Boston’s New Columbus Ave. Busway Opens This Saturday

The MBTA and the Boston Transportation Department have announced that the region's first center-running bus transitway, on Columbus Avenue in Roxbury, will open this Saturday, October 30.

The new bus lanes will run between Walnut Avenue (at the northern edge of Franklin Park) and the Jackson Square Orange Line station, benefiting the MBTA’s 22, 29, and 44 bus routes. The project also built 8 new bus platforms to serve the corridor, with large shelters, screens that display real-time arrival information, and shorter, high-visibility crosswalks.

The MBTA released this sizzle reel of the new infrastructure on Tuesday, featuring drone footage of a test bus and some of the new amenities at project's bus platforms:

Earlier this year, planners approved funding for a $15 million project to extend the transitway further north along Columbus Avenue and Tremont Street to the Ruggles station in Roxbury.

That northern extension is expected to benefit even more riders: while the under-construction segment south of Jackson Square carries three bus routes, the segment of Tremont Street between Ruggles and Malcolm X Boulevard carries six routes, including four of the most heavily-used, frequent-running bus lines in the MBTA system: the 15, the 22, the 23, and the 28.