Last week, after years of construction, the MBTA opened its new concourse for intercity buses at the South Station Bus Terminal, located above the railway platforms at Boston's South Station.
The new concourse is one of the final components of the South Station Tower project, which has been under construction since 2020 and was initially approved by the Boston Planning and Development Agency (today known as the Boston Planning Department) in 2006.
The developers agreed to build the new bus concourse as part of their deal to build a new tower above the publicly-owned tracks at South Station.
The new concourse adds 12 new berths and a large new waiting area to the bus terminal, which originally opened in 1995.
One component of the new concourse that's still not yet open to the public is a new elevator and staircase (pictured below) that will connect the northern end of the bus terminal directly to the South Station headhouse, at the end of the boarding platforms.
This new entrance will considerably reduce the distance that passengers will need to walk to transfer between buses and trains.
Currently, the most direct connection from the bus terminal to most of the train platforms involves walking out the bus terminal's main entrance on Atlantic Avenue near Beach Street, then re-entering South Station at the Essex Street entrance.
10,000 passengers a day
The expansion of the bus terminal comes as Boston's intercity bus services are still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
An MBTA spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS that the bus terminal currently sees about 10,000 passengers a day. In 2019, the agency estimates that about 14,000 people a day used the bus terminal.
The decline in passengers reflects a decline in the number of buses that serve the station. MBTA data indicate that the bus terminal served 5,723 departures in October 2025, which is down 23 percent compared to October 2019.
However, the number of passengers and departures have both been growing steadily since 2020.
With the completion of the new concourse, the terminal now has space to accommodate considerably more departures, and more bus lines.
The MBTA told StreetsblogMASS that OurBus, a carrier based out of New York City that currently picks up and drops off passengers at various curbside locations, will start using the South Station Bus Terminal later this fall.
