Wu Says Blue Hill Ave Buses Will Take Nearly Half the Time. The MBTA's Own Page Says 'Up to 15 Minutes.'

At the Sept. 30 meeting on the Blue Hill Avenue plan, Mayor Michelle Wu said the new design would "nearly cut in half the amount of time the bus rides along the corridor," and that "a bus would come every three to six minutes," WBUR reported. The MBTA's project page says something smaller: the plan supports 1,400 bus trips a day and saves "up to 15 minutes in travel time during peak hours."

Those can both be true. "Up to 15 minutes" is a ceiling on savings, and "nearly half" depends on how long the trip takes today, which neither source states for the whole corridor. I haven't seen a published before-and-after run time for Mattapan Square to Grove Hall. If someone has it, send it.

What the public record does establish is the scale. The MBTA says Blue Hill Ave has 10 bus routes carrying more than 40,000 riders each weekday, that riders collectively lose 3,056 hours a week in traffic, and that there's no transit priority infrastructure now. WBUR says the plan is part of a roughly $163 million overhaul, with federal grants covering more than half and $80 million secured in March. Construction would start no earlier than 2028 and could take up to three years. The design is 30 percent complete.

The opposition is real and specific. State Rep. Christopher Worrell told WBUR that moving stops to the middle of the road puts "people running across two lanes of traffic." Councilor Miniard Culpepper wants the city to look at an Orange Line extension and says grant money could go to lighting and sidewalks now. A Mattapan dry cleaner who has owned his shop since the early 1980s said competition for parking, especially during construction, could close him within months. Supporters include a resident who called the project an end to historical disinvestment in the Black community and a Transportation for Massachusetts advocate who said it makes the corridor fully accessible for the first time.

My read, as opinion: both numbers should be published with their math. A mayor's line at a town hall isn't a travel-time study. The T has the ridership and delay figures to show one, and the people who live on the avenue deserve to see it before the design is finalized.

What we still don't know: the current and projected end-to-end bus times, how many of the 42 new parking spaces WBUR mentions offset the spaces lost, and what the city will change after the September and October feedback. Osgood said updated designs would be shared before December.