[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: So, hello everyone and welcome to the to tonight's community meeting for bus network redesign. My name is Reagan check you and I will be serving as the moderator for tonight's meeting. Next slide. I would like to note that all MBTA activities, including public meetings, are free of discrimination. The MBTA complies with all federal, state, civil rights requirements preventing discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, limited English proficiency, and additional protected characteristics. We welcome the diversity from across our entire service area. If you have any questions or concerns, please visit mbta.com forward slash title six, that's title VI to reach the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights. Next slide. I would also like to remind everyone of the rules for participating in this meeting, as well as remind everyone that the meeting is being recorded. While we wish we were able to do this meeting in person, we're hoping that we have designed an online public meeting that will be interactive and provide an opportunity for us to have a conversation together. Before we can begin that conversation, I do want to review a few technical aspects of the zoom platform. Next slide. We have ASL interpreters tonight for the meeting. If you would like to view the ASL interpreter at all times, keep your view settings in gallery mode. To pin the interpreter's video, click the ellipses in the top right corner of the interpreter's video and select Pin Video. You will need to repeat this process each time we switch interpreters. We also have an interpreter tonight who are translating the meeting into Spanish and Mandarin. If you require these services, please click the interpretation button on your screen, the globe icon and select which language you wish to hear. In addition, we will be holding small. Uh, discussions later this meeting, um, meeting by region. If you would like to be in a Spanish language or Mandarin language discussion, please message a project team member in the chat so we can move you into the appropriate discussion section at that time. At this moment, I will ask all English speakers to please select English as their chosen language. This will allow you to hear translated non English comments during the Q and a. Next slide. You can view closed captions by clicking the closed captions feature and selecting from the options shown. Show subtitle will display a caption at the bottom of the screen. View full transcript will display the meeting's audio transcription in a window to the right. Next slide. All attendees are muted during the presentation to prevent excessive background noise. If you are viewing this meeting on a computer, please toggle speaker view to see the presentation more prominently. If you are on a smartphone, swipe to change views. You may use the chat button to submit a typed question or comment at any point during the meeting. The chat is not open, but if you direct your question to the ask a question, we will receive the comment and question. We will be monitoring the chat during the presentation, but ask that you hold all your substantive comments and questions for the breakout session or question and answer session that we will be having later in the meeting. If you have a technical problem, please share your issue in the chat feature at any point during the meeting, and we will respond as quickly as possible. And I'll note that all project team staff members are listed with project team next to their names in the participant list. Okay, so the questions that you submit are not going to be visible to attendees once submitted, but we will try to get to as many as possible during the Q&A portion of the meeting. And during the breakout room discussions, the chat will be visible to everyone, and we encourage you to keep any comments in the chat respectful to other attendees. If you use inappropriate language, you will be removed from the meeting. If you have a technical problem, please share your issue in the chat during the meeting. And now, after all of that, I would like to introduce Justin Antos from the MBTA. He is the Senior Director of Bus Transformation, and he will give some opening remarks. Justin?
[Unidentified]: Thanks, Regan.
[Justin Antos]: Good evening. As Reagan said, my name is Justin Antos. I'm the director of bus transformation here at the T. I'm excited to be here tonight to kick off this meeting for our bus network redesign. Why am I excited? Because transit is essential to the region's economy, especially post-pandemic, and MBTA buses serve our most transit-dependent population. Bus ridership at the MBTA was the most resilient during COVID, stronger even today, than many rail services. But our region has changed significantly over the past few years and decades, and our bus network needs to rise to the challenge and change with it. It's essential that the T's bus network adapts to how, where, and when people travel today. Back in May, we released a draft map, a proposal for service, and all last summer, and including this fall, we've received over 20,000 public comments on it. We've reviewed all of those comments. We've read them all. And we've had dozens of meetings with cities, municipalities, residents, elected officials, neighborhood groups, many, many meetings over the past few months. And we said during that time that we would make meaningful changes to our service proposal based on what we heard from you. And we're here tonight to tell you about the changes that we made, what we heard and what we're doing about it. Now, a note, the public comment period for this proposal has ended. The goal here tonight is for us to explain what we heard and how we are changing it in response. And our goals for the overall project remain the same. It is still to create a better bus network, a more equitable service for our riders, and to transform the entire bus system by creating routes that are more frequent and connect to more places. How do we do that? Well, we do it by increasing service. We still plan to increase service by 25% across the network when we are done. We are challenged by a bus operator hiring shortage, but we have plans to respond to that. We also plan to provide hundreds of thousands of riders with higher frequency service. That's a high frequency service we define as a bus stopping at your stop every 15 minutes or better, seven days a week, all day long. But to make these improvements, we had to make trade-offs and consider changes. We weren't able to make all the changes that you requested of us, but we ultimately made changes to about two thirds of the routes in the service proposal you will hear about tonight. So the revised network map that we will present to you now is, I think, a better plan and a more equitable bus system for current and future bus riders that reflects the changing travel needs with more frequent service, more reliable service, and better connection. And I just wanted to close by saying thank you. Thank you for being here tonight to help us build a better bus network. This is our bus system. It is not the MBTA's bus system. It is not yours alone. Everyone here, including me, including all of the MBTA staff here tonight, ride the bus and care about the bus very deeply. Now back to Doug Johnson, project manager.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thank you, Justin. Hi everyone, thank you for joining us tonight. As Justin mentioned, my name is Doug Johnson and I'm the project manager for bus network redesign. Tonight's meeting will begin with a brief presentation about bus network redesign, and the changes that have been made to the proposal that we published back in May. As Justin mentioned, and as you know, back in May we published a draft network map, and we solicited public feedback on it through September, we ultimately received over 20,000 comments on the draft proposal, and we've incorporated that feedback into a revised network map that will present to you tonight. I will give a general overview of the changes that were made, and then we'll move into breakout rooms where project team members will give presentations about the changes made to specific areas of the network. In those breakout rooms, you will have the opportunity to ask questions about the changes that were made. After about 40 minutes, we will return to the main Zoom room for a question and answer session. At the start of Q&A, we will call on elected officials to make comments first. If you are not able to stay for the whole meeting, but would like to leave a comment about the revised bus network, you can either post a comment in the chat and we will add it to our records, or you can submit a comment through our online comment form. A link to that form will be posted in the chat. Folks may be familiar with the Better Bus Project, but I'll give you a brief description of this effort and how bus network redesign fits into it. The Better Bus Project is a series of integrated projects across the MBTA that seek to transform and modernize the entire bus system to create more reliable service and a better rider experience. It includes the bus network redesign, the ongoing effort to modernize our bus maintenance facilities and decarbonize the fleet, build bus transit priority infrastructure throughout the network, make all bus stops accessible, provide more bus stop amenities like shelters, benches, and lighting, improve the distribution of information to riders about buses, when they will arrive at stops, and about route changes. as well as change the way that the MBTA collects fares on our system. Bus network redesign is one piece of that larger effort, and it informs those other efforts by telling us where bus service will go and when, how many operators we'll need, how many buses we'll need, where new bus stops will need to be located, and where we will need to install bus transit priority, things like bus lanes and traffic lights that are specifically for transit vehicles. So the Bus Network Redesign Project specifically is an effort to reimagine the entire bus network so that it better reflects the needs of the region today. As folks know, over the last few years and many decades, the region has changed a lot. People are living in areas that used to be industrial. There are new job centers that exist now that didn't exist a decade or two. Earlier, travel patterns have changed both because of COVID and they were changing before COVID. But the bus network that exists right now doesn't do a good job of addressing that demand and those travel patterns, where people want to go and when they want to go there. The bus network hasn't really changed very much in about 50 years. So this effort seeks to redesign it so that it better meets the needs of the region, so that we provide service to the places that people want to go, when people want to get there, and we provide service that is frequent and reliable. A good example of that, as you know, right now, the bus network is really focused on providing service on weekday mornings and weekday evenings. But obviously, people travel all day, every day, not just for work on weekday mornings and evenings. People have all different kinds of hours and all different reasons to travel around.
[Adam Hurtubise]: We want to make sure that the bus network meets all of those needs.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Our first goal is to create a more equitable network. This is about providing more service and more reliable service to the people who are the most dependent on public transit, including low-income populations, households with few or no vehicles, seniors, people with disabilities, and communities of color that do not have equal access to public transit. We want to create more frequent service in busy neighborhoods, more all day service, service that runs all day, every day, whether it's a weekday or a weekend, and is frequent and reliable regardless of the time of day. We want to create new connections to more places, including all those non-downtown job centers that exist now that didn't exist a decade or two ago. We want to make the network simpler and easier to use. As folks know, right now, sometimes if you get on a bus, it may not go to the same place it usually goes to, depending on the time of day or the day of the week. We want to make sure that the network is easier to navigate and that routes do consistent things so that you don't have to worry about what time of day it is or what day of the week it is, whether that bus is going to get you home or not. We want the network to be consistent and reliable enough that folks can show up to a bus stop without having to check the schedule to confirm that that bus is going to come on time or get them to where they need to go. We also want to implement more transit priority, as I mentioned, and other infrastructure across the network to improve reliability and accessibility. Many of the bus stops in the current network are not accessible. They're not compliant with the American with Disabilities Act. and there are a lot of challenges for folks who are trying to use the bus network at those locations. These are things that we seek to address through this effort as part of our overall goal of transforming and improving the bus network. We've developed a revised network proposal using service design principles and the public feedback that we collected over the summer and the fall. In general, our principles are to prioritize frequency over one-seat rides, create more rapid transit connections and more crosstown routes, focus on all-day service, combine routes to create high-frequency corridors, minimize route variations, and minimize deviations on high-frequency routes. But service design principles only get us so far, of course, and so does the analysis of quantitative data. That's the cell phone data that we use to develop the initial network and other metrics like ridership and things that can be quantified or counted. We know that that alone is not enough to design a bus network. Public feedback is a really important component and has to be incorporated into the network to ensure that it actually meets people's needs. We told everyone at the beginning of this process that we would make meaningful changes to the draft network based on the feedback that we received and we have. The revised bus network would still increase service by 25% across the network versus pre pandemic service. we would still double the number of high-frequency corridors. Those are buses coming every 15 minutes or better, all day, seven days a week. And when we say 15 minutes or better, the goal is for that to be the worst that that service would be. Some routes would come every four minutes during rush hour, or every six minutes, or every eight minutes. There are routes in the network today that come that frequently during rush hour, and that we do not intend to change. But what we want to do is make sure that those really frequent routes are really frequent all day, every day. The existing key bus routes that we have Those are our most frequent routes, their frequency varies in during peak periods is when they are most frequent. Their frequency is more consistent than other routes in the network, but it is still less frequent midday and on weekends. The map on the left on this slide shows the key bus routes. The map on the right shows the new high-frequency corridors that would be created by this plan. You can see that communities like Chelsea, Everett, Medford, Malden, Lynn, Waltham, South Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, West Roxbury, Quincy, many of these communities gain high frequency service that they don't have today. So this is really about creating a network that provides more equitable service across the region and better service for everyone who uses buses. Based on the feedback that we received over the summer and the fall, we ended up making changes to about two thirds of the routes in the