Boston Express to expand its bus service from N.H.
There is good news for cash-strapped Granite State commuters interested in forgoing their gas-guzzling motor vehicles and hopping on the bus to Beantown: Boston Express, the state-subsidized bus line that operates commuter runs daily from Nashua, will be expanding its service to Londonderry this fall.
"Anything that increases commuters' options has to be good," David Preece, executive director of the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission, said last week.
The buses will depart from the new $6.9 million bus terminal and park-and-ride lot at Exit 5 off Interstate 93 scheduled to open in September.
"The lot will have parking for 440 vehicles and an overflow area for an additional 275 cars," Bill Boynton, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, said last week.
Bus service is currently available to commuters from another park-and-ride lot off exit 4 in Londonderry that will be eliminated when the new one opens.
Bus service will expand considerably when the new station opens. According to Kit Morgan, administrator of the New Hampshire Bureau of Rail and Transit, Concord Coach offers about eight trips daily from Londonderry to Boston, Monday through Friday, during peak commuting hours. Boston Express will offer 18 or 19 trips a day on the half-hour during peak commuting hours and hourly on off-peak hours. It will also offer service on weekends.
Boston Express is affiliated with Concord Coach. New Hampshire has signed a three-year, $4.8 million contract with Boston Express to subsidize bus service, and has bought 16 buses for the company at $460,000 each.
"We prefer to see it as giving a jump start to the project," said Boynton. "The spending is part of the environmental mitigation plan related to the I-93 widening project."
But the new service does come at a cost - a reduction in daily bus trips from Manchester, N.H.
"It will hurt the people who can least afford it, those who don't have cars and can't drive to the new station," said Preece. "We're trying to see if we can do something about it."
If you're wondering how much money, if any, you'll save by leaving the car in the garage and taking public transportation, check out the "transit calculator" at the MBTA's website, mbta.com. You can plug in your car's miles per gallon, the price of gas, length of commute, and parking cost, and it will calculate yearly commuting costs, which can be compared to the cost of taking the T.
MassHighway officials told members of the Lowell Junction/I-93 Development Area Task Force at its June meeting that the design won't be finalized until after the project's federal Environmental Impact Statement is drafted, possibly some time next summer. MassHighway is in the process of hiring a consultant for the environmental review and design process.
Starts & Stops appears every other Sunday in Globe Northwest. Transportation comments and questions may be sent to starts@globe.com. 