Why we need the dedicated bus lanes on North Massachusetts Avenue
Preliminary bus lane markings are complete on North Massachusetts Avenue on Nov. 12. (Photo: Cambridge Bike Lanes via Twitter)
If you live in North Cambridge or travel via Massachusetts Avenue north of Porter Square, you’ve probably seen the city’s new dedicated bus lane and protected bike lanes, and you might have had some questions:
- What are the bus lanes good for?
- How many people really take the bus? It only goes by very infrequently.
- Traffic was already bad; won’t this make it worse?
- Why do we need dedicated bus lanes?
To understand the benefit of these bus lanes, you first have to realize how much more efficient buses are at moving people. A bus might be three times as long as a car, but compared with a single-occupancy vehicle with just one driver, it can carry 40 times as many people. Put another way, buses can often move 13 times as many people using the same amount of space as cars.
To give a real example, a study done on Mount Auburn Street during rush hour showed buses were only 3 percent of vehicles but carried 55 percent of the people on the road!
Since they are moving so many people, a bus stuck in traffic affects far more people than just a single car. Additionally, getting stuck in traffic can increase the variability of bus arrival times, which means passengers need to plan not just for trip time but also for the worst-case delay caused by variability. Which makes the impact even worse.
This is why we need dedicated bus lanes, separate from normal vehicle lanes: They speed up the bus and reduce variability for a very large number of people at once, even if the number of vehicles is small. In the end, people are important, not vehicles.
If traffic wasn’t bad, there would be no need for dedicated bus lanes. So by their nature, dedicated bus lanes need to be built on congested streets. As far as the impact of these lanes, the city estimates that in the long run these changes will add only two to three minutes to car drivers’ rush-hour commute. That being said, based on other bus lanes across metro Boston, in the long run there might be almost no additional delays for vehicle traffic once everyone gets used to the new lanes.
On the Broadway, Somerville, dedicated bus lane, travel times for motor vehicles were almost identical to times before implementation, and overall motor vehicle volumes decreased. As in this project, traffic models projected an increase in travel times on Broadway but, due to a shift to more people riding the bus and biking and drivers adjusting their routes, these projections did not materialize.
In general, we have seen from the many bus lane projects across the region that when bus lanes are introduced, bus ridership goes up. Examples of this improvement include Broadway in Somerville, where ridership increased by 36 percent to 69 percent and Brighton Avenue in Boston, where ridership increased by 5 percent to 8 percent. Both roadways are similar in terms of width and vehicular traffic counts to North Massachusetts Avenue. And this is one of the streets the MBTA is considering for higher-frequency service, which will be enabled by dedicated bus lanes – allowing even more people to ride it. And more people riding the bus means fewer people driving.
Do we really need dedicated bus lanes on this particular stretch?
The 77 bus that goes through the northern section of Massachusetts Avenue continues to be one of the top-20 ridership routes in the MBTA system, with almost 7,500 riders on weekdays in 2019. And even as it is one of the busiest routes in the region, it is also one of the more unreliable routes in Cambridge.
Failing bus service is one of the greatest disparities threatening our region. Transit inequities lead to Black riders spending 64 more hours per year on the bus compared with their white counterparts. Per the 2017 MBTA survey of route 77 riders:
- 35 percent of riders were low-income.
- 24 percent were minority riders.
- 57 percent were women.
- 13 percent were seniors.
- 32 percent didn’t own a car.
A faster bus means seniors can spend less time waiting in the cold for a late bus and parents can spend less time commuting to work and more time with their children. Thousands of bus riders will have a faster ride every day. And as more people switch to riding this now faster and more reliable route, we will all benefit from less congestion and cleaner air.
Jarred Johnson is executive director of the transportation advocacy group TransitMatters, and Matthew Petersen is its programs manager. Kristiana Lachiusa is director of transit and outreach for the LivableStreets Alliance, a Cambridge nonprofit.
Feature image of a bus lane test in 2018 by LivableStreets via Twitter.
Bono wonders: Do any of these people actually live in North Cambridge? Do any of them own cars? How often do they actually take the bus? Exactly who is the “we” these authors are talking about?? (Bono’s reminded of that old saw: What do you mean “we” Kimosabe??) Jarred Johnson lives in Boston, from whence he retweets garbage like this: https://twitter.com/jarjoh/status/1466903459886731271
You have not factored the Covid numbers into your argument. Ridership across the board for all T systems are still not back to previous levels: “ If, when, and how most riders will return to the T is anyone’s guess. In April 2021, the number of average weekday trips on the MBTA transit system, including the commuter rail, was 32 percent of the average weekday trips in April 2019, according to the most recent available data from the MBTA. On the commuter rail alone, the figure was just 14 percent.” More people who have a vehicle are choosing to drive rather than taking public transit, for fear of contacting Covid. That will not change anytime soon.
Most anyone that can/could take a bus already takes a bus. If you live in Cambridge you walk, ride, bike, take the bus and god forbid drive somewhere.
To create a literal parking lot of automobiles while the bus lane sits empty and it’s utilization rate is less than 10% is a really warped view.
Never mind the destruction of the local small businesses along this stretch of mass ave. So sad and clearly with all these “gee it’s terrific articles” manipulating the reality of living and working in n Cambridge.
Perhaps most of the buses be shunted over to the Alewife train station rather than going all the way to Harvard Square.
Not only can’t get bus drivers
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2021/12/07/mbta-bus-service-cuts-worker-shortage/?p1=hp_featurestack
but ridership is down across the board. The new “design” if you can even call it that works so well let’s bring it to h sq – not.
I live on Mass Ave just where the bus lane stops. It’s a nightmare with cars backed up. This is creating more traffic, not less. I’ve found that when crossing the street during rush hour – at a cross walk – cars are very respectful. I was almost run over by a bicycle yesterday. Someone should tell bike riders that pedestrians have the right of way at crosswalks. This is only going to get worse once we have snow. I doubt any kind of feasibility study was done on this. And why is it that bike riders and potential bus riders from other cities are more important than Cambridge residents and business owners.
Thanks to Cambridge Day for posting this and furthering the conversation about the dedicated bus lanes. I can say that in years past, taking the 77 home to North Cambridge could be 35 minutes or more after 4:30pm on workdays, but lately that trip has been a reasonable 15 minutes.
And as for the people complaining that this might benefit Arlingtonians—a lot of people in NC need to go to Arlington for various reasons (Boys and Girls Club, Dance School, etc.) and faster bus routes are helpful.
Anyone know how the “calculus” is done determining the need for a bus lane v. how many trips buses make in a given day? I wonder if maybe an “hours of operation” for some bus lanes would free up two lanes of traffic when bus travel is light. Seems like a waste of street to provide one lane soley for a vehicle that only travels down it once every so often.
Patrick, this is not about a logical “calculus”. It’s about a combination of political correctness, power politics and squeaky wheels, same process that made bicycle advocacy over ruling the city of Cambridge’s loss of common sense and balanced priorities.
Patrick, this is not about a logical “calculus”. It’s about a combination of political correctness, power politics and squeaky wheels, same process that made bicycle advocacy over ruling the city of Cambridge’s common sense and balanced priorities.