TransitMatters Launches All-New Data Dashboard

Today, TransitMatters is releasing a new, totally overhauled version of our Data Dashboard.

Since its founding, TransitMatters has focused on helping Greater Boston advocate for the safe, frequent, and reliable transit that it deserves. Boston is fortunate to have passionate and tireless journalists, elected officials, and advocates working to advance these outcomes, and TransitMatters is evolving to fill an essential niche in this policy-making ecosystem: data.

We can only advocate for what we understand, and our volunteers have begun to monitor, analyze, and visualize data so policymakers, riders, and other transit enthusiasts can advocate for a better transit network.

Key Metrics for Transit

There are many ways to measure service quality, and TransitMatters has explored several of them. Some have landed in the Boston Globe, and others have gotten traction on social media. The new dashboard makes it easier to explore some key metrics.

Service on the Blue Line deteriorated after system-wide speed restrictions were imposed on March 10. Total round trips went from 97% of scheduled to 80%.

• Service: How much service is the T providing? This is measured in daily vehicle trips, or the number of times a train or bus makes the complete round trip with passengers. More service means shorter wait times, fewer crowded cars, and faster travel times overall.

Average speed on the Green Line peaked in May 2020. This was likely caused by reduced car traffic. Transit Signal Priority (TSP) projects could create similar speed improvements in the long term.

• Speed: How quickly can riders move through Boston? This is presented as a monthly average in miles per hour. It’s calculated across the entire line, in both directions, including dwell times.

The T promised that the Orange Line would be faster after the Orange Line shutdown. But today, there are almost 15 minutes of delay.

• Slow Zones: How much additional time should riders allow their trip to take? This is measured as the additional minutes and seconds it takes a vehicle to complete an end-to-end trip compared to historical averages. These delays are mostly caused by slow zones.

Ridership across the system dropped dramatically after WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Ridership on the Red Line has steadily increased and is currently about 40% of the peak.

• Ridership: How are riders responding to the experience offered by the T? This is measured in one-way trips (every time a passenger taps their fare card), and presented as daily totals.

These are crucial and high-level indicators of system health, and this new view provides them all at a glance: casual visitors don’t need to know what they’re looking for. And clicking on the name of each top-level metric chart leads to more data on the same theme.

Detailed information on Slow Zones in the new Data Dashboard.

If you want to deep-dive into historical data, the dashboard has you covered, too. Maybe you want to better understand how a specific derailment affected headways for the rest of the day. You might be curious if the wider doors on the new Orange Line trains improved dwell times. Or perhaps you noticed that your commute on the Red Line has gotten slower, and you want to find out when that started. You can still select a pair of stations and get all this data — for a single day, or a whole year.

Pick a historical day or date range to view detailed performance data.

We have big plans for the future of the Data Dashboard. Over time we plan to add up-to-the-minute system status, metrics for on-time performance and vehicle bunching, and more data about bus and Commuter Rail service—also, flexible interfaces for power users to go deeper into the data we already have. The Dashboard will be a unified home for all of it, and we’re excited to see it evolve alongside Boston’s transit network in the coming months, years, and decades.

Eight Minutes to Park Street

The first section of our subway system opened in 1897. What we have, we have inherited. It cannot be an easy task for the MBTA to keep a century’s worth of history and know-how in mind as it operates, modernizes, and expands the system. There are now several generations’ worth of maps, schematics, and timetables to be referenced — layer upon layer of their hopes and frustrations and sparks of brilliance if you know how to look. But for all that we have, much more has likely been lost. Our memory of transit past is imperfect and leaky. (Can you blame us? We have places to be.)

A photo of Harvard Square subway station advertising “8 Minutes to Park St.” (source, Lynch, Kevin; Kepes, Gyorgy; Bichajian, Nishan, released under CC-BY-NA 3.0).

Today’s Red Line riders might find the photo above surprising. In the mid-1950s, a trip from Harvard to Park Street appeared to take eight minutes. Today it takes 50% longer than that. If we want to hold our transit system to a standard we know can be achieved, we need a detailed record of what used to be possible. And, fundamentally, that’s what the Data Dashboard is for. We’re building this for the transit riders of today, but also for the 2030s, 2040s, and beyond. Of course, we hope that they’ll be enjoying a more expansive and functional system. But as likely as not, they’ll find echoes of their problems in the ones we’re facing now.

A screenshot of our Data Dashboard, shows a nearly 13-minute travel time for the same trip on a typical Wednesday.

We hope that you’ll check out the new Data Dashboard, and share your insights from it with your friends, your neighbors, and on social media. We would love any feedback on what else you’d like to be able to do with this tool (or what’s just not working) via social media or using this form. And if you want to support our efforts to tell the story of transit in Boston for decades to come, please consider supporting our work by becoming a member.

TransitMatters Executive Director's Public Comment At June MBTA Board Meeting

Below is the full transcript of the public comments our Executive Director, Jarred Johnson, presented to the MBTA Board on June 22, 2023:

“Good morning, Secretary Fiandaca, Chair Glynn, General Manager Eng, members of the board, and staff. I appreciate the opportunity to provide public comment. 

My name is Jarred Johnson, the Executive Director of TransitMatters and a proud T rider. 

I want to acknowledge that I truly appreciate how much the tenor of these board meetings has changed. I want to thank the new and returning board members for their work. I know this is not easy and is a serious time commitment. I also want to acknowledge the positive changes the Healey Administration has already started making. This is my first comment with General Manager Eng, a welcome addition. I’m also pleased to see the marshaling of resources to encourage mode shift during the Sumner closure. 