proposal. We changed 85 of 133 routes. The changes that we made range from things like making small changes to routes to making complete changes to routes, including taking routes that exist today and putting them back in the proposal as they exist today or pre-pandemic. So the types of changes really range from those small changes, depending on the feedback, to wholesale changes to routes. And I'll talk more about those in the next few slides. And then the facilitators and breakout rooms will walk through each route in the respective area that that breakout room is associated with and talk about those changes. There were five main reasons why we made changes. The first was to respond to public feedback that we received on the draft map. The second was to improve access to hospitals, senior centers, grocery stores, shopping malls, and other destinations. The third was to reduce the walk distances, specifically for seniors, riders with disabilities, and riders with mobility challenges, and especially in locations with really challenging terrain or pedestrian conditions. I mentioned the service design principles earlier, where we said we wanted to focus on more frequent service and combining services so that they'd be more frequent. The trade off with doing that is that there are situations in which we would be asking folks to walk further to get to a bus stop than they have to walk today in order to have a much better service. We heard a lot of feedback about that specifically from folks on the draft map. And we looked at those situations where folks said that increased walking distance would be a hardship and a barrier to accessing the service for them. So we took that feedback to heart and we adjusted many of our routes to reduce those walking distances in situations where folks told us it would be too much of a hardship or barrier to accessing the service. The fourth reason was to preserve some existing one seat rides to certain destinations. In the draft network, one of the things that we were doing was creating a network of really high frequency routes. But a trade-off with that is that in some cases, a route that you have today, that's a one-seat ride, meaning you get on a bus, it takes you from point A to point B without you having to transfer or get on a different bus. That's a one-seat ride. In the draft network that we had proposed, there were some situations where existing one-seat rides would be broken up into a two-seat ride. So you would have to transfer from one service to another. If those two routes are very frequent and very reliable, then it won't impact your travel time very much to have to make that transfer. But we know that there are locations where transferring from one service to another can be really challenging or can be a big increase in the amount of time that you're spending getting from point A to point B. So we've reviewed all the feedback that we received a lot of feedback about that specifically. And we took a really close look at that and ultimately decided that in some situations, It was better to put a route, a one seat ride back into the network. And I think a good example of that is the route 39 from Jamaica Plain to Copley and Back Bay. We had proposed the 39 going from Jamaica Plain into Cambridge. but we heard a lot of feedback on it and decided ultimately to revert it back to what it does today. So the 39 would continue to do what it does today. If folks want to travel to Cambridge from JP, there are other options in this new network for them to transfer from the 39 to our new 47 or other routes, but that's an example where we put back what exists in the network today because of the feedback that we got. And then the fifth reason for changes were to balance our resources and stay within the limits that bound us. There are a maximum number of buses that we can run at any given time. Without increasing the size of the fleet, we can't go beyond that current limit. There's also a maximum amount of service hours revenue vehicle hours that we can run and stay within our budget. So that is a hard limit as well, and we had to stay within that it's still a 25% increase over the pre-pandemic amount of service that we were providing, and I want to be clear on that. We will be providing 25% more service versus what we were providing pre-pandemic, not today. Obviously, as folks know, there is less service provided today because of operator shortage challenges that we are facing right now. So those were limits that we had to stay within. So we were not able to make every single change that was requested of us, but we did our best to respond to as much of the public feedback as we possibly could and really make this a much better network based on the feedback that we received. There are five main categories for types of changes that were made. The first was restoring existing route either to what it does today either in whole or in part. I'll give you a few examples on this list. The 39 I already mentioned will continue to do what it does today going from Jamaica Plain to Copley and Back Bay. We put part of the 47 back but then also extended the 47 in different ways so it looks slightly different than it does today. The 55 will continue to do what it does today. We have proposed the 55 going to Kendall rather than going from Fenway to Copley, but we heard a lot of feedback on it, and the 55 will continue to do what it does today. I want to be clear that it will not go to Park Street as it did in the past, but it will continue to do what it does today. The 87 and the 89 are routes that we made changes to in response to the feedback that we received. The 201, the 202 are back to in this network doing what they do today. So we rescinded the alternate proposal that we have for those routes. The 354 was not included in the initial proposal that we released in May. That is back in this new network providing express service from Burlington and Woburn down 93 to Medford Square and into downtown. And then the 505 we had proposed a modification to its routing. We reverted it back to the routing that it has today due to feedback from City of Needham. So, excuse me, Newton. That's the first category of changes. The second was rerouting routes, making small changes to routes to better connect to medical facilities, senior housing, and other destinations. This is a major theme that we heard in the public feedback. routes like the T8 and the T12. And I wanna note here that the letter T in front of a number means that that will be a high frequency route. It will come every 15 minutes or better all day from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week. In some cases, those routes are even more frequent during rush hours. So the T8 and the T12, we modified to better connect to Boston Medical Center. the 11 will continue to serve Tufts Medical Center directly. In the draft proposal, we had proposed the 11 stopping at the Broadway red line station. But based on feedback that we got from folks, we decided to extend the 11 to Tufts Medical Center. It won't do exactly what it does today. It won't loop through downtown and down A street, but it will go from South Boston to Tufts Medical Center and back directly. Other routes like the T-104, that will do something very different than what it does today. It will still start at Malden Center, but it will go to East Boston through Everett and Chelsea. We modified that proposal to better serve the grocery store in Chelsea, the Market Basket, and to connect to the airport Blue Line station. You can see the other routes on this list where there were other small route modifications made to that May proposal in response to this feedback that we got. The third category was adding routes to the proposal that were not in the proposal for May. The 113 is a brand new route that we've added that goes from Chelsea to Assembly Row by way of Everett Square. That was a change we made in relation to some other changes, the 90 in Somerville. The 47, I mentioned, is a route we've reintroduced, it will continue to do partly what it does today, but not the entirety of what it does today. If you join the breakout room that covers Cambridge, and the surrounding municipalities you'll hear more about that route. The fourth category of changes was frequency and span adjustments. So that's how often a bus comes and then span is the time, the hours of the day that it runs. So those are routes where we adjusted the frequency and span but we didn't adjust the route. And a good example of that is the 504, where we've added some midday service to it, and the SL2. We had proposed making the SL2 peak period only, basically rush hour only on weekdays, but the SL2 will now be a high frequency route seven days a week. And then the last category were routes that were included in the May proposal that are not in a revised network. An example of this is the Route 20. We had proposed the Route 20 to do what the 201 and 202 do to some extent. Because we have restored the 201 and the 202, we have rescinded this proposal for the Route 20. So there were a handful of other routes where that was the case. The 350 is an example. We have reintroduced to some extent the Route 80, but now the 80 in this new network will do what we have proposed for the 350, as well as providing a connection between Arlington Center and Somerville that is not covered by the Green Line extension. So there were a small number of routes that had been in the proposal that were removed because of other changes that we made in the network. So those are the main categories. You will hear the actual details of these changes and see maps in the breakout rooms that we'll move to shortly. The revised bus network is now publicly available. You can go to the project website, which is mbta.com slash BNRD. On the project website, there is a list of all the changes made to the May 2022 proposal, both an interactive map and a static PDF map that you can look at. And there's a link to the online comment form where folks can leave comments about the revised bus network. All of your comments will be shared with the Bus Transformation Office, which is tasked with implementation of the new network. We are also conducting an equity analysis of the revised bus network. That is underway right now and will be completed by December. That is required of us by the FTA, or it's required of all transit agencies by the FTA when an agency wants to make changes that surpass a certain threshold. Because we are redesigning the entire network, we surpass that threshold and we are required to conduct this equity analysis. There will be a public meeting for that, the results of that equity analysis to present it to the public this winter. The changes that we are proposing to the bus network are not going to happen overnight. We anticipate that it will take a total of five years to implement this new network. It will be done in phases as our bus operator headcount allows, beginning in the summer of 2023. Changes will likely be made with the summer service changes each year between 2023 and 2027. There are also a number of capital projects or construction projects that will need to take place in order to make this new network possible. We are in the process of identifying new stop locations where existing stops that are not accessible will need to either be upgraded or relocated so that they can be accessible, as well as where transit priority infrastructure will need to be implemented in order to allow the service to maintain the reliability that we want it to have. Those are things, as I mentioned, like bus lanes and dedicated traffic signals specifically for buses. If you're familiar with the Green Line, you know that the Green Line, the B branch, C branch, D and E, when they're in the roadway or on the surface, there are dedicated signals for them at intersections. So that is something that we will be implementing across the network for buses in places where we want to make bus service more reliable or have it have dedicated roadway space or exclusive time in a signal phase. The work to identify all of those projects and those locations is underway right now. And we are working on a plan to both address the operator shortage that we and many transit agencies across the country are experiencing, as well as the implications for that with the implementation phasing that we are planning right now. That concludes this overview presentation. Before we move to breakout rooms, I just want to say, or leave these resources here for a moment so that folks have the project website, you can see it's the first address there, mbta.com slash BNRD. The online feedback form, you can find it on the project website or you can use the link mbta.com slash BNRD feedback that will take you directly to that online feedback form. And you can learn more about the Bettered Bus project at that project website, mbta.com slash Bettered Bus. Of course, you can continue to email the MBTA as well, your questions and comments. I'll now turn it back over to Regan Cecchio, who will go over how the breakout rooms will work.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks, Doug. So, as he mentioned, we're going to be having some presentations in breakout rooms by area to answer your questions about the revised map. Can you go to the next slide, Doug? So, On screen, and I will read them out for the benefit of the interpreters. You can see there are breakout rooms cross reference by municipality. So breakout room 1. It's 1st, Beverly, Chelsea, Danvers, East Boston. Everett, Lynn, Linfield, Malden, Marblehead, Melrose, Nahant. Peabody, Redding, Revere, Salem, Saugus, Stoneham, Swampscott, Wakefield, and Winthrop. Breakout room two, Arlington, Bedford, Burlington, Cambridge, Lexington, Medford, Somerville, Winchester, Woburn. Breakout room 3 is Boston and Brookline. Breakout room 4 is Belmont, Needham, Newton, Waltham, Watertown. Breakout room 5 is Avon, Braintree, Brockton, Canton, Dedham, Hingham, Holbrook, Hull, Milton, Norwood, Quincy, Randolph, Walpole, Westwood, Weymouth. Thank you for your patience as I went through those and I will note that although rooms are listed by municipality routes, obviously cross municipal border. So please join the room that most closely fits your interests. Each breakout room, uh. We'll have a group leader who will give a short overview of the updates to the network. And then they will be available to answer your question and answers. About the revised map. If you would like to visit more than one breakout room, you may switch between rooms at any point. You will have to leave that room, come to the main room, and then rejoin with a different breakout room. When you select your breakout room, you're going to look for the number of the breakout room. We've tried to put some of the towns in the naming convention, but it is a little difficult to fit. And so look for the number one, number two, number three, number four, number five. I am going to note right now for the facilitators and note takers, we are actually unable to automatically assign you to your rooms. So please join your rooms promptly when we open the breakout room. So you'll need to do that yourself. Apologies to the team. So with that, Amanda, can you pause the recording? Recording stopped and Doug, do you want to go until. 720 yes. Okay. So we're going to be in breakout rooms for 40 minutes. So, even though the slide says 715, we will stay in there until 720 and then at 720, you'll be moved back to the main room and we will do Q and a. If you do have any difficulty selecting a breakout room to join, please just write in the chat what room you want to join and we can move you into that room.
[Unidentified]: So, Amanda, can you now open the breakout rooms? Okay, so everyone should be able to join their rooms.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: And Doug, you can stop your screen share.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I'll leave this up momentarily so that folks see the in case I need to review the.
