MBTA reviewing bus routes as it considers service changes
Frank Burke says he can count on the No. 64 bus. Not for getting him around the city, but for waking him up at odd hours of the night.
"When you have the street completely lined with cars and the bus is coming the other way, there's nowhere to pull in," said Burke, who hears the screeching brakes and honking horns caused by the tight squeeze on Hobart Street, near where he lives on Falkland Street. "Some of the residents end up parking on the sidewalk to avoid the buses, and they get a $40 ticket."
Burke and his neighbors may be in luck. As MBTA officials review ridership numbers and evaluate routes across the city, a process that takes place every two years, Boston City Councilor Mark Ciommo, who represents Allston/Brighton, has requested rerouting the bus to Brooks Street.
It's one of almost 100 changes that T officials have included in a proposal aimed toward increasing service without raising operating costs.
The proposed changes, discussed at a public hearing at the Honan-Allston Branch Library last week, include eliminating four bus routes as well as cutting back on more than a dozen other bus and ferry routes.
Among the routes recommended to be eliminated is a Silver Line route that connects City Point and South Station by way of the Seaport District, which averages less than half a passenger per trip. The No. 6 bus, which travels from South Station to Haymarket, and the No. 48 bus, linking commercial and residential areas in Jamaica Plain, are also slated to be cut due to low ridership.
Hearings on the MBTA's plans are also scheduled for noon tomorrow in the Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. Federal Building auditorium on Causeway Street; 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute, 305 South St., Jamaica Plain; and 2 p.m. Thursday in Room 333 at Northeastern's Curry Student Center, 360 Huntington Ave.
RICHARD THOMPSON 