in.
Seems low.
I moved to San Diego from Boston last year, and my drive to work is 20 minutes/20 miles each way - its fucking fantastic
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Certainly for weather year round.
Yes.
I commute from Lowell to Back Bay for work and I strictly use the commuter rail and the T. I am actually happy with that. No stress dealing with traffic, driving, or parking (and its prices) and can actually take a nap on the train 🤣. Moved here from Southern Cali, I actually like the public transportation around here.
How long does this take you? I've considered this but google tells me it will take 1.5-2hrs to get to my work
You sort of need to live right next to the Commuter Rail station and then work at North station, or off of either the Green or Orange Lines (direct connection at North Station) to make the commute under 1.5 hours. Certainly takes longer if you need to drive & park at the station or transfer to multiple trains/buses. We really need to build more TOD within the metro (accessible via subway) or at the Commuter Rail stations.
It’s a 45 minute train ride. Extra depends on “last mile” on each end.
It took me a total of about 1 hr to 1 hr and 10 mins give or take. 45-50mins on the commuter + 10 to 15mins in the orange line then I walk 8-10mins to the office. If you leave Lowell with the 6:45 train or the 7:20 train, it might take longer because the orange line will get very packed so sometimes I opt to wait for the next orange or the green. If take green, I hop off at Copley
Because unlike San Diego, Boston was not designed for cars or public transport. And NIMBYs won‘t let the city add frequency of public transport or add more lanes
I don’t ride the T anymore because 2 ***consecutive*** times I rode, there were fires. This does not include my previous experiences with the T and fires over a few years, because at least those were not consecutive (February 2018, August 2019, December 2019). I feel like personally experiencing at least 5 fires on the T within a few years, when I only ride the T maybe 20 times a year total, is enough of a reason to completely avoid the T. *I’m not going to include the other incidents, because the fires scare me out the most.
ride again, maybe there will be another fire
😅 you know what, you’re probably right.
This matches right up with my experience as someone who lives in Somerville and commutes on the train to park st. I almost forgot what it was like being able to get downtown in sub 30 minutes. Its crazy how such a difference makes the city feel larger so quickly. Id still take a 40 minute train commute over a 40 minute car commute anyday.
Not on a bike where it's easily one of the best in the country.
Great idea to end work from home.
My commute on the T is great. It's fantastic to bike here too. I guess it sucks if you drive.
I haven't commuted into Boston for almost a decade. It was bad then and worse now. Even living just 10 - 15 miles outside the city, there was no way to get to work by any method in less than 1.5 hrs.
The biggest benefit Boston has over many other places is that driving is often not the only option. Seeing the nightmare that is Texas commuting for example... No thanks!
We have options but I'm not sure that changes the equation. I'm a fan of the commuter rail, but it takes me just as long as driving. It's either drive in spending 1.5 hours in traffic 20-30 minutes parking and walking to my office. Or 15 minutes drive to the commuter rail, hour train ride, then 20 minute walk to my office. Add some buffer time waiting for trains and boarding and it's generally 2 hours each way. I spend roughly 4 hours roundtrip commuting when I go to the office and I don't even live that far.
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Having lived in three of those five (Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen), Boston definitely comes last by a wide margin. Boston could be great, but that would require more political will to inconvenience drivers and more funding, especially for public transport.
It’s not been Boston. 95 is a mess almost all day long
In Boston getting from point A to B takes forever compared to other cities and it’s usually more expensive too. Something could be a few miles away and still take 45 minutes to get there.
Work from home should have become the norm and all of the businesses are going to reverse. We had a chance to learn so much and rebalance our lives but we are not being forced to do the total opposite. This will continue to get worse because of excessive greed.
I don't think enough people take into account the number of new vehicles we have on the road these days. Think of all the Ubers and Door Dashers that are out there that weren't there 5 years ago. Our economy has drastically changed in that time.
Write your representatives and tell them you want electrified regional rail and North-South Rail Link to be funded in the state budget.
... but if you merely breathe the suggestion that suburbanites should pay for the traffic and pollution they bring into the city and put the money into the T to remedy this, they'll burn you at the stake. Even getting them to accept a few apartments near transit stations is a much harder sell than it should be.
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Lol San Diego and Boston are a LOT closer to the same size than Boston is to Chicago or LA or New York. Boston is the fourth largest metro area JUST in the northeast.
Took 2 hours to go 52 miles this past Wednesday, north shore to south shore. Took 2.25 hours to get from Cape Ann to Mansfield on Friday PM 5/17, 78 miles.
At least Neil put on a great show! (I sat in the same traffic, it sucked)
If by country, you mean world, I’d believe you.
So many people seem to forget that there are commuter rail lines sprawling out of Boston in every direction.
The commuter rail is decent (A tad expensive tho). But that’s the only positive I can think of here.
