One-quarter mile is generally taken as the distance most people are willing to walk to a public transit stop.  The number of households, jobs, and schools within a quarter mile, or about a 10-minute walk, from a transit stop is an indicator of the transit system’s coverage.
  
How are we doing?

In the City of Boston, almost 80% of jobs, 51% of the public schools and 56% of residences are located within one-quarter mile, or about a 10-minute walk, of an MBTA commuter rail, subway or trolley stop, based on calculations using 2000 US Census data.    These figures do not consider proximity to MBTA bus stops.  While 76% of Asian and 60% of white households were close to rail transit by this definition, only 54% of Latino households and 41% of black households were.  Households without cars and low-income households were more likely to be near rail transit than average, but children and the elderly were less likely to live near rail transit than average.

Most Boston residents who do not live near rail transit are within walking distance of a bus stop.  However, MBTA buses are less convenient because the system lacks provisions to give priority to buses over other traffic, operational controls to insure that buses are on schedule, and frequent service.  Further, most bus routes are designed to feed the rail transit system, requiring bus riders to suffer the inconvenience of a transfer and to pay the fare twice.  Although the basic rail or bus fare is low compared to other transit systems, the combined bus and rail fare is at the highest range of what other systems charge.  The monthly pass pricing reflects this differential as well (see the MassPIRG report,  Hidden Costs: The Need For Transfers In The MBTA System).
 
Data collected as part of the environmental review for the Urban Ring indicate that residents of many neighborhoods in Boston and surrounding cities, such as Cambridge and Chelsea, must make multiple transfers to get to their destinations and experience extremely slow travel speeds.  The average commute made by bus or subway takes 40 minutes — and in Boston neighborhoods that are not well served by the rapid transit system, work trip travel times are far longer.  Proposed transit system expansions, such as the upgrading of the Fairmount commuter rail branch through Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, the extension of the Silver Line south of Dudley Square, and the Urban Ring could significantly reduce transit travel time in Boston’s underserved areas.