I appreciate the countless hours that went into the CIP, but this agency is at a crossroads. It can’t continue to put out the same old type of plan that, despite the hard work, is essentially meaningless because it omits so much and is indecipherable to anyone outside of the agency.  

I was shocked to read in the Globe months ago that the CIP contains about 10-12% of safety and reliability-related requests. I know that it will take time to get a full accounting of the system’s needs and develop a timeline for digging out of the mess the Baker Administration left behind. But I can do simple math and a 5-year plan that tackles about 10% of what is probably a drastic undercount of safety and reliability needs doesn't inspire hope. 

And this is before we get to the needed modernization efforts. While others might dismiss commuter rail electrification, and Red–Blue Connector as frivolous expansion projects, they are critical to the resilience and reliability of the system. An opportunity like the MBTA Communities Act and the potential to alleviate some of the nation’s worst traffic combined with the condition of the MBTA’s locomotive fleet, should elevate, and indeed, accelerate the nearly 4-year-old commitment to regional rail. But that’s not what the CIP reflects.

To this point, I actually found the language at the last CIP update insulting. 400 people did not send in letters to tell the MBTA good job on the regional rail efforts. If this plan is a 5-year outlook, we will be woefully behind international peers and not reach the Governor's own 2040 goal. Parking failing locomotives in a $2-3 billion dollar station expansion that could be made significantly cheaper or eliminated by more reliable modern technology and a world standard operating model is not a plan. It is a deeply unserious distraction from the real work.

We must do something different with this CIP. Transit is in trouble across the country. But what has never worked, is scaling back ambition, looking inward, and failing to tap into the two greatest resources an agency has: its workers and its riders. 

I’ll stick to speaking for the riders, but I would imagine that many of the MBTA’s staff and labor partners feel the same way. It’s time for this agency to fight. It’s time for this agency to demonstrate what I know because I have friends who work at the MBTA and because I talk with incredibly smart and dedicated civil servants that I call colleagues. But the everyday rider doesn’t see that. As my colleague mentioned, they see poorly executed diversions and outdated infrastructure. And what they don’t see is any vision for the future or any glimmer of hope for when they will have regular service. 

Much of this is ultimately the fault and the responsibility of the General Court. But a closed mouth will never get fed. I will end by saying you have an unprecedented amount of support to shake things up and to do things differently, both from the advocacy community and from riders. But the MBTA has to take the first step. Right now riders, the economy, and our environment are the victims of the world’s most pointless and maddening game of chicken. It’s time for the MBTA to ask for what it needs and advocate more forcefully on behalf of riders. And we’re here to help you.”

For media inquiries, please e-mail media@transitmatters.org. 

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New TransitMatters Report: The Way Forward on Regional Rail

BOSTON, MA, June 1, 2023 –  Commuter Rail is at a crossroads. Work schedules have become more flexible, lower-income workers contend with unreliable, expensive, and infrequent trains, traffic increases, and the Commonwealth draws nearer to its 2050 net zero emissions goal. Now is a crucial time to start making progress towards the transformation of the commuter rail system that the MBTA committed to in 2019. To that end, today TransitMatters released Turning Vision into Reality, a report which urges Governor Healey, the Massachusetts Legislature, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to make a concerted effort to advance this transformation.

“The transformation of our commuter rail network is still just as pressing as ever,” said Jarred Johnson, TransitMatters’ executive director. “If we want to spur the needed housing development, tackle congestion, and significantly cut transportation emissions through mode shift, making Regional Rail a reality is a must.”

Regional Rail improvements such as electrification and high platforms allow for significant frequency increases, trip time reductions of up to 50%, and universal accessibility. 

Sen. Brendan Crighton praised the report, saying “Our outdated transportation system in Massachusetts fails to meet the diverse needs of our residents today. It's time to modernize our commuter rail and invest in Regional Rail that will create more affordable, sustainable, and reliable service. By embracing this transformation, we can ensure a transportation network that connects communities, reduces traffic congestion, and promotes economic growth.”

The report also urges the MBTA to lower and rationalize Commuter Rail fares to boost ridership. Today’s expensive, inequitable fare system forces lower-income riders into long, less reliable bus trips, while needlessly suppressing ridership in a world where many pre-Covid commuter rail riders work part or full time from home.

“If we want to truly be a Massachusetts for all, few priorities can have more of an impact than an electrified, reliable, fast, and affordable Regional Rail,” added Rep. Andy Vargas. “The status quo $24 round trip from Haverhill to Boston will never attract ridership.”

With the MBTA facing an enormous budgetary shortfall and ridership not fully recovered to pre-COVID levels, it is vital to advance a vision of a high ridership, low cost public transportation system that works for everyone rather than a managed decline. To this end, TransitMatters makes recommendations based on the practices of transit agencies which have successfully managed major projects. Particularly crucial steps are an expanded in-house planning team, permitting reform for environmentally beneficial projects, and standardization of infrastructure wherever possible. Implementing these changes requires consistent funding and oversight from the Massachusetts Legislature. 

With the opportunity window to deploy federal infrastructure funding closing, the rezoning of communities along the Commuter Rail, and a supportive administration, now is the best moment to advance this transition. The Commonwealth can shape the future it needs to remain competitive, livable, and affordable. Regional Rail is crucial to doing so; it’s time to move forward. 

About TransitMatters: TransitMatters advancespeople-focused and data-driven solutions to advocate for better public transportation and mobility that provides access and opportunities for everyoneacross the Commonwealth, addresses climate change and inequality, and strengthens our economy.