New T Map Highlights New ‘Frequent-Service’ Bus Routes

5:01 PM EDT on September 11, 2024

An MBTA subway map that includes lighter yellow lines showing the new "frequent Service" bus routes — The MBTA’s new fall 2024 rapid transit map highlights several new “frequent-service” bus routes in Everett, Chelsea, and Revere (upper right corner). Photo courtesy of Reddit user r/SupremeLeaderC, used with permission.

Earlier this week, Reddit user r/SupremeLeaderC spotted a brand-new MBTA subway map on the Green Line – one that illustrates the T's new "frequent-service" bus routes in Malden, Everett, and Revere.

The new routes are crowded into the extreme upper-right corner, in a part of the map that was mostly blank in the map's last edition. Though it occupies a relatively small part of the map, this region represents an area of roughly 12 square miles where a quarter-million people live.

A legend between the Orange and Blue lines highlights the new routes as "Bus Network Redesign Phase 1 – Effective December 2024."

A map of the northern part of the Boston region showing proposed changes to five bus routes in Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Revere, and Somerville: the 86, in the lower left of the map, which runs between Reservoir Station and Sullivan Square today, but would be shortened to end at Harvard Square in the future; the proposed "frequent-service" 109, which runs through Everett to Sullivan today, and would extend to Harvard in the future to pick up the discontinued segment of the 86; the frequent-service 116, between Maverick and Wonderland, the frequent-service 104, between Airport and Malden Center, and the frequent-service 110, between Wellington and Wonderland. — A map of bus route changes proposed under the first phase of the MBTA's bus network redesign. Dashed lines indicate existing bus routes that would be modified; thicker lines denote proposed "frequent-service" bus routes that would arrive every 15 minutes or less all day.

In another notable change, the Silver Line bus routes are now depicted in a thinner line on the official MBTA map.

The Silver Line mostly operates in curbside bus lanes or mixed traffic, except for a few segments of dedicated transitways in Chelsea and the Seaport.

Previous editions depicted the Silver Line in the same style as the subway and light rail lines, which gave visitors the impression that the Silver Line was another rapid-transit line (it is not).

Giving buses their own lanes was a unique street design when the Silver Line opened in 2001, and back then, it may have been unusual enough to merit a special graphic treatment on the T's map.

But more recently, the T has been rolling out out similar or better bus infrastructure on many other bus routes throughout the region, making the Silver Line less unique.