[Unidentified]: Hi, everyone. This is Melissa Dulé from the MBTA. We'll just give another minute. I see folks are still signing themselves to this particular breakout room. So we'll start shortly. This is breakout room number two. We will be covering root changes in Arlington, Bedford, Burlington, Cambridge, Lexington, Lincoln, Medford, Somerville, Winchester, and Woburn. Let's get started. My name is Melissa Dulé, and I'm the Senior Director of Service Planning. I'll be walking through the changes that we made to the draft bus network redesign map. As Doug mentioned in the first part of the presentation, we made meaningful changes to the network map based on the feedback that we received. A note about order, I'm largely going to present these in numeric order, but there are some routes that are interrelated, so occasionally I may go out of order when there are related route changes. We made a number of changes, restoring existing routes in whole or in part. I've shown a subset of the routes that we'll be covering today here. So this is a little bit different than the slide that Doug showed earlier. Sometimes we've made route changes to better serve medical facilities or senior housing or other destinations at the request of municipalities and others. Sometimes we've added new routes back into the proposed. Sometimes we've made frequency or span adjustments. So the first batch of routes that I'll be talking about relates to the initial proposal for the T39, but that also affects T47 and T96. So the next slides I'll present together. The former proposal was to connect the T39 from Jamaica Plain to Longwood Medical, Boston University, Cambridge, and Somerville, ultimately ending at Porter Square in Cambridge. But we heard that the route was too long. This is something that we'd heard from the public, from elected officials, and even during our operator in-reach events, we'd heard that our bus operators were concerned with the route's length and the availability of restroom access for such a long route. Also, some of the other things that we'd heard, Jamaica Plain in particular, wanted direct service to Copley. And there is the history there with the former Arborway Greenline service providing that direct connection. So that was important to maintain. In Cambridge, the city was concerned with the ability to carve out layover space at Porter Square, given some of the protected bike infrastructure that has gone in. Summerville residents had noted that there was no direct connection between Davis Square and Union Square that had required a transfer between the T-96 and the T-39 in our original proposal. So synthesizing all this different feedback that we'd received on many different aspects, We end up with the revised proposal as shown. The T39 on the left side would retain its direct service to Copley like it does now, and this would replace our initial proposal that had gone all the way up through Cambridge into Union Square and Porter Square. On the left, you can see that we're proposing we would get that connectivity between Union Square and Cambridge, Cambridge Port, Boston University, and Ruggles with a new route, T47. So this is similar to today's 47 bus, but the route is a little different. So this would start actually a little bit beyond Union Square. near the future East Somerville station that will be opening on the Green Line extension later this year. And it would only go as far as Ruggles. We have other services that would serve Broadway station and Albany Street and other portions of today's Route 47. And this would be a T47 route, meaning that it would be a high frequency service. It would be every 15 minutes or better, seven days a week from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. And that gets the connectivity that we were really looking for, getting folks in Cambridge and Somerville to job opportunities at the Longwood Medical Area, to opportunities for patient care, and also to the BU area, while still allowing that transfer to the T39 for folks who are interested in continuing out to Jamaica Plain and Forest Hills. On the next slide, I can show you how we also made some changes to T96. I had mentioned one of the things that we'd heard from Somerville in particular was interest in extending a one-seat ride with high frequency between Davis Square and Union Square, two very important squares within Somerville. So by sliding where the T39 and the T96 connect, except now that it's the T47, we slid that connection point to Union Square. So what that means is that there would now be high frequency service directly between Davis and Union on the new T96. So this relates to the changes to the T39 that I had mentioned. But at the same time, we also have another different unrelated route change on the Medford portion of the T96 as well. We heard from many riders of the T96 along Winthrop Street, that would be over here, and George Street on the former proposal to keep service on College Ave, that would create a hardship for them. The walk out to College Ave was just too far, this is College Ave over here, for the volume of riders there. In the revised proposal, the T96 would serve High Street, from Medford Square to Winthrop Circle, and would travel down Winthrop Street to George Street, meaning that we're able to provide direct high-frequency service to some existing Route 94 riders along High Street here, and also to cut down that walk distance for the folks who had written us coming from George Street or folks coming from Winthrop Street in the Medgar Hillside area. The next package of changes relates to bus route 55. The 55 had been proposed as a combination of today's CT2 and 55 and provided local connectivity to the West Fens neighborhood via transfer at a future accessible Heinz station, while also connecting Kendall Square and the Red Line to the Longwood Medical Area. But we heard from residents in the West Fens, including many seniors, that they really valued that direct connection to Copley Square. So we've split apart our proposal into the 55 to Copley with an 85 bus that serves the function of the CT2 for Kendall and Longwood trips. We're retiring the CT2 nomenclature and instead using the 85 numbers in its place. have another map that shows a little bit more of the 85 also. So we would continue to serve Kendall Square, the Port neighborhood in Cambridge, Union Square, And instead of Avon Street in Spring Hill, like the 85 uses today to turn around, due to planned roadway changes in Somerville, we would instead provide a north-south connection between Union Square and Assembly, which is something that we'd heard requested multiple times during our outreach earlier this summer. Next we have Route 64. As in our original proposal, we're looking to extend the route to Kendall Square on all days of the week so that there would be a consistent service pattern, unlike today's service, which only goes to Kendall on weekdays. And we also have two changes on the Boston end of the route to maintain service to North Beacon Street due to significant development plans. And also to not show that the route would serve future West Station, which is slated to open after our five-year implementation window. It currently looks like West Station is slated for about 10 years out. So we're continuing to show, at least for the short term, that the 64 would do what it does today on this stretch through Austin. Next we have route 74. This is probably one of the biggest concerns that we had heard within Cambridge was the loss of frequency on Concord Ave. We did not have the route 74 on the initial map, which only had the routes 75 and 78. But with the amount of development slated for the area, including low income housing, which is expected to attract significant transit trips, and also the existing residential employment and retail opportunities along Concord Ave and near Fresh Pond Circle, we've added the Route 74 back in. This would also have new Sunday service compared to today's service because the 74 only operates Mondays through Saturdays. At the Belmont end of the route, we also are showing a small route change. We're showing the route continuing to Belmont Center under the railroad bridge. This would not be possible now with the posted low clearance, but we have some ideas for intersection changes that would allow the posted bridge height to be revised in a way that would allow for restored bus service under the bridge and into Belmont Center. Next, we have Route 76. One concern we'd heard about this route, which goes out to the Hanscom Civil Air Terminal in Bedford and to Lincoln Lab and through Lexington and into ALF, was that we had proposed only operating peak period service, and we'd instead upgraded the sort of companion Route 62 to be a seven-day service, but that was something that was causing a hardship that we'd heard about during our initial outreach. So we have restored midday service on the Route 76 while still having the 62 upgraded to seven-day service. We also heard about concern about the lack of service along Acorn Park Drive in Cambridge off of Route 2, which is served by today's inbound route. This serves a number of office parks and other developments, and we have added that Acorn Park Drive portion of the route back into both the routes 62 and the 76. There was also a concern from Lincoln Lab riders that they were being forced to take a longer trip via the Hanscom Civil Air terminal for their connections. The intention is that we would serve Lincoln Lab and Hanscom only once per round trip, like we do today, and that we would go outbound in the mornings to Lincoln Lab first, then inbound from Hanscom, and then reverse that for the PM. That gives the most direct trips to the most number of riders without folks having to kind of take a lengthy detour through the other portion of the route. And then lastly, there was a concern in Lexington about the loss of service to Lexington Center, which provides either better frequency to the portion of the route where it overlaps with the 62, or also serves a small stretch over near the high school, just to the west of Mass Ave. By rerouting the 62 on a slightly longer routing, we're able to serve Lexington Center, get better frequency to that important town center in Lexington, allow for transfer opportunities to the Lexpress routes that the town of Lexington operates, and get that connection to the high school that folks are looking for. So those are the changes to Route 76. Next we have Route 80. One of the pieces that we had heard that was missing from our original map proposal was a connection from Arlington to the Medford Greenline Extension Bridge. In the original proposal, we had not included Route 80 at all due to substantial overlaps between Route 80 and the Medford-Tufts branch of the Green Line that's slated to open later this year. In the revised proposal, we restore the Route 80 connection from Arlington Center, here, to Boston Ave and Medford-Tufts Green Line Extension Station. And from there, we continue to Davis Square for our Red Line connection. This also becomes the primary Boston Ave connection here in Medford, which replaces the proposed 94 that had formerly been on Boston Ave in our initial proposal, and which I have a slide on later. At the outer end of the Route 80, We continue the route from Arlington Center out to Burlington, like the 350 bus does today. So the proposed network redesign version of Route 80 would also be a Route 350 replacement to Burlington Mall Road, 3rd Ave, and North Burlington, and would have both Green Line and Red Line connections at Medford Tufts and at Davis Station. Next we have route 83. On the left is our original proposal, which had been to extend the service to Kendall Square, which would have connected Rinjav, Inman Square, and the Port neighborhood to Kendall. But we heard from Cambridge staff and residents on the importance of the bus connection, specifically from Rinjav users, to the services and resources in Central Square, where the 83 terminates today. With other route improvements slated for Kendall Square, we felt that we could continue to route the 83 at Central without impacting the greater vision for improved connectivity to Kendall Square. So you can see on the right, we're preserving the 83 to Central Square in the new network. Next, we have route 87. We had formally proposed significant changes to Route 87, including tying together Broadway and Clarendon Hill with Harvard Street in Medford and Mystic Ave in Medford and Somerville. You can see the original proposal on the left, which is very different from today's 87 bus. One of the biggest concerns, and we heard many, many concerns from Somerville and Cambridge and Medford, was about the lack of direct service between Clarendon Hill, Davis, Union Square, Market Basket, Twin City Plaza, and Lechmere. And we heard a lot, lot, lot of comments on this. So in this proposal, we have restored the Route 87 as a direct route that travels from Arlington Center to Lechmere Station. And like in the proposal, the route would operate a consistent service pattern seven days a week, unlike today's route that only goes as far as Clarendon Hill on Sundays. So we would be having the 87 go to Arlington Center on Sundays, which is different from today's 87. This does mean that there would be a stretch of Harvard Street in Medford where we had proposed running new service and where we would not have service in the revised version of the network. Also, it means that Mystic Ave in Medford would be served via the Route 95, which I will talk about shortly. As part of the original 87 proposal, we had also had it be a combination with today's 67 bus to serve the Turkey Hill neighborhood in Arlington, as shown on the left. We received a significant amount of feedback from Turkey Hill that having a red line connection at Alewife specifically was important. We also heard from our operator in-reach efforts that the proposed route length from Turkey Hill to Sullivan was too long, especially since there are not good restroom facilities at the Turkey Hill end of the line, which is in a quiet residential neighborhood. This proposal spins off the 67 back onto a separate route, which would operate Turkey Hill to Alewife weekdays only, as shown on the right. There is a route change from today's 67 and that the bus would stay on Mass Ave from Arlington Center to Alewife Brook Parkway as a replacement for the 350 connections on this stretch into Alewife due to the 350 replacement with the 80 via Boston Ave that I spoke about earlier. This would omit Pleasant Street and Route 2, but those areas would still have other transit service under this proposal. Next, group 89. This is probably the other biggest issue that we had heard in Somerville and Medford. It was the lack of connection in our original map between Winter Hill, Ball Square, and Davis Square. On the left, you can see our original proposal, which included upgraded high frequency service on the T101 along Broadway at Goon Square, the new Green Line extension at Ball Square, and a high-frequency T96 service on College Ave, but there was not a direct connection between Winter Hill and Davis. In the new map on the right, you can see the proposed Route 89, which would operate consistently with a single service pattern between Davis and Sullivan, with a stop near the new Ball Square station on the Green Line extension that should be opening later this year. For Route 89 users, note that there would not be a mix of some Clarendon Hill trips and some Davis trips like there is today. For connections to Clarendon Hill, please use the 87 or the 90 and connect at Davis to this 89 service. Now, as a result of the 89 restoration, we have also put the T-101 back onto Main Street in Medford, like it does today, which serves a little farther north on the Medford side of Winter Hill, while the 89 will still serve Magoon Square on Broadway. So you can see on the map on the right, the 101, T-101 kind of takes this soft corner here on Main Street and omits Magoon Square, unlike the older version which had been squared off a little bit. I say squared off, that's not really a square. Next, Route 90 In response to concerns with reliability and route length, both from riders and also from our operator in-reach efforts, we've looked at shortening this route for better reliability. At the western end, this would not go to Arlington Center, but rather would terminate at Clarendon Hill. Broadway and Arlington would still be served by seven-day service on the Route 87 bus. On the eastern end, this would not go to Chelsea and Everett directly, but would terminate at Assembly Station. This is different from today's route in that we omit the Sullivan Station connections directly and instead provide an orange line connection on Revolution Drive at Assembly Station, much closer to the orange line than today's stop that's on Grand Union Boulevard. We also have a separate connection from Assembly to Chelsea and Everett as Route 113 that I'll get into shortly. Now also in response to concerns about the difficulty of connections between Route 90 and the Green Line, especially since this route is intended to be a Route 88 replacement, And especially since Gilman Station on the Green Line Extension right behind City Hall and the high school is surrounded with steep grades, there was also a small reroute onto Tufts Street and Washington Street to help facilitate better transfer opportunities at East Somerville Station on the Green Line Extension. This requires some street crossings, but we hope this can make a better transfer option available, especially in winter months when steep grades can be most challenging. And then there were also several comments, more than several, many, many comments received on the original proposal regarding the loss of service frequency along Highland Ave overall. We looked at some of our hours calculations and this criticism was absolutely fair and not our intention. So as a result, this service has been upgraded to every 20-minute service, mostly seven days per week, with some periods of every 30-minute service after 10 p.m. Lastly, I do want to highlight that this service is intended to be a combination of the route 88 and 90. So the service would become a more significant route than the 90 is today. It would still serve Clarendon Hill, as it had done in our original proposal. And it would still serve those important school related trips that students and caregivers from all over Somerville might be making to get from West Somerville and Davis and Spring Hill to the high school or to the East Somerville Community School or to the Capuano. Also, the simplified schedules that were published on the trip planner, do not include any of those special trips that may be needed that might operate today. For example, today there are some afternoon trips on Route 88 that start at the high school during Somerville High School on Highland Ave. during periods when large crowds of students might overwhelm the regular 88 service traveling through. So our expectation is that these trips could still operate, but that they would become 90 trips instead of 88 trips. And I had mentioned as part of the Route 90 shortening that we created the new Route 113. So it's been spun off into a separate route that would connect Assembly to Sullivan and over to Everett and Chelsea. This gets better connectivity between Chelsea, Everett, and Somerville, as had been suggested in our original proposal. And this has been extended to Bellingham Square in Chelsea, which was something we'd heard requested in our Chelsea focus groups, as the initial 90 proposal had only gone as far as Chelsea Station and the Market Basket. Next we have the routes 94 and 134. So 94 formerly had been proposed as shown on the left to serve Boston Ave, West Medford, Playstead Road, Winchester, Woburn, and Burlington. And in the new proposal, there is no route 94. So instead, we propose restoring the route 134 from North Woburn to Winchester, Medford and Wellington, along with some changes to the 80 and 354. Now there's a few reasons for this. One, there was a problem with the original route 94 and that the bus was not able to make one of the turns near West Medford station due to the railroad crossing and some of the intersection geometry. We also had a lot of interest in restoring the Route 354 express route in Burlington, Woburn, and Medford. But that led to some other network changes, including ultimately the elimination of Route 133 out to Anderson, Woburn as a resource offset. And I'll talk about that. I have another slide later. And then there's also the extension of Route 80 to Burlington that I spoke about on an earlier slide. So with all these changes, nearly all of the proposed 94 is covered by the new 80, 134, and 354. However, the one change that I do want to highlight is that Placestead Road, which is right about there in West Medford would not have direct service that had been served in our earlier version of the network. That stretch of Placedead Road is entirely within half a mile of other bus service on High Street or Winthrop Street or the commuter rail station also. Also, the proposed 134 would be a little different than today's 134 in that it's proposed to go down Locust Street in Medford, which is that little street right next to the Wegmans. And then it would also have a more consistent service pattern with more full trips and fewer of those short, weird trips that run on nights and weekends that only go to Medford Square. 