Two fare-free bus lines have seen a sharp increase in travel times.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) fare-free buses in Boston’s Mattapan and Roxbury neighborhoods are also some of the system’s slowest, effectively canceling out the benefits of free fares, according to a report from TransitMatters.
As Christian MilNeil explains in Streetsblog Mass, the Pokey/Schleppie Awards report compiles the MBTA’s slowest and most bunched bus routes. This year, it found that the fare-free 23 and 28 buses have average speeds of 6.6 and 6.7 miles per hour, some of the slowest in the network. “The 28 also suffered one of the biggest decreases in average speeds from the previous year,” down from 8.5 mph in 2023.
“For anyone whose time is more valuable than the minimum wage rate of $15 per hour (25 cents a minute), the cost of those longer bus trips outweighs the $1.70 savings of a fare-free bus ride,” MilNeil writes.
The report notes that nine of the 10 slowest buses in the 2024 report are in the heavily Black Roxbury neighborhood. In all of these cases, the buses don’t benefit from dedicated bus lanes on any part of their routes.
Read the full story: Paying With Their Time: Increasing Traffic Congestion Erodes Benefits of Boston’s Fare-Free Buses
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