A principal driver of the controversial Blue Hill Avenue rehabilitation and center-running bus lane project has been to prioritize the needs of the estimated 40,000 bus riders that the city and the MBTA say use the corridor each weekday.
Critics of the plan as its stands, however, argue that city and state officials have overstated the number of customers who would benefit from the faster commutes promised with the installation of dedicated travel lanes for the various bus routes that would use them.
The Reporter last week asked the MBTA to provide a breakdown of recent ridership figures by route. According to numbers they provided in response, eight bus routes collectively account for some 40,250 riders on the corridor per day, a number routinely cited in meetings over multiple years.
The largest group includes 11,727 riders on Route 23, which runs along Blue Hill Avenue, but only for about half a block at Grove Hall. Most of its Ashmont to Ruggles route involves Washington and Warren Streets, not Blue Hill Avenue.
A similar situation involves Route 22, which travels along the Blue Hill Avenue corridor for about four blocks, or 0.7 miles, from Talbot Avenue to Seaver Street, but largely carries passengers from Ashmont to Ruggles on other roads with 7,659 riders per day. All told those two routes that only travel on Blue Hill Avenue for a few minutes each ride account for 19,386 riders out of the 40,250 cited, or 48 percent.
The Route 28 is the only bus that travels Blue Hill Avenue the entire corridor, and it accounts for 10,894 riders per day. Routes 14, 19, 29, 31 and 45 that are partly on the corridor, but longer than Route 22 or 23, account for 9,971 riders per day.
Mela Bush, a longtime public transit advocate with Dorchester’s Action 4 Equity, said that she had always assumed the MBTA and city were talking about 40,000 riders travelling the entire corridor on Route 28, and it was never clear that multiple routes were being counted.
“I thought it was always the 28,” Bush said. “It’s not that there aren’t 40,000 riders touching Blue Hill Avenue, it’s just that there aren’t 40,000 going up and down the entire Blue Hill Avenue corridor on one route. It had confused me because I didn’t think there were that many hours in the day to get that many people on a bus. The math was not mathing, as they say, and I think it’s disingenuous.”
Bush elaborated on her supposition that the “optics” have been to prioritize 40,000 bus riders using the center-lane bus, and to essentially downplay those who might get in the way.
“They have played some Jedi mind trick to pressure people that there will be 40,000 riders every day inconvenienced if they don’t get the center-running bus lane and we need to help all of them first,” she said.
Azia Carle, also of Action 4 Equity, said most people she knew involved in the discussion didn’t know there were other routes counted in the larger figure.
“There has been a belief that when they’re talking about ridership, they’re talking about ridership on the 28,” she said. “If they’re not getting the number exclusively from the 28, that brings up a whole other level of discussion and engagement we need to have…It’s not even the same population or demographic.”
State Rep. Chris Worrell, who is a critic of the center-running bus lane, said the 40,000 number is “deeply misleading. It is not a demonstrated count of 40,000 people riding on Blue Hill Avenue,” he said.
“There is a fundamental difference. You cannot take every passenger who rides a route from one end to the other, including riders who may never travel on Blue Hill Avenue, and then present that total to the public as Blue Hill Avenue ridership. That turns a route-wide statistic into a corridor statistic.”
Worrell said there needs to be an effort to regain trust with accurate numbers, calling for leaders to release stop-by-stop boarding and alighting data and segment-level passenger counts.
“Until then, 40,000 should not be presented as a verified Blue Hill Avenue ridership number,” he said. “The community deserves the actual Blue Hill Avenue data, not the total ridership of entire bus routes repackaged as Blue Hill Avenue ridership.”
MBTA officials said the numbers aren’t meant to mislead because any improvement will help all riders who touch the corridor.
“If there is an improvement in a corridor, all riders on that route benefit from that improvement – increased reliability, improved headways, better frequencies – regardless of whether they actually travel in the corridor itself,” read a statement from the T.
“The improvements will benefit some more than others – riders traveling within the corridor itself for a longer distance will receive the greatest benefits – reduction of travel time in addition to increased reliability and improved headways – compared to other groups of riders, like those in the corridor for a shorter distance, those crossing the corridor, or those who ride a route that interacts with the corridor but don’t ride in it.”
State Rep. Russell Holmes – an advocate for the center-running bus lane – said the numbers reflect all of those that use the route.
“I don’t think the 40,000 number is being used to be deceptive; they are on the route,” he said. “I say this as a bus rider: That any investment and improvement we make along the route, or any route, is going to improve my life.”
Mayor Michelle Wu’s office, and Councillors Brian Worrell and Miniard Culpepper, were asked to comment, but did not respond in time for this story.
Said LivableStreets Project Manager Maha Aslam, who has been deeply involved in the Blue Hill Avenue project advocating for transit and overall mobility, of the 40,000 rider number:
“I think it’s a standard way of measuring things, but I do understand if many feel it wasn’t explicitly said. Yet there are 40,000 riders on the corridor,” she said. “People might take the 28 or the 22 for a couple of blocks and then go onto other routes. The 28 will see the most benefit but it doesn’t mean other buses don’t benefit.”
She also said cars and pedestrians who use parts of the corridor are also counted similarly.
“Even if a car is on for a one-block stretch, it’s on the corridor and causes traffic and takes up space and is counted,” she said.
Bush said that future meetings need to unpack the 40,000-rider number and explain what it means.
“It’s like a bunch of straight pins in a pile and you need to get them untangled,” she said. “Let’s untangle that pile of pins and lay them all out straight so we can understand all of it.”
The final meeting in the Blue Hill Avenue Transportation Action Plan series is next Wednesday (Sept. 30) at 6:30 p.m. at the former Jeremiah Burke High School (now Holland Tech), 60 Washington St.
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