95. Formerly, our proposal on the 95, shown on the left, would go to Wellington. The revised version on the right goes via Mystic Ave and serves part of Medford that are poised for substantial redevelopment, and is similar to what most 95 trips do today. This also fills in for the route 87 that I spoke about earlier, which has been restored to leech mirror and the revised map. So the 95 is filling that void on Mystic Ave that was left behind by shifting the 87 back to its current alignment. So compared to today's 95, there would be one consistent service pattern, in that the route would go from Arlington to Sullivan consistently, rather than the current service pattern where some trips start in Arlington and some trips start on Placetip Road. Also, the frequency of this route is slated to improve to every 20 minutes, mostly, seven days a week, with perhaps some 30-minute service after 10 p.m. This fills in a gap in between the three high frequency corridors that were newly proposed in Medford as part of the bus network redesign process. So that gives more prominence to this Route 95 in Medford. Also in Medford, we have some changes to the Route 99 and 108. Bus route 99 was proposed as shown on the left most map, and would serve Middlesex Ave and Medford and Wellington station. Now based on feedback we heard regarding loss of service to commercial street. think that's actually Malden near the super 88 and Medford Street near some medical facilities like the Cambridge Health Alliance and also other locations in Everett from current 97 riders. We've extended the 99 in the center map like a 97 through Everett to the Broadway and to the Gateway Center and on to Wellington. The Middlesex Ave portion of the route would still be served by the extended 108 as shown on the right which had formerly been proposed to terminate at Malden. So in this case what we ended up with is there's net one more route kind of between Malden Center and Wellington so that we could fill in some gaps that had been left in the initial version of the network, but there's no sections that we're discontinuing globally as part of this package of changes here. Bus route 100. This had been proposed to continue via the current terminus near Elm Street across to Governors Ave and then up Winthrop Street to Medford High School and out this way. We propose that the 100 should terminate as it does today near Elm Street because we've restored the 134 service on Winthrop Ave through Medford Square and over to Wellington. Though this does mean that there would be no service on Governor's Ave. When we did have bus service operating there, it was very, very low ridership. Only a couple more slides. We have some changes, bus routes 133 and 131. The 133 initial proposed route is on the left. In the new network, there is no route 133, but we've modified our proposed 131. provide much of the functionality. So the 133 initially had included new service to Anderson-Woburn commuter rail, and had been part of a package of changes to create local bus service instead of the express services in Burlington and Woburn, and new connections to Stona, Melrose, and the Orange Line. However, with the restoration of the 354 express route, one of the trade-offs was that we had to truncate some new service extensions. So you can see that we're no longer showing bus service to Anderson-Woburn. The North Woburn service will be part of the 134 route that I spoke about previously, and the local Woburn, Stoneham, and Melrose connection will be part of the route 131. Oh, thank goodness. I have a little more time. So as part of the route network changes, we also removed part of the proposed extension of Route 131 out to Saugus and Lynn, but most of this is picked up with the modified 429. That's primarily outside of our service area, so I won't go into too much detail there. So going back to the $350,000, we talked about this briefly when I mentioned the $80,000 earlier. One thing that the proposed $80,000 does differently than the initial proposed $350,000 on the left is that we would continue to serve Burlington Mall Road and 3rd Avenue directly, the original proposal had separated out the Burlington Mall Road portion of the route onto a separate 94 to make the 350 more direct and thus have shorter, more competitive travel times as part of the 354 express bus elimination. But with the preservation of 354 service that I'll talk about in a minute, the existing route structure was retained, although it's been shifted as an extension of the Route 80 instead of the 350 via AOA. So we would still go to Burlington, we would still go to Winchester and Woburn and Arlington, but it will be as the Route 80 to Davis and Bedford-Tufts Green Line extension instead of to Alewife on the Red Line. bus route 354. From the northern suburbs, this is probably the biggest change that we've made. We'd heard a lot of feedback that our initial proposal did not have any express service to Burlington, Woburn, or Medford. Instead, we had redrawn service in those neighborhoods to have seven day local service to feed into the red, orange, and or green lines. But one of the things we'd heard from Medford, Woburn, Burlington was that the travel times were not competitive and that there was a lot of interest in retaining the direct connection into downtown Boston. Because of the challenges of parking in the downtown, many folks conveyed that they have a car, but they're most likely to use transit for those downtown-oriented trips where parking is constrained. So in this revised proposal, the 354 would continue to do what it does today and would serve Burlington, Woburn, and Medford during rush hours on weekdays. In order to make that work with our resource changes, there were a number of other route changes that I mentioned already to keep us within our hours budget for this change in our vehicles and our operator camps. Then we have one more change, the bus route 54. There was a route change to this. It starts in Arlington Center and had originally been proposed to extend over to Riverside and Newton as a crosstown connection. We had a route change to use Pleasant Street in Belmont instead of Waverly Street due to some narrow roadway and concerns about the ability to accept bus traffic. There was also a frequency change to this route as an offset for some of the other service restorations that are part of the new package. So this would be about every 30 minutes during rush hours and about hourly for the rest of the day. And lastly, we truncated this route at Waltham Centre rather than Riverside, as had been suggested in the original proposal. And here's another map that shows the truncation. It was a big root, so you can see it originally went to Riverside and now is being proposed to go to Waltham Center instead. There were routes that did not change since the May proposal, the T1, T66, 68, 69, T71, T73. Those are all substantially the same routes as they are today. In the case of those T routes, Many of them are better frequency late at night because we've promoted, we've improved what it means to be a high frequency route. Today those key bus routes are generally every 20 minutes or better. And our expectation is still that they would be every 15 minutes or better. And we're still excited that we're promoting new routes like the T110. from Wellington and Medford over to Wonderland to be high frequency. We're excited that we're promoting the T70 from Waltham Centre through Watertown and Cambridge into Kendall as a new high frequency service. And those didn't change. So those are some of the things that we're still very excited about. In some cases, we also had a change that was just a frequency or a span adjustment, but not a route change. So the 78 has later evening service till 1 a.m., like it does today. It had been kind of in a bucket with other types of services that only had service till 10 p.m., but it was not our intention that that would be a service cut. So we've made it clear that we intend to keep that until 1 a.m., like it does today. So with that, That is all the changes that I wanted to make sure that I had a chance to explain to folks. So now we have a few minutes for questions and answers. So if you're interested, I recommend putting your questions into the chat. or comments into the chat because we're able to save those. I know we're short on time, so we might not have a chance to get to everyone. So I do encourage anyone who's able to put your questions and comments into the chat. And I do see that we have a few hands raised. So if I may, let's see.
[SPEAKER_04]: Jose from Matawala, I have unmuted you.
[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah, hi. So my question is for the Wellington Express bus which was running from Wellington to downtown Boston. That's the express bus trip to do. I don't see that in the list anywhere. And I wanted to check on why that has been discontinued.
[Unidentified]: That's interesting. I'm not familiar with an express bus that ever ran from Wellington into downtown Boston.
[SPEAKER_15]: Wellington.
[Unidentified]: Oh, Burlington. Interpreters, I'm about to close the breakout room, so if you can be ready to go, people will be joining the main room. All right, welcome back everyone.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: I hope that you had great discussions in your groups. I would like to remind folks, you'll have to reselect your language. There's the button on your Zoom controls that says Interpretation. Please select your language, even if that language is English. That will allow you to hear the comments in the Q&A that are being translated into English. during this meeting, so please select English, Spanish, or Mandarin. Using the Zoom controls, there's an interpretation button, and I myself will be switching to the English channel, so please use that control to select your language of choice.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thank you everyone.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: I understand that some of the breakout rooms had a lot of content to go through and perhaps not enough time for Q&A. We will have an open Q&A during the meeting now. Amanda, you can restart the recording.
[Frances Mitchell]: Recording in progress.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: And I'll just start over from there. Welcome back from the breakout rooms, everyone. I know that some of the breakout rooms had a lot of content to go through, and they may not have had a ton of time for Q&A. So we are going to do an open Q&A session now. And we will hopefully be able to get through everybody's comments. We'll start with elected officials, but first I Excuse me, want to acknowledge the fact that this meeting reached the capacity of our zoom account, which was 300 participants at once in a meeting. We are deeply sorry for that oversight there. We know that there were more than 300 people who wanted to attend this meeting, so we will hold another meeting and we will use a Zoom license that has a higher capacity so that everyone will be able to join the meeting who wants to. So it will be the same content as this meeting. We will get that scheduled as soon as possible and folks will be able to join that meeting. So we deeply apologize for the inconvenience that folks experienced and for the fact that folks were not able to join this meeting who wanted to. So that was on us and we will address that by having another meeting and ensuring that our Zoom license is not subject to that same capacity limit. Now I'll turn it over to Regan Shakyo, who will moderate the Q&A.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks, Doug. Terry, can you go to the next slide, please? So it's Doug mentioned we're going to take some questions and comments from elected officials first and then we'll move into the general question and answer section, so I will ask those who are not elected officials to lower your hands at this time, and I will. There will be time later, and I will call on you then in the meantime, I see representative Connolly has been waiting patiently, so I'm going to unmute him now.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_24]: Can you hear me? Hello.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: We can. Thank you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_24]: Terrific. Well, thank you for hosting us this evening. This is State Rep Mike Conley from Cambridge and Somerville. And, you know, I think first I got to say right off the bat, and I want to say for the record, I've actually spent more time in this meeting hearing from constituents who were unable to get into the meeting. In emailing me or tweeting at me or in some cases texting me and asking what's going on. Then I really have been able to focus on the substance of the presentation and I just came from the Somerville Cambridge breakout room where there was not time to answer a single question. And so that breakout room ended with numerous hands raised and not a single question answered. And so, you know, I certainly, you know, having said that, I understand the bus network redesign team has made a lot of efforts and there is a lot in this second iteration that responds to the hundreds and hundreds of pieces of feedback that you received from Somerville and Cambridge. as well as the nine page letter that I submitted back in July. But it's almost hard to get into the substance without first addressing these process concerns. You know, I really appreciate the fact that you've stated that your number one priority here is centering equity. But I would also say, you know, if the discussion is about moving from a one-seat ride to a two-seat ride with greater frequency of the buses in order to accommodate that change, I think it's going to be up to the MBTA to prove that you could deliver on that promise. And as we heard earlier in the meeting, with the operator hiring shortage, with the challenges that we've seen building new bus garages, you know, I think there's a lot of pieces that need to come into play. So one thing I would ask is that no service be removed, at least until we get an opportunity to see a few things, to see how the fair share amendment and the potential for billions of dollars of more revenue that could go to support the MBTA, how that plays out, to see how the new gubernatorial administration approaches these issues, And then another big thing for my district in particular is not just making assumptions about what the Green Line extension might mean, but to actually allow the Green Line extension to be fully completed to become fully operational and to give us an opportunity to actually look at the data And see how, if at all the Green Line extension is impacting bus ridership and so to ensure that we don't take bus routes away from East Cambridge or East Somerville. Um, without first understanding that. So those are some general concerns. Um, you know, in terms of some specific notes, I heard from, uh, a Cambridge school committee member today who was raising specific concerns around things like the 68 bus. You know, I know we work to preserve the 68 bus back when it was on the chopping block a couple of years ago, we would like to see the 68 bus, uh, maintained. through rush hour, and not have it only be a daytime only bus, but to be something that continues with frequent service through 8pm and the 68 bus serves one of the neighborhoods of Cambridge with the highest incidence of poverty, with the greatest diversity in the city. And so I think from an equity perspective, any cuts to the 68 bus would raise some serious red flags. Likewise on the 78 bus. I've already heard feedback from Cambridge officials that there's a desire to extend that into evening rush hour through 8pm. On the CT2 bus, you know, I do understand that there's some excellent intentions around that. And I understand that you're now calling the CT2 bus, as I understand it, the 85 bus. But here I am, I'm a state representative, I care deeply about this stuff. And there's so much here, it's hard for me to even keep track of all of it. And so that's why I would again encourage you not just to schedule another meeting, but to consider pushing this entire process back somewhat to delay any federal equity submissions and to really give us here in Somerville and Cambridge the time that we need. Perhaps we should actually have a specific meeting for the city of Somerville and the city of Cambridge. I noticed that our breakout room had close to 130 people. Out of the 300 people who joined so clearly there's a tremendous amount of interest here. I could go on and on i'll yield the floor here momentarily. I did want to say you know the 47 bus seems like a win for our Community. The 83 bus the 89 bus those seems like important wins, as well as the 87 bus being extended to one am. So there's a lot here I'm grateful for, but the bottom line is we need another meeting, we might need multiple meetings, and we need a lot of time to communicate and engage to make sure we get this right. Thank you so much.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Representative Connolly. I appreciate your comments. I see Senator Lovely has her hand up. I'm going to unmute you, Senator.
