The quality of life for people who live and work in Boston and the metropolitan region depends in large part on their ability to get from one place to another for increasingly diverse purposes.

How are we doing?

More than three quarters of the 927,000 trips to the City of Boston daily are by private motor vehicle: 30% to downtown neighborhoods and 70% to the rest of Boston.  While about half of the downtown trips were by public transit, only 22% of the trips to the rest of Boston were by transit, indicating poor transit connections across neighborhoods. The number of trips is increasing in every mode of travel.  This increase is attributed to the growing complexity of people’s lives (only 30% of all trips today are work-related), growing household income, and increasing residential sprawl.  The completion of the Central Artery/Tunnel project may reorganize trip patterns in Boston, since new connections have become possible, and recurring delay has been reduced.

Looking at commuting trips from home to work, Boston residents drove alone only 40% of the time, the second-lowest rate of any city or town in Massachusetts and far lower than the 64% drive-alone share for Metropolitan Boston and the 74% drive-alone share statewide.  Boston residents used public transit for 32% of commuting trips, nearly double the 17% transit share for Metropolitan Boston commuting trips.  This high rate of transit use occurs despite the fact that public transit commuters have the longest average commutes of all Massachusetts workers, with average travel times of greater than 60 minutes for commuter rail and ferry riders and 40 minutes for bus and subway riders, compared to 25 minutes for commuters who drive alone.

One problem for many transit users, both commuters and those using transit for other kinds of trips, is that Boston’s transportation systems were designed to get people in and out of downtown Boston from Boston neighborhoods and growing suburban cities and towns.  This radial system of public transportation has not been modified to connect communities in the inner core circumferentially nor does it facilitate Boston residents’ access to new suburban job centers.  Some densely developed and lower-income areas, such as portions of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Somerville, are served by buses, which, by MBTA policy, have a lower minimum frequency of service and span of service over the day and week.

Unlike the rail system, the MBTA has no operational control system for its bus routes, with the result that buses tend to bunch and otherwise deviate from scheduled service.  While the MBTA has instituted a system of free transfers for passengers switching from one bus route to a second bus route, most bus routes connect to the rail system and, with few routes excepted, passengers must transfer from the bus to rapid transit and pay a second fare in order to reach the downtown area or make connections to other parts of the region.