Anyone who rides the Number 1 bus must wonder why it goes to Nubian Square, previously Dudley Square which was once the second biggest retail center in Boston after downtown. That was quite a while ago.
Bicycling down Mass. Avenue, occasionally behind a Number 1 bus, I’ve often wondered why the bus doesn’t continue to Columbia Point and UMass. Boston. It’s already sort of a university connector from Harvard and Lesley to MIT, then Boston University, on to Berklee and the music conservatories and the culture boulevard of Huntington Avenue that includes Northeastern, the Longwood Medical area, Symphony Hall, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, the Mass. College of Art, Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Then the bus passes Boston University’s Medical Campus. And heads towards Columbia Point and the JFK Library, which was once proposed for Harvard Square. Right after the bus passes the Dorchester Brewing Company, which contains the Museum of Bad Art, it reaches Edward Everett Square (not, however, Edward Everett Horton Square after the actor who played all those butlers in old movies) and you can see a 12-foot tall bronze sculpture of a pear by Cambridge sculptor Laura Baring-Gould. Then under Route 3 and on to Columbia Point with its sculpture garden, UMass Boston and the under-appreciated JFK Library. The Library would be a perfect place to end the route and point the bus back toward Cambridge.
Denver, Colo. has a free bus connecting places along its 16th Street downtown corridor, which runs 1.25 miles. The distance from Harvard Square to MIT is 1.9 miles. The distance from Harvard Square to UMass Boston is a bit more than eight miles. Obviously, Al-Zubi’s Bus to the Harbor would require coordination with the City of Boston. Running the Number 1 between Harvard and MIT would represent one set of older, impressive priorities. Running the bus to UMass Boston would be a defining, more democratic and inclusive route for the city of Cambridge and all of Boston.
Gus Rancatore, owner of Toscanini’s, Cambridge.
A stronger
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I wouldn’t say that it connects to Lesley or BU’s main campus, it’s a pretty decent walk to each of those.
The biggest problems with the 1 bus though aren’t cost or connectivity, it’s crowding, bunching and delays. Try taking it from Central Square to Boston in the morning and you’ll experience it packed shoulder-to-shoulder, getting stuck behind cars on the Boston side, and it’s inconsistent as to when it shows up. It’s supposed to be at regular intervals, but in practice it might be 30 minutes of waiting and then two buses back to back.
If you made the bus free, it might speed up boarding but it also might make it more crowded. If you lengthen the route, it might make crowding worse, and it almost definitely would make the bunching and delays worse.
There are probably better solutions here, like signal priority and bus lanes that are actually enforced the entire length of the route. Long term would be cool to see it turned into a new rail line.
“Free” sounds nice, but nothing is free. When you propose eliminating the fare, you should clearly state who would pay. Say something like, “I want suburb people to pay for their cars and for my bus”, or “I want people on other busses to pay my fare”. Or even, “I want everyone on the bus except me to pay”. A lot more honest, don’t you think?
@Barkolab What you seem to be saying is: “I’m fine with everyone subsidizing driving, I just don’t want to subsidize anything else.”
We heavily subsidize driving by underpricing road use and parking. Gas taxes and user fees do not cover the full cost of highways and maintenance, and “free” parking is baked into rents, home prices, and retail prices.
Meanwhile, public transit runs on thin budgets and faces recurring fiscal crises, even though strong transit reduces congestion, pollution, and household transportation costs.
Drivers also do not pay the full social costs of congestion, crashes, climate emissions, and local air pollution.
In short, everyone subsidizes driving, and we spend far more on it than on public transportation.
If we are being honest, drivers should pay the true costs of driving, and transit should be funded as the public good it is.