[SPEAKER_24]: Thank you. I've transitioned to my car. So I'll be brief, and I representative Kearns is on as well. So, like to yield the floor to her but I just would urge that the 435 bus and Danvers I'm Senator john lovely represent Danvers Beverly Salem and Peabody. and the 435 bus in Danvers, the loop into Danvers Square has been cut, and I would urge the T to restore that loop, that one mile loop we have. Danvers is a A community that is home to me group homes of intellectually disabled adults who rely on that service. Those group homes are within the downtown area. And we've heard from constituents. who have rely on that transit, and now it's not available to them. So that's so what I would urge is the restoration of the loop into Denver Square on the 435. And I'll yield the floor to the good representative from Denver. Thank you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Senator. I don't see Representative Kearns' hand raised. Representative Kearns, if you would like to make comments, please raise your hand and I can recognize you.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: All right. I see some other people with their hands raised, but I also know that it's time to go into Q&A, and people have been waiting very patiently all evening. Oh, someone, yes.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Representative Sally Kearns has her hand raised.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: She does. I'm sorry, Representative. Let me unmute you, Representative.
[SPEAKER_16]: Thank you. I'll be very brief. I do have four friends, constituents who have spent the time to be heard tonight. I will yield. I will just reiterate that the 435 loop through Danvers Square, as Senator Lovelace said, is very important to us in Danvers. We are an underserved community. Thank you. And I also want to echo the comments and concerns about process that were shared by Mike Conley, my colleague in Cambridge. And with that, I will yield my time. Thank you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you so much, much appreciated for your comments. All right, so as you can see on screen, I am not going to go through all of the different ways you can ask questions or make comments. If you want to raise your hand or make a comment in the ask a question now section, or as Amanda just posted in the chat, there's also a feedback form you can leave comments in. Um, I will now, um, I will request that everybody make their comments very brief, um, under 2 minutes this evening. I don't want to cut people off, but I know that there's a lot of people who've been waiting for time this evening. So, I will start with Diane Smith.
[SPEAKER_30]: Diane hello. Can you hear me?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_30]: Okay, during our breakout session number three, it appears that the Boston Transportation Department is going to decide what happens with bus route number seven instead of the MBTA. So I have a recommendation that somebody be required to attend the next visit, the next meeting that you hold from the Boston Transportation Department so they can answer questions about what is going on with the number seven bus. And that's my recommendation. And my question is, does anyone know if the Boston Transportation Department is accepting comments concerning the route of the number seven bus? Thank you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thank you, Diane for your question I'd like to clarify a point here. We have proposed for the route seven that it will go from South Boston through downtown connecting to South Station and North Station, and then going through Charlestown to Sullivan Square. We have proposed a routing for that route through downtown, but the City of Boston has a planning effort underway called the North Station to Seaport multimodal corridor. That planning process is identifying the ideal location for bus lanes through downtown, connecting North Station to South Station, and we are coordinating with the City of Boston and that effort as it moves forward. There are many locations in the network where municipalities, who are often the roadway owners in cases where we're running service, there are many situations in which municipalities are conducting planning processes that will have an impact on the future bus network.
[SPEAKER_30]: Okay, who's speaking now?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: This is Doug Johnson, I'm the project manager for Boston.
[SPEAKER_30]: Hi Doug. Okay, Doug. So, since you know where the bus is going, do you know what street into downtown Boston, it's going the furthest up into downtown do you know the street name?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: So right now we are showing the seven going on Summer Street to South Station, and then using Congress Street and Post Office, excuse me, Pearl Street and Congress Street through Post Office Square, and then going up Congress Street to North Station, and then over the North Washington Street Bridge into Charlestown.
[SPEAKER_30]: Okay, so it's not really going, it's not going as far as it used to go into downtown Boston, and I see that as a problem, but okay, thank you very much.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thank you for your comment.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you. I'm going to turn to Robin Forrest, who has been having difficulty raising a hand and message me some minutes ago. Robin, are you able to unmute?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_07]: Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Thank you so much. I use the 441 bus route. That's my main route that takes me to and from work, that takes me to my doctor's offices, that takes me to shopping in Vinton Square. According to the plan, you're doing away with 441 completely. So this is like a huge hardship for me. I don't know why the MBTA thinks that putting more buses on the 442 and taking away a route that will take away from other people would be beneficial because this is not an improvement for me. And I just, like I said, this is like a huge hardship for me. I kept submitting comments and surveys trying to get someone to listen. And also I don't get it because people, some people go from Marblehead and they get off at Paradise Road and Swampskate to take the Swampskate commuter rail. So everybody doesn't have to get on the line on the commuter rail to get to Boston. but then you're making it so everybody has to go from Marblehead or Swampsgate into Lynn to get on the commuter rail to get into Boston. So it's, I don't, you know, it's like people didn't ask questions before they redid this plan. Because like I said, this is a huge hardship for me. I'm in my 50s. I use public transportation. I don't have a car. I don't drive. You're taking all the doctor's offices are on Paradise Road. I mean, nothing's going to go down there. I'm going to have to take lifts or, you know, taxis everywhere. This is very expensive. I just wish you'd reconsider that. I mean, why put more buses on 442 if you're going to take it away from another route? I don't get it. I just, you know, you're taking away from Peter to pay Paul, but you're making, you know, some people, you know, get the lottery and other people, you know, you get the shaft. So I just wish you'd reconsider that.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you. Thank you very much for your comments. Doug, I don't know if we wanna.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Melissa, are you able to talk more to the 442 and 455?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_07]: Talk about the 441 that you wanna cancel. That's what I would appreciate.
[Unidentified]: speak to the 441. The proposal was that we would combine the resources from the 441 and 442, which today we have the two different branches. Sometimes it takes the more inland route and sometimes it takes the more coastal route. And having that branch structure adds a lot of complexity. And we recognize that some people are using those different routes. But what we were trying to do is make more frequent service, more legible service, because sometimes, especially in the middle of the day, you end up with buses that are every 90 minutes. And we were trying to say, well, what does it take? What would it take to make it so that we could build the Marblehead services so that they came, you know, every hourly or better consistently. So that was the intention. I know there's a lot of people.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah. Thank you, Melissa. Yeah, I think we're going to go on Amber McMahon. I'm going to unmute you. Hi, how are you? Hello. Thank you for waiting.
[SPEAKER_19]: Just a quick comment and question. First off, I was told that someone would get back to me about my correspondences and comments in previous meetings and certified letters that were sent, and they have not yet to date. And I was wondering if someone was going to be doing that. And then also, what are the hours and the frequency of the 54 on Pleasant Street?
[Adam Hurtubise]: Melissa, I'll defer to you.
[Unidentified]: I'm checking my notes for the 54. So with the frequency change, as I'd mentioned in the breakout group too, we'd originally proposed it would be medium frequency, but with the new schedule that is slated to be mostly hourly from seven days a week, from 6 a.m. till 7 p.m., and then a little less frequent later in the evening until 10 o'clock.
[SPEAKER_19]: OK, so and is that every hour? What?
[Unidentified]: Approximately hourly for the most part of the day for the bulk of the day.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Melissa and Amber. I'm going to move on to Hannah Belcher.
[Unidentified]: Hannah. You should be able to mute.
[SPEAKER_13]: Hi, my name is Eileen and I just got unmuted. So if I have an opportunity to speak, I would like to. I know you were asking for Hannah, but I think I got the lucky draw. So I'd like to make a couple of comments to you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Certainly, I'm not sure what happened to Hannah, but we will find her. But thank you, Eileen. Go ahead.
[SPEAKER_13]: Thank you. First of all, I'd like to give kudos to Rep. Mike Conley. I feel the same way he does. And I believe that there is so much that one has to divide to get answers for a specific location, that it would be very helpful for folks to possibly spend time in our communities and give individual breakdowns of what's actually happening in our neighborhood regarding our services. I also would like to mention, you know, more buses, but we are cutting services and that's not equitable. And I also feel very, the same way as there were other folks speaking regarding number seven services in South Boston, and we had a very big group And I had my hand raised and I also put chat questions and I did not have an opportunity to respond. So just like many others tonight, I believe that you're trying to accommodate too many of us with our concerns and answers. And I really think that you could consider coming into our neighborhoods and giving us opportunities to fully understand what your plan is. And it is very concerning that for Boston, you're telling us it's BTD to determine. And so we really do need to have both you and BTD present. That would be helpful.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you so much for your comments. I am going to, I see Hannah has her hand raised again. I'm going to try that one more time. My apologies for whatever happened technologically, Hannah.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Yes, I'm sorry about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay. I'm Hannah Belcher I'm a town Councilor in Winthrop Mass and I did make comments in our specific breakout section so I'll save those but I just like to agree with what rep currently mentioned about potentially waiting on moving this forward until a new administration is in place and we see the way they're going to change funding or priorities And I also just wanted to make a comment on the way the data was looked at, big data with cell phones. And I understand in the city that can be incredibly helpful because you have such a large sample size when you get into areas like Winthrop and some of the smaller communities outside of the city. I think that it would behoove the MBTA to look through a different lens at those communities to make sure we're not disadvantaging areas like Point Shirley neighborhood in Winthrop, and I'm sure there are other surrounding towns a little further out of Boston that experience the same thing. So I just wanted to make that point.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: I thank you, I appreciate your comments tonight. I'm going to keep going with the raised hands. I will know for those of you who are making comments in the chat, we are capturing them all and they will be part of the record even if they are not read aloud tonight. And I'm going to go to Daniel Landers next.
[SPEAKER_36]: Okay, thank you. My name is Daniel Landers. I am a citizen and a resident of Danvers. I just like to state that as somebody who suffers from epilepsy and autism, I did heavily rely on the 465 Danvers Square bus route as it would often take me to Salem when I needed to, or Peabody when I needed to, or just around the town in general. It would also take me to the train station, which I would actually have liked to use since I recently graduated from UMass and would have liked to visit my school again. I just want to state that a lot of people like me who cannot drive due to their disabilities or any other in ailments or infliction, do heavily rely on public transportation and do heavily rely on the bus and specifically that bus route as well.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you so much for your comments. Um, I will, I also know that there are some questions people are having, um, and Doug, I just want to make sure that I'm saying everything right here that the meeting recording tonight will be posted along with. Um, if the recordings went well, all of the recordings from the breakout sessions. And we do plan to also post the meeting deck and summary. Correct for the meeting deck.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: That's right. We will be posting the recording of the meeting. Um, we. hopefully recorded all of the breakout rooms, and we will post the recordings from those as well. And that will all be available on the project website.
[Adam Hurtubise]: There's an event page for this event. We will post all of those there.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Okay, thank you. And also, I know some people say they can't see all the chat comments. That is true. But in the final, we are capturing them all in a final report. So no worries there. I also know some people have been messaging me having some difficulty with the raised hand feature. So I'm.
[Unidentified]: Reagan, you might have unmuted yourself.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you so much. I'm going to turn to Judith Jacobs because I know she messaged me a while ago having difficulties. I'm going to unmute Judith.
[Unidentified]: Judith, can you hear me? Yes.
[MCM00000945_SPEAKER_27]: Hi. Hi, Reagan. Thank you so much for acknowledging me. I know this has probably been a difficult time. challenge tonight, and that a lot of people tried to get on. So my question is, there is a resident that reached out to me who couldn't get on either. And she's concerned about the route, the bus line that is 80 and 90, which I believe the folks from Clarendon Hill, actually in Somerville, so I'm from Somerville, I'm a Somerville resident, and her specific question was with regard to if the previous stops will then be reinstated or they won't be. So I think she just needs some clarification on that because she is kind of spearheading this in the neighborhood to try to help the residents to understand the changes. So if you could maybe talk a little bit about that.
