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It’s a good time for public transit in Massachusetts, says SRTA Administrator Erik Rousseau.
Fares are now a thing of the past on local buses around the state. Sunday service is here to stay on the South Coast. And SRTA is testing out new “microtransit” vans to serve the South Coast Rail stations.
“Our ridership has exploded,” Rousseau said in an interview with The Light. “It’s a good problem to have.”
The free and expanded service is funded by state grants, including revenue from the so-called millionaires tax passed by voters in 2022.
This month, for the second year in a row, state lawmakers approved funding from the millionaires tax to make fares free on local buses outside Greater Boston. Most regional transit authorities, including SRTA, opted into the program during the fiscal year that ended last month.
But now, free rides aren’t optional. With the latest budget, the Legislature rewrote a state law to mandate that regional transit authorities stop charging fares on their regular routes and demand-response services. The new law requires the state to reimburse the authorities for lost fare revenue.
A report released earlier this year found that SRTA ridership rose 56% when fares were eliminated.
Rousseau said he didn’t have final numbers on this past fiscal year yet, but the estimates are staggering. SRTA has never provided more than 3 million trips in a previous fiscal year, but in this past cycle, it provided more than 4 million trips, he said.
Recent service expansions also contributed to the increase in trips, Rousseau said.
Sunday bus service, introduced in January last year, contributed almost 300,000 trips, he said. An express bus service on the popular intercity route between New Bedford and Fall River, reintroduced late last year, also added to the trip tally.
SRTA has added more buses to meet the increased demand, Rousseau said. Those buses aren’t meant to increase the frequency of service, but instead to help keep the current routes on schedule.
“I’d love to increase frequency,” he said. “Anything that we do, we want to ensure as much as reasonably possible that it’s going to stay in place. I don’t want to put things out there and then take it right back.”
Rousseau’s cautious approach comes from the way public transit is funded in Massachusetts. SRTA can get a state grant to expand service during one budget year and lose it during the next. For example, the authority introduced night service in Fairhaven in 2019, only to cut it in 2022 when the state funding ran out.
“So, the changes that we’ve been making recently is to keep up with the expectations that are already existing,” Rousseau said.
New service: Vans to South Coast Rail
The latest addition to SRTA service is a fleet of “microtransit” vans to help serve the South Coast’s new MBTA commuter-rail stations that opened in March. Riders can use an app to call the vans within a certain area a few miles around the stations, much like an Uber. Each ride costs $1.
SRTA has fixed-route buses that run near the stations, but the microtransit service solves a timing problem.
Buses run from 5:20 a.m. until 9:40 p.m. on weekdays, but service is limited during early-morning and late-night hours. That leaves a gap for riders trying to connect to the stations, where trains start running at 4:25 a.m. and arrive as late as 1:38 a.m.
Microtransit provides service during most off-peak hours when people typically commute. The vans are currently available on weekdays from 4:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Rousseau said.
Initial ridership has been “pretty steady,” he said, with about 100 rides per month. SRTA hasn’t heavily advertised the service during the early rollout, but there are plans to get the word out this fall, Rousseau said.
He added that SRTA is open to tweaking the hours or service area in response to feedback. A state grant is funding the vans through at least the end of this fiscal year next June.
That same grant is also funding the intercity express bus reintroduced last year.
“You don’t realize how helpful it can be until you’re somebody that gets on a bus in Fall River and it takes you an hour and five minutes to get to New Bedford, and you saw the whole world along the way and that was wonderful, but you really wanted to get to your doctor’s appointment,” Rousseau said. “To be able to do that in 25 minutes instead is a game-changer.”
Upcoming changes in the works
SRTA has plans to improve its bus stops, mostly by upgrading signage to include route information and a QR code that will show when the next bus is arriving. Shelters could be introduced at some stops, depending on land availability.
“Having some basic information at the bus stop should be the bare minimum,” Rousseau said.
But first, he said, the authority needs to take a look at its stops to make sure they are still spaced efficiently. There are currently more than 1,000 SRTA stops and reducing that number could help speed up service, he said.
There isn’t a specific timeline for these improvements, but Rousseau hopes work will start soon. SRTA has just hired a new planning director who will work on the project.
SRTA is also working with the Greater Attleboro and Taunton Regional Transit Authority and Brockton Area Transit to develop a bus service to connect Fall River, Taunton, and Brockton.
Four fully electric buses will join SRTA’s fleet in the “near future,” funded by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection from a legal settlement with Volkswagen, Rousseau said. Federal grants have already paid for 40 new hybrid buses that SRTA used to replace older vehicles in its 70-bus fleet over the past two years.
A mixed funding outlook
After a series of “lean years,” local transit authorities have a new source of funding in the millionaires tax, which was created by the Fair Share Amendment in 2022. This state surtax on incomes over $1 million generates revenue for a fund dedicated to transportation and education. The Legislature then chooses how to spend that money, and in the last two budgets it has poured tens of millions of dollars into regional transit authorities to fund free fares and other service improvements.
The extra state money made it possible for SRTA to add long-awaited Sunday buses last year, Rousseau said. Increased contributions from local governments also helped fund the new service.
In 2024, state assistance accounted for 41% of SRTA’s revenue, jumping from 24% in the previous year.
Federal assistance accounted for 25% of SRTA revenue in 2024, local governments contributed 12%, and capital grants from a combination of state and federal sources made up most of the remainder.
Rousseau said he’s keeping an eye on SRTA’s federal funding sources as President Donald Trump slashes spending across the federal government. He hasn’t seen any signs of imminent transit cuts, he said.
“It’s hard to be optimistic, but we’re doing OK relative to many other entities that are similar to us,” Rousseau said. “I don’t know how long that will last.”
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
This is exciting as someone who uses the transit. The only thing that I’d add is that I’d truly like to see the BusTracker app to be useable. This was GLORIOUS to know if I was going to miss a bus or if I had already missed a bus, as they aren’t always on time.
I reached out to SRTA weeks ago via email and social media about the Bustracker app not working. I haven’t received any response. The app hasn’t worked since at least February, and there’s been no official statement explaining why. Riders deserve communication and clarity, especially while SRTA is touting record ridership and expanding service. Quite the juxtaposition: “We made fares free, but had to shut off GPS so the service wouldn’t be ‘too’ good.”
This is good news, with the cost to buy, insure, and maintain a vehicle being out of reach of a lot of people. This is a valuable service that will help out a lot residents of Massachusetts.
Is there a bus that goes to Price Rite on South Street? Can I get the bus closer to where I live, on Seventh Street?