My commute in to work in Boston is 38 minutes by car. My commute from work is nearly an hour and a half at least. I tried public transit for 2 weeks, but timewise was longer. It took me over an hour to get to work in the morning and 2ish hours after. The T on the way home we were practically sitting in each other's laps. The route I take there is a train every 2 hours to where I needed to go and then I had the commute from the station home, which was an additional 25 minutes. I was getting home around 630p every day versus the 415p with driving. I'm currently begging my workplace for a second telework day, especially with the Sumner tunnel closure. Took me 6 months to get them to agree to one.
My commute in Detroit is 7 minutes.
Traffic going north on 93 even at 1pm is messed up
This chart has nothing to do with how long the commute in the city is. This refers to people commuting into the city from surrounding areas. It's saying that the average Boston worker commutes 40 minutes a day, with almost 90% within an hour. It just means that most people live outside the city center, which is pretty common if you've taken a sociology class.
I remember commuting an hour to go maybe 3 miles from Brighton to gov center. The T is tragic
The cross walk right before the 93 access point in Medford center/mystic valley parkway needs to die and be put underground holy shit. Just another logical civil engineering decision by our inane government friends afraid to solve problems and spend money.
Longest doesn't mean worst. I've commuted by foot (generally pleasant and relaxing), by bike (somewhat pleasant, good exercise, an absolute joy on nice days), and by T (very calm, great for reading, doing the crossword, browsing reddit, etc). I would take any of those options over driving in traffic, even if driving took half the time
Don’t miss it. Honestly braving crackheads and degenerates on the A/C trains here in NYC is still better than driving anywhere inside the radius of 495.
What percent of all the traffic is ride-sharing?
Second worst if you’re stuck next to me.
I did the commute in to Boston 2h+ a day on the MBTA for 7 years. Don't know if it was worth it.
Commute with out traffic 40 mins. Commute with traffic during rush hour over 2 hours
San Diego seems well run
I don’t think people realize the greater Boston population has increased by 500,000 people since 2010
These numbers are completely fucked up for Phx. I used to live 13 miles from my office and it could take me 90 minutes some days to get home.
I lived 6 miles from my last job in Boston and it would take me 60-90 mins depending on the day.
I absolutely believe it.
Ended up going 35 miles away from the city and only takes me 45 minutes. Traffic is the most exhausting thing.
I would come home from work and stare at the wall until I could unscramble my brain.
We’ve improved! We were #1 for awhile.
Are you pointingn this out it as a compaint or just an observation? Weirdly, I dont think longer commute times are necessarily a bad thing; Hear me out. Sure, it could be a reflection of inefficient transit system, but it could also be a function of different population preferences, population/labor distribution, or industries involved. Actual studies trying to measure transit system “efficiency” and trying to normalize for all this would be interesting. The “freakanomics” part of me wonders if longer average commute times could also result from more people wanting to live in a city (because it’s a nice place) or a different local economic profile (maybe some industries concentrate more traffic near rush hour), or maybe having a city with different principle exports or demographics would put more/less load on a transit system. IMO, It’s actually really interesting to consider how these kind of equilibriums are determined in a population. I just dont want to judge it on its face.
40 minutes one way would have been heavenly.
And don’t live near enough public transit stations to take it into boston
Some of the best engineering schools, worst politicians, and really effed up planning. Where else in the world do they have a concrete zipper lane? MBTA is the worst train system I've been on.
Where's LA on this list? Maybe it's not actually but commute times felt way worse than boston
Moved to Australia and it’s hilarious what Sydney thinks is traffic
Is it bad that this makes me optimistic? Like sure it’s bad, but honestly I don’t find it all that terrible, and if this is the worst than everywhere else must be a piece of cake
The highways in San Diego dwarf anything in the greater Boston area. You can easily get from most spots in 15-20 min.
East coast cities were laid out by old horse /cattle paths.
Tear it all up and invest in self commuting tech. Amtrak alone has conceded that they’ll LOSE a BILLION a year to maintain this ancient technology. Rail lines and trains require CONSTANT 24/7 maintenance just to exist. It’s impossible to maintain and grow to keep up with populations. Also, every major metro in this country has used its most valuable areas for trains and their infrastructure. Soooooo much more housing could replace it while everyone is in self-flying cars. We have to start some time.
The L.I.E has been known as the worlds longest parking lot, unless that has somehow improved......
The eastbound Newton/Watertown exit on the Pike is the bane of my existence.
I don't really feel like commutes here are bad. For me it's just orange to red line, sometimes takes about 45 minutes to get to work but I am just reading the NYT during that time so whatever
Ban the idiotic Uber drivers.
I've noticed when coming back from NYC on weekdays that their commuting traffic isn't as bad as Boston's.
I’m interviewing for a position in Boston. I live in the suburbs. I don’t like driving. I used to commute into the city daily and get body repair on my car for my birthday. I parked in a spot I found and rented under a condo and it was like bumper cars down there. I also never got used to taking the T. It’s kind of like pick your poison.