[Unidentified]: Hello, Doug.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: I'm sorry, Doug, I'll turn to you.
[Unidentified]: I was wondering if you could clarify which stops are being reinstated. I'm sorry, I'm just not following.
[MCM00000945_SPEAKER_27]: OK, well, I don't use the bus lines either, but I'm someone that has gone to many meetings in the city. I've been very active that way. I also want to do give some credit to our representative Conley for, you know, pointing out some things that really needed to be said. I'm glad that he did address that. So the question is about the bus lines number 80 and 90. And apparently there was some maybe discussion or confusion surrounding whether or not those routes will be subject to changes or they're apparently been changed. And she wanted to know whether they would resort to the previous routes that they had been doing. So that's all I have. I'm sorry, I don't know any specific information. She sent me a text and wanted me to relay that question to all of you. Okay, thanks for clarifying.
[Unidentified]: We talked about this in our breakout group number two, and we also have maps and other information on our website at mbta.com slash BNRD for anyone who wasn't able to make it into this meeting. In the case of the 80, we do have a new version of the 80 proposed, so it would be different than the existing 80. There's portions of the route in Somerville primarily from Ball Square and into Lechmere where we are not proposing to have the 80 continue once the future green line opens, but we are proposing that the outer portion of the 80 from Arlington Center and Boston Ave and College Ave into Davis Square would be part of the Route 80 that we have on the new map. And we would actually have it extend out to Burlington to be a sort of substitute for the 350. So be sure to look at our new proposal for the Route 80. And the 90 is proposed to have better frequency than today's 90. It's also proposed to be extended beyond Davis Square, where it terminates today, out to Clarendon Hill, so that it becomes sort of a combination 88 slash 90 with better frequency every 20 minutes for most of the day, maybe every 30 minutes later into the evening, and that would be seven day a week service, and we have some other changes around circulation at Sullivan and Assembly, so be sure to look at the map there as well.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks, Melissa. I appreciate that. Terry, do you mind going to the next screen? Just so folks have it. And I also want to confirm, I know this meeting was supposed to end earlier, but Doug, we're going to keep going, right? And answer some more questions. Yes, we are. Thank you. All right, I'm going to turn to Julie Kelly next. Julie, are you able to unmute yourself? Hi, can you hear me?
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_18]: I think that bus into work and I heard they're going to change the time to start later.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: In the morning, Julie, if I can, if I can interrupt you faded out right when you said what number do you mind repeating it? Can you hear me? You're breaking up 1 more time. Can you hear me now? Yes. And we. PB, Lupita D Montoya.
[SPEAKER_18]: PB, Lupita D Montoya. PB, Lupita D Montoya. PB, Lupita D Montoya. PB, Lupita D Montoya. Yes, perfect for the day at the bus times are going to change and it's not it's not really helpful because it's running later at night, I mean running at four o'clock instead of 330 and on the way home it's standing room only at 330 already the buses people are standing on the way home the bus already fall. It used to leave at 2.45 in the afternoon. Now it's starting to leave at 4. And in the morning, people start at 6.30, and it's going to start leaving the route at 6. People are going to be late for work. Some of us on the bus, we get about 20, 30 people in the morning on the bus, in the morning going to work at 6.30. And when we get out, we wait a half hour for the bus, which no problem. We don't mind waiting. But 4 o'clock, it'd be too crowded. It's already standing. We get like 10, 15 people standing, usually on the way home. already.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate the comments.
[Unidentified]: Thanks for flagging that. That's something we can have the service planning team if there are bypasses and crowding issues that doesn't have to be a bus network redesign thing. That's the type of change that we make as part of our ongoing quarterly service change. So I can flag that for the team and have them take a look.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Melissa. I'm going to turn to Ramey Parker next.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hi, thank you. I just have a quick comment and a quick question. I got some of my answers in the breakout room, but here in Stoneham, for the proposed route you showed a capital and everything, a 2023 to 27 plan. I just want to know if you would be establishing number bus routes for that. So who's in 23 and who's in 27? That's the first question. And to Rep Conley's comment about needing more time. I have to say, I've been involved in this better bus network redesign program since 2018. And so four years later, we're still not still not boots on the ground. So I just want to make a comment that there's been a lot of outreach done by this team and I support moving forward. That being said, is it possible to have individual members reach out to each of these towns just to have a conversation? There's a lot of stress and anxiety going on in this meeting and I feel bad for everybody but I really just want to try to move forward and I don't want this to be stalled any longer. So, thank you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thanks for your comment. We are working on the implementation plan right now and figuring out what routes would be implemented in those earlier years and what would likely be in later years. It will be dependent on our bus operator headcount, which is something that we are working on right now. The MBTA actually just changed the hiring practices for bus operators. We used to require people to have CDLs before they could become a bus driver. Now we're helping folks get the commercial driver's license who want to be bus operators. So we are working to address the operator shortage, which is going to be a key thing to work on in order to implement these service changes. But we are working on the implementation plan right now, which will determine sort of what we do each year. Obviously we'll provide advance notice before any changes happen, but certainly hear you on on the timeline of this and how long these planning processes sometimes can take. So we're working on the implementation plan now and we'll have more information in the next few months about what the first few phases of implementation will look like.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: I know some people have had some questions about where they could get information about previous meetings that have been held on this project. If you go to the project website, which is listed on screen right now, and I'm sure Amanda will also post it in the chat, and you scroll down to past events and you click on individual meetings, there is a meeting recording linked to all of the previous meetings and meeting materials as well on the site. So, uh, that being said, I'm going to go to Jake taper.
[Unidentified]: Jake either. Hi. Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Great. So I'm with an organization named Massachusetts Senior Action Council I'm a community organizer. I'm not a senior, but there are three I know there are three members of our organization on the call tonight, it's at all possible for them to speak. It would be great. I know that some of them have been having trouble with the technology they may not have been able to raise their hands. So I would yield my time to Mary Napolitano, Louise Baxter, and Martha London. They're still on the call. The rest of my time that is. The four main points, the three main questions I had after after we reviewed this as an organization. So it's obvious that there's some good changes, but I want to know more about what the actual process was for ensuring that locations that are critical to seniors are getting a service, are in the new revised plan. I want to know what the municipality by municipality process was for taking a look at all the different spots that needed, you know, close front door service for seniors and ensuring that that was kept. I also want to know what the process was to ensure that all of these new transfers are accessible. Was there a, you know, a, was there a point by point, You know, did you review every new transfer to just sort of ensure, hey, is the geography challenging? Are we going to be able to have this open to seniors? And my last question, did the revised plan roll back some of the reductions in the number of stops? Or are you guys still reducing stops to increase frequency on some of these routes? Because I know that in some case, that's going to be a problem for seniors. Thanks, and I just encourage you to see if you can let Mary and the other folks ask some questions.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: And actually, can you share with me the names? I heard Louise and I missed the other names.
[Unidentified]: Oh. Jake, let me unmute you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Jake, what were the other names?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sorry, I was going to say Mary Napolitano.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: OK.
[SPEAKER_04]: Louise Baxter. And Martha London. Great, thank you. There may be some others on the call but those are the ones that I saw.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: We'll make sure we get to them tonight.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, I'll, I'll be able to respond to some of your questions Jake thank you for for coming to the meeting and for participating in the process. For bus stops, we are actively working to figure out how many stops in the system would need to be upgraded and where we would need to locate new stops for services that we are proposing. So there are some roadways in the network that don't currently have bus service on them. So we need to figure out where accessible stops would be located. And then for stops that exists now that will have service. There's the ongoing PADI program that we're working with in the Office of Systemwide Accessibility to figure out how we go about making stops accessible. In some cases, a stop in its existing location can be made accessible. Sometimes conditions don't allow for that and this as you know and the stop has to be moved to a location that does provide for accessibility. So we're going through that process right now of figuring out all the capital needs for the new network and that's also the case for transfer locations. So to your question about where transfers are happening, not every station in the system is fully accessible right now. If there are locations where we are anticipating transfers that are not fully accessible, we will be looking at how to make them accessible. So we're not taking the existing roadway conditions for granted necessarily. We want to make capital improvements throughout the network to improve accessibility and, you know, make stops accessible, make transfer locations accessible where we want to have them. So that's a process that is ongoing right now. We're also happy to continue to meet with folks in the Mass Interaction Council to talk about all of these changes and the process. I think There's probably more content than that you'd like to get into and what we'd love to talk to you about that we can get through in this meeting. So we're happy to meet with folks at a subsequent meeting. But I think we can go ahead and call on the folks that you listed if any of them are still here, Reagan.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: OK, I will call on Louise Baxter.
[Unidentified]: I'm going to unmute you, Louise. Yeah, I, the questions already. But, you know, like t 12 I just wanted to make, make sure that it's where it's done for Boston medical but I think I'm glad that you did a lot to think about seniors and everything. But I already spoke to about T12. I'm not quite sure where it's stopping for BMC. And I thank you for all the information you've given for the seniors.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you so much for your comments. Mary, I'm going to see if Mary Napolitano, I'm going to see if you would like to unmute and share any comments.
[Unidentified]: Mary?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, um, I just had a couple of comment kind of comments questions. I know that the plan is not to have the 90 bus food stop at Sullivan station. And I was concerned because I've spoken to workers in that area that depend on that 90 to get to Cali and come home. get there in the mornings and home in the afternoons that work in the child's town, the stress worker center, and just in that general area that have concerns about how they're getting home. And that was one question. And although another thing about the 90, if you're having it stop at assembly station, That's a hike to get over to Trader Joe's in that area there, that strip mall. I found it difficult to get to the station to the 90 bus from the 90 over, let alone walk the extra distance. So you're cutting off people that really wanna utilize that area. I go to Trader Joe's, I'm gluten free. There's certain things I only get there, And I was concerned about that. And also being on the 88 route, I have concerns, not for myself, because I don't go in town or a lot of different places over in that area, but we have 60, 70 and 80 year old workers still on the highway to have area that need to go towards Lechmere. So you would take a one or two seat ride and make it three or four seats. which has me concerned because the 90 bus has never left early in the morning. It's always been around 6.30, 7 o'clock, which people work in 7.00, 7.30, and happen to make multiple changes, would be late for work. So that was another concern, and they would have the same issues coming back home. And that was a concern of mine, not for myself, but for other individuals I know along that route.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you so much for your questions and comments.
[Unidentified]: If I could jump in on a couple of those. The proposal is to have the 90 pulling closer to assembly station but there still would be a boarding stop on Grand Union Boulevard kind of right in front of the Trader Joe's. So maybe you could either. kind of walk to Trader Joe's from Assembly Station in one direction, but when you have your groceries and you're ready to go back to Somerville, to Highland Ave or wherever, you only have to walk as far as Grand Union Boulevard, where the bus stop is today. And the proposal for the 90, it's intended to be, I'll call it like an 88 and 90 combination, so it would start earlier and especially on Sundays, like on Sundays, the 90 today might only start at 10 o'clock in the morning and end at six o'clock in the afternoon or something thereabouts. The proposal is for it to have a full span of service with frequency of about every 20 minutes or better for most of the day, seven days a week, and then maybe closer to every 30 minutes, like after 10 o'clock at night. So it's a much better frequency than what the 90 has today as it's kind of taking on new functionality with some of what the 88 had formerly done.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks so much Melissa. I do want to. Remind everyone that if you are trying to make comments in the chat to not direct message, individual project staff members, but to direct your comments to the ask a question. Person that way, we'll make sure we will be capturing all of your comments and questions. I'm going to go to Colleen Murphy next. Colleen, you should be unmuted.
[SPEAKER_17]: Hi, can you hear me?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Hi, yes.
[SPEAKER_17]: Hi, I'm a Winthrop resident. I have a question. Did you, did I understand that the, what they're proposing is that the bus pick up for points in the landing by the Winthrop Yacht Club?
[Unidentified]: We're proposing that the stop would be not in the yacht club, but in what is it called the ferry terminal in the parking lot with a boat. The public.
[SPEAKER_17]: It's, yeah, it's not only would like you to keep in mind that in the wintertime that is utilized for everybody in that area, because it's not any on street parking in winter with storms. In the summertime, that is a very heavily utilized docking for boats to go in and out all day long. And for the overflow for people to pack each. And I just, why the bus can't, which is probably back. And.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: So I'm sorry, Colleen.
[SPEAKER_17]: Is it because this.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: You're breaking up, Colleen. I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_17]: I just want you to keep in mind that that's a habit. Can you hear me now?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Can you hear me? Yes.
[SPEAKER_17]: Yes. Did you hear what I said about the landing? It's a public landing.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Okay, great. We did get that part.
[SPEAKER_17]: It's a public landing that's heavily utilized.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Can you hear me? Melissa, I'm not sure how much of that you heard. It was coming in and out for me.
[Unidentified]: So we're not proposing to take the entirety of the parking lot. We were just hoping that we could pull into that lot as a way to get extra connectivity to, say, the Winthrop Ferry. This is actually a request we'd heard from the Winthrop Transportation Advisory Committee that we'd met with formally. I don't know if they're still meeting. This is going back probably a few years with some of the other folks, but there'd been interest in getting service into that parking lot. rather than having some of our services terminate at Winthrop Beach, kind of on the, a little bit farther north of that, the Yacht Club area. And kind of one of the things that we're looking at with the loss in service, I can sense some frustration with the loss of service to the Point Shirley area, but one of the things that today with the service that Sometimes goes out to Point Shirley, maybe every third trip during rush hours on weekdays. Sometimes when you have multiple variants and sometimes it's the long bus and the long route that goes all the way to Point Shirley and sometimes it's the shorter route that serves the main portion of the peninsula of Winthrop. It creates bunching and irregular irregularity in the schedule so it might be that when you have the long bus coming through for all the way from the point that it's right behind one of the shorter buses and having those. when something like 96% of our ridership in Winthrop is not beyond the Yacht Club, but is rather in the sort of more populated portion of Winthrop, having the service out to Point Shirley can kind of create bunching and irregular gaps in service of there'll be a bus, you know, two minutes apart and then the next one will be 35 minutes later. We get these weird schedule irregularities when you have long and short variations of routes. So one of the things that we're trying to do is introduce more consistency and regularity so that the 96% of Winthrop riders would have a more better legible service, better frequency, evenly spaced trips. So that's the reasoning behind the proposal. Thanks, Melissa.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: All right, I'm going to go to Clark Fraser now. Clark, you should be able to unmute.
[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, thank you. I'll try to make this brief. I want to say something about bus stops. As yesterday, I was at Riverway Plaza in Weymouth on Route 220 and there was no bus stop sign. I started one bus stop earlier and there was no sign there either. I couldn't find it. I think that I hope that you get crosswalks at every bus stop that's not at a signal. That's been a problem in Hingham. I just want to talk about schedules in general. I hope that you could go to, when I say you say regular interval, I mean really regular interval, like half hour, not 35 minutes, not 28 minutes, not 17 minutes, because that's what fits the buses. Is it true that the 220 would have half hours headway in the evening? And if so, what are you going to do about the red line where the headways are every 13 minutes? How could you possibly make a predictable connection? I mean, that's my biggest gripe about the MBTA is how long it takes to get from point A to point B, because I have to wait an unpredictable amount of time at intermediate points, meaning that I have to give myself an extra half hour or an hour to get someplace because I don't know how long it's going to take for the connections. So my question is, what are you going to do about that? Can you do time transfer? Can you do more time points? You have better schedules? Can you do computer, you know, electronic dispatching? So what are you going to do? Because I didn't see it in the mission statement. I didn't see anything about connections there.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks so much for your comment. Um, Melissa, I understand that there's a whole host of initiatives that are also happening in conjunction with bus network redesign to improve, uh. The operations at the, uh, for buses. Um, but I don't know if we want to speak to any of that or go to the next question.
[Unidentified]: If I could just take like 15 seconds. I know there's a lot of people in the queue, so I don't want to spend a lot of time. But one of the things we're trying to do is make more high frequency services so that that transfer experience can be better. Usually when things are, you know, every 13 minutes in the case of the red line, those transfers can be less onerous. So that's what we're trying to do is make more of those high frequency services. That's the short answer.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks so much. I'm going to go to John Strauss. John, you should be unmuted.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Regan. This is John Strauss from Burlington, and very interesting, the Burlington Transportation Committee was also holding a meeting, so I had two transportation meetings about buses going on at the same time, and everybody's very excited about the new bus route 80, because we were concerned about the back and forth in Burlington itself between Chestnut Street and Middlesex Turnpike area. But I wanted to ask a couple of questions. One was just a concern of the length of time of the trip on the 80, that's going to be a long way for somebody that wants to go all the way into town to go through Woburn and then go down into Somerville and then get on the red line from there. The other question I had was also about connecting the biotech areas in Alewife to Burlington, because we built three new projects in Burlington, and one is actually in Bedford, but that's connected by the 351. And now with the loss of the 350, that direct connection is broken. So we want those curious about if there was going to be, you know, something addressed about that, because we do want to get rid of SOV trips. That's the basic motivation behind a lot of this. The last thing I wanted to bring up was the veteran services to the hospital in Bedford. Again, it's only got the 62 going there, and they're not really a good way to get from the surrounding communities. to the veterans hospital. You can just take those under advisement if you want to take the time not to go too well then. But those were the concerns that were brought up when you were discussing the switching of the groups.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Melissa is nodding and I'm assuming, and I know we're taking all these notes down, so I think we'll take those concerns with us. Is that right, Melissa? All right, terrific. I am going to go to Melissa Novitz. Melissa, you should be able to speak.
[SPEAKER_14]: Hi, good evening, thank you. I appreciate the previous comments and the effort associated with the process thus far, but I was curious about the ability to revisit some of the community meetings, especially the T96 bus, as the May and October plans are dramatically different. I know tonight on this call, there are at least five directive letters to the revised route, which are concerned about traffic safety and emissions with the high frequency service. So I'm curious if you could comment on the possibility of, you know, revisiting community meetings for some of the impacted routes.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, I can respond to that. Thank you for your, your question. The change that we made in the T 96 was in response to a lot of the feedback that we got from folks on Winthrop Street and George Street. What we had proposed back in May. would have required a walking distance for a lot of the riders on those streets that due to the terrain over there, obviously, as you know, it's Medford Hillside, due to the sort of steepness of some of the streets, it would have been really challenging for folks to access the service as we had proposed it back in May. So we took that feedback from folks and modified the route accordingly. So we have it going on High Street and then to Winthrop. It continues to provide a service for Winthrop and George before getting on College Ave. So this was a change that was made in response to a lot of that feedback that we got and we think is responsive to the bus ridership in that area.
[Adam Hurtubise]: I don't know if you want to add anything to that.
[Unidentified]: I took that question as being more of a process question, Doug. Certainly, I can confirm that we had hundreds and hundreds of comments from the Medford Hillside community. And this was one of the things that was flagged in the letter to us from the mayor of Medford. So this was something that was really a priority for us. But I don't know if you want to tackle the process question there, Doug.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, we're certainly been having meetings with both the city of Sarnoville and the city of Medford, the planning department in Medford, about a lot of these changes. So we will continue to meet with municipalities as we get into implementation for these routes. And that can include meetings with community based organizations and neighborhood associations as well to talk about these changes. But For that route specifically, that's. The change we made to the route is one that we we think is really responsive to the feedback that we got from folks there, but certainly happy to keep meeting with folks and talking about these changes.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Doug. I'm going to turn to Matt Guyton. Matt, you should be able to unmute yourself.
[SPEAKER_23]: Yes, I I have a question about Route 67 in Arlington. I'm glad that you've restored it, but I'm wondering, is it possible to restore the section on pleasant street back so that it goes down pleasant street on the way to away.
[Unidentified]: Yeah, thanks for flagging that. I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to get to your question in our breakout group. We had a lot of content to get through. The reason for the diversion onto Massachusetts Avenue with the 67 was to fill in for that connectivity between Mass Ave and Alewife that was lost with some of the other changes to the network. So that's the That's the rationale for why the proposal is what it is.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thanks, Melissa, I do want to note. I know that we said at 8 that we were going to keep going and I think Doug, we're going to continue to move. Keep going to take as many questions as we can until our interpreters need to. Stop tonight.
[Unidentified]: Yep.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: All right. So, um. I'm Rikki Thomas. I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name.
[Unidentified]: I've unmuted you though. That was a pretty good pronunciation.
[SPEAKER_20]: It wasn't bad? Oh, thank you. I'm Rikki Thomas. I'm 14. I have a bit of a cold right now, so sorry if my voice sounds weird. But I just want to thank you all for doing this work. but I have a few comments, first of which I'm very happy that the T-47 is high frequency, though the terminus in Somerville near Union Square seems a little bit odd to me, and I think extending that and the 96 The t 96 to Sullivan would be beneficial, especially as currently the 91 extends from central to Sullivan, and that direct connection is helpful. One opinion I have is that I don't understand why the 74 came back. I feel like that is just, I've lived in West Cambridge. That seems to me like the people of West Cambridge often speak a lot. And it seems like the loudest people are sort of getting the most in that circumstance. I would think that a better use of those resources would be to increase service on the 78. And maybe that spare bus can go. If there's extra service can go somewhere else that needs it more, but instead of having the 74 I think having increased frequency on the 78 including later times, which is especially necessary and it serves more people would be really helpful. A few other things. There were a few routes that I noticed were from 9am to 4pm, which I don't really understand that doesn't really serve like commuters to have routes from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and weekdays only. That seemed odd to me. The two that I saw were the 439 and 451, which are the only transit to those communities. The 439 is the only bus that serves Nahant. I would suggest that they also run on weekends, but only running at 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. is, I really think, not good for those routes. Um, the 76. Um, I think really could use the weekend service. Um, maybe returning the 6276 for weekend service, but it's the only transit to Hanscom Air Force Base. And I just really think that that should be. included. So Enrique, thank you so much.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Yeah. Thank you so much. And we'll take those comments. And I also encourage you and everyone, if you have longer comments to leave them in the comment form, because we certainly want to hear all of the thoughtful comments tonight.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: And I'll just add to that, Enrique, some of us watched your entire YouTube video about the drafts network that you made back in the summer. It was great. Really appreciate all of your comments.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And appreciate your engagement in the process. So thanks.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: So I'm going to go to Tom Lamar. And Tom, you should be unmuted.
[MCM00001546_SPEAKER_01]: Hi, good evening. Thank you for your work on this project. I think there's a lot that's really good here. And I hope you'll be able to move forward pretty quickly with a lot of the recommendations here, the robust public process to figure out some of the details. But I hope that's compatible still moving forward quickly because there's a lot of really good stuff here. The specific point I wanted to make, Enrique actually may have said it better than I will, but I also wanted to mention the routing of the T96 and the T47 east of Union Square was a little confusing to me. I'm curious if the intent is to partially serve as a connection to East Somerville Station, but I wanted to note that the bus stops there are on the other side of McGrath Highway from East Somerville Station. So while they're relatively close to East Somerville Station, almost a transfer, it's an extremely unpleasant walk. So I wanted to ask that you consider extending one or both of the T96 and T47 along Washington Street from Union to Sullivan. I think the T47 of those provides more valuable connections replacing the old 91, but either one could be reasonable. And please keep in mind that Somerville has already added some bus priority and several traffic lights along Washington Street. Plans to add more So hopefully that provides a connection to East Somerville station and Sullivan station, while being a pretty efficient route. So please keep in mind the efficiency of that route, not just the distance I think this might went out as more efficient route overall. Thank you. You're doing a great job and I hope you can move forward quickly with this.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Tom. I am going to go next to Emily Bites. Sorry, Emily, if I mispronounced. It's Vetus. I'm so sorry. Yeah, that's okay.
[SPEAKER_21]: So I wanted to talk about the 89. And I'm grateful that it's been brought back. Because people who live in Winter Hill do want to go and we don't wanna have to walk there. But I'm really disappointed that it's still, it's not a frequent bus, it's every half hour. And that means if you miss the bus, you're stuck there for an hour. I live a good 12 minute walk from the bus. So basically I have to get there 20 minutes early. So I'd like to ask why, if you've taken the time to bring this bus back, everyone in who lives in Winter Hill wanted back, why you couldn't make it a more frequent bus that would really serve the community. Thanks.
[Unidentified]: I mean, the main reason was the resource constraints. We were working within a budget of 25% more operators than we already have to do all the things that we're talking about doing, and within our budget of plus 60 buses above what we had pre-COVID. So it was already an increase, but there were a lot of things that we were trying to do. So those were the different trade-offs that we were balancing. Summerville Broadway does get new high-frequency service with the T101. And if you miss an 89, you can take a 101 and transfer to a 96. And there are other ways to make redundant trip transfers possible if you just miss a connection with the new network that we have. Thanks, Melissa.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: I'm going to go to Charles next.
[SPEAKER_09]: Good evening. I just like to say I think the new map is a very big improvement over the previous version which previous version looks like it was drawn by a consultant who had never had to rely on bus service to get anywhere. That being said well is a big improvement I would second representative colleagues request that you allow I think it's important to have. More public meetings, more time to, for us to digest these. Map. Someone said they had been working on this since 2018. Here in Cambridge. The first we heard about this plan was last spring. Excuse me. So I think it's important to have more opportunity for public comment and maybe get a third draft. commenter. I live in West Cambridge myself. I am very grateful that the 74 is coming back. You are proposing massive service cuts to our neighborhood. Having the 74 and the 75 will mean that it's potentially usable to ride transit in the midday as opposed to just the rush hour. I see the rerouting of the Burlington-Winchester-Wolbert service. That's already a very long route. I sometimes use it myself. Right now it goes into Alewife. We're rerouting it into Davis through Medford. You're going to add 10 to 15 minutes to what's already a long route. And I think it'd be better to go into Alewife itself. Two other very quick comments. I think you're missing an opportunity of not extending the 71 to Newton corner. where currently, if you want to go from say Harvard Square to Newton corner. You have to change either change or make a very long walk at from Watertown and the change involves crossing major streets. I think it would be very simple now. You don't have the trackless trolleys just to extend the 71, make the loop around Newton Corner and come back to Watertown. So that's one suggestion. I think you're really missing an opportunity there. And another, I know that some of the residents of Cambridge have proposed that the 83 be extended from Range Avenue over the bridge on Alewife Parkway to the shopping centers there on Alewife. So there's a Those are my comments. Thank you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you so much for your feedback. It's much appreciated. Um, I do know some folks want to ask some follow up questions, but we're going to go through the people who haven't had a chance to speak yet. 1st. Um, they've been very patient this evening. Um, Allison.
[SPEAKER_11]: Hi, good evening. A couple comments. And first I want to thank you for the restoration of bus service on Heath Street between the VA hospital and Nubian Square. That's terribly important and it was just crazy that it was going to be completely eliminated. It is the VA hospital that is served by that route. In the breakout session, I think Josh was focused on BMC, but don't forget the VA hospitals for sure. I just wanted to ask very specifically that the individual route maps be listed as PDFs on your website because it's very hard to zoom in on some neighborhoods where there's multiple routes in order to see what particular streets are being used for those trips. Two follow-up concerns. Now that the route on Heath Street is going to be the 41 and it goes all the way to JFK, UMass, that does make a long trip. And another new route that you're proposing starting in Brooklyn Village, the T12, is also a very long route. And long trips, as your operators have said, can affect them, but also it can obviously affect reliability. So I do remain concerned about that. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you for your comments and your feedback tonight. Um, okay, so I'm going to go to Sasha. Merced mercy, Sasha.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Am I now yes, you're we can hear you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_12]: Okay. Thank you all for the work that you're doing, trying to balance these multiple concerns. My comments today are about Brighton, which I was dismayed to find has been really left out in most ways. The one thing that we moved here for was the 501, and that has been cut back. I understand it's an express bus, and it's quite far from some of the initiatives of the project. And yet, it is a bus that even now we're finding is poorly serviced. So to cut it back to just rush hour and away from Saturdays is in many ways to disconnect this part of the city from the downtown core. Similarly, the 65 that was to become the T15 was cut from Oak Square. I would hope you reconsider to stretch it back there as was previously proposed and to make the connection to Ruggles through the hospital area that is otherwise very disconnected from Brayden. And then I would talk about the 86. I know I made some comments there. I, however, prefer to end my thoughts with a question pertaining to the bus hiring plan. Would you please comment on how you intend to do that. I understand that you're opening this to persons who do not currently hold the CDL and are trying to be nimble and flexible in meeting the opportunity to create the high frequency routes throughout the city. But what are the numbers? How many drivers do you have now? When do you have plans to increase that by say 25% what is the phasing for how many drivers in phase one, phase two, phase three?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thanks for your question so we don't have specific numbers by year. We do know, obviously how many operators we have right now, how many we need to provide pre pandemic service and then ultimately how many we would need to provide the service that we're showing in this new network. So, it's. Maybe Melissa can bring up the exact numbers if you don't mind, Melissa. I don't have them in front of me, but it's something like a 50% increase in the number of operators that we have today is what is necessary in order to implement this full network. And that includes closing the gap between the number that we have today and the number that we would need in order to provide the pre-pandemic level of service that we have been providing. So we There are a lot of initiatives underway at the MBTA to address the hiring practices for operators and look at what the actual job conditions are like and the impact that those may have on people's desire to be a bus operators so folks are taking a look at at everything from our hiring practices to the actual job itself, and what it entails, so they can figure out how to make the job more appealing. more accessible for folks who are interested in being bus operators and then ultimately staff up to the level that we need. I believe we presented the numbers to the board of directors at their last meeting, but I don't recall the actual Members most of you have a pretty close.
[Unidentified]: So, just to get back to where we were pre coven we need to hire about 300 bus operators and then bus network redesign. That was just over 400 operators so about 700, I think 50 operators is what we're looking at over the five years. of this to kind of catch up to where we were and then include that growth that we're looking to add. So that's a massive number. And in order to make that position more appealing so that we can be more competitive and find the talent that we need in order to make this plan happen, we're looking at a lot of different ideas on how to make the position more appealing and some other different things.
[Adam Hurtubise]: And correctly from Ron Wilson, we have about 1500 operators today, I think.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you both. I'm going to go to Karen, but I also do want to emphasize, please, if you have a comment you want to make, please just use the comment form or post it in the chat and we will read it and we will retain it for the record. So Karen, I'm going to unmute you.
[SPEAKER_29]: Hi, my name is Karen Chavez and I live in Winthrop, Massachusetts. I'm not sure exactly where Melissa DeLay and Doug Johnson are getting their information from, but the Winthrop Transportation Committee no longer exists. And the purpose of that committee was not to eliminate a bus stop down as far as Deer Island at Point Shirley, but to add a bus stop going into the public landing so that people would make use of the ferry. I don't believe that either one of those people on a cold day in December when there was a nor'easter has ever walked from Deer Island down to the public landing to get the bus. I think if they did, they would see the necessity of extending that bus route back down to Deer Island, or as we better know, as the MWRA station. I am sorry that the MBTA and DOT has seen fit to eliminate that particular bus stop. I do not live at Point Shirley. I do not use the bus service in Winthrop. But I do have sympathy for all the people who live at Point Shirley who do use that bus service. And to walk that amount in a cold, wintry day is almost impossible. I do realize that they changed the stop from High Tide, which is probably another quarter of a mile or so down the road, up to the landing. Also, I think when you're commenting on what the town is, you don't say that it is just a stop. And it is the width of your club. It is not just a stop on the way. I wish that the MBTA and the DOT would go back and look at this. I realize we do have a ferry that goes into Boston a few times a day. but that does not compensate the people who live on the other end of that very route. Thank you.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you for your comments. I also want to note the time. It is 8.48. We have 12 minutes, and we do have a hard stop at this meeting at 9 o'clock because of the availability of the interpreters. I see five people have their hands raised. We are going to get to as many of them as possible in the next 12 minutes. But I do want to share, as Doug mentioned, we are going to have a subsequent follow-up meeting, so there will be more opportunities to ask questions and provide feedback. as well as there is the feedback form. But I'm going to stop talking and get to more questions. Anita, I'm going to unmute you now.
[Anita Nagem]: Hello. My name is Anita Nagum. I live in Medford, sorry, previously in Somerville. I want to echo the comments of Rep. Mike Connolly. He's not my rep, but I applaud his statement. I think it's unacceptable to proceed with this plan, which has many changes in it, without a full and fair comment period on the new proposal. Some problems have been solved, but many others have been created. And I question whether proceeding without a full and fair comment period would actually meet federal requirements for public participation. I'm very glad that the 89 and 87 have been restored in Somerville. I was part of a group that was very concerned with this, but I am very concerned with what is happening in Medford. I've spoken with over 200 people since this plan came out last Thursday. About half knew about this proposal because of the efforts of my neighbor and me. Half had not heard of it at all. There are two main issues in Medford. First, West Medford will be left with very little service. On Boston Avenue, west of North Street, and on High Street, on Boston Ave, there will only be the number 80 bus, which is running at the lowest frequency, including every 90 minutes after 7 p.m. The 96 will not be going to Harvard Square as it's terminus anymore. And the loss of service to Harvard Square is a major issue. There are many students and employees of Harvard that live in the area. In addition, you did not consider that Harvard Square is a main bus hub. Many people take buses to Harvard and transfer to other lines. The main campus of Cambridge Hospital is on Cambridge Street, accessible by the 69 bus from Harvard. In order for those of us in Medford who go there, we would have to now take three modes of transportation or else take a bus, walk one or two blocks and get on another bus. It is not a simple, it would not be a simple trip. One transfer was more than enough. You need to maintain access to the 69 bus for everyone who needs to get to Cambridge Hospital.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you. Those are all of my comments. Thank you so much, Anita. Much appreciated tonight. I'm going to go to Celine Parker.
[Unidentified]: Parker? Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_34]: I'm a resident of West Medford as well, and this follows up really nicely from the earlier comment. Just wanted to mention that bus route 94 that currently runs between Medford Square and Davis Square and cuts through West Medford is also remote in the proposal, and that severely restricts access to red line for West Medford residents. And also with changes to route 96, there is no longer a bus service between Medford and Harvard Square, which, as previously commented, is a frequent commute for many Medford residents. And I would like to suggest a potential solution to address both issues. That will be to reinstate bus route 94 as currently in place, which currently ends in Davis Square, and extend it to Harvard Square. So that will address both issues in terms of not limiting access to Red Line for West Medford residents, and also access to Harvard Square from Medford. And so I would really greatly appreciate if this option will be considered. And just want to add one more comment and finish with that. As someone who have used buses in both Medford and Cambridge, my personal observation is that buses that serve Medford are much more dated, creating both air and noise pollution. So I hope as part of this big project, renewing buses that serve Medford routes will also be seriously considered. Thank you so much.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you for your comments. I think we have time for two more questions tonight. I see one from FHSU, which I'll call in a minute, and Emily. My apologies to anyone else who wanted to make comments tonight, but just wanted to flag that. So FHSU, I'm going to unmute you.
[SPEAKER_31]: Hello, can you hear me?
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Yes, we can.
[SPEAKER_31]: Yes. Just quick question. It is really confused on the changes on the route. So just give me a little brief summary. At every square used to be before used to be five bus stop at every square. So in the future, how many bus is going to stop in every square?
[Unidentified]: Melissa. Oh, gosh, I'm on the spot. Well, it depends where you're going. Because from Everett Square, you can now get to Chelsea. You can get to East Boston. You can get to Sullivan. You can get to a bunch of different places. Everett has a lot more connections to a lot of different places. So there might be multiple routes, but it sort of depends on which way you're headed. So I guess that's it.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: It will still be five routes. As Melissa said, there are new connections that are created by the new network. So you'll be able to get to more places from Everett Square than you can today and a more frequent bus service. But the absolute number of routes is still five going through Everett Square.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Melissa. And Emily, I know had a follow up question for Melissa for her question about Somerville. So Emily, you will be the last question of the night. and I'm up to send me to do.
[SPEAKER_21]: Yeah, thanks so much. So I wanted to follow up on the idea that Winter Hill isn't a priority for the MBTA because of budget concerns, whatever. It's really not good to hear that. But also I'd like to say that, I'm sorry, it's just, It's really hard to hear that all the people in your neighborhood just will be getting in their cars. There was such a missed opportunity here to get people out of their cars and onto the buses. But there's no good way to get out of Winter Hill to get any place else. And that's, it's such a shame. And I just want, I feel like I'm speaking for a lot of people that this redesign, while an improvement for many places is not an improvement for Winter Hill. It's not an improvement for North Somerville. It's not an improvement for the environmental justice neighborhoods in North Somerville and East Somerville. And, you know, I think the MBT has to do better by us. That's it.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_21]: Thank you, Emily. I appreciate your comments and I appreciate the comments of everyone tonight who is provided very thoughtful feedback and really good questions. Doug, I'm going to turn it over to you now.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Thanks, Reagan.
[MCM00001519_SPEAKER_10]: Thank you, everyone who joined us tonight. We really appreciate your participation in this process. And the feedback that you've given us throughout it really did make the network much better. We sincerely apologize again, for the issues you ran into earlier with zoom and the maximum number of people that can be in one meeting, we will hold another meeting. and we will make sure that we don't run into a capacity limit again at that next meeting. We will notice that on the project website as soon as the meeting date has been selected. But for now, thank you all so much for participating in this. We really appreciate your time and we wish you all a good evening.