OPMI Data Blog – behind the scenes with MBTA data

Intersectional Rider Demographics 2022

A New Way to Look at MBTA Demographics In 2022, the MBTA launched our rolling “rider census” – a.k.a. the System-Wide Passenger Survey – to better understand who rides the system, and how that shifts over time. While this “census” is not a full technical accounting of every rider, it is our most comprehensive survey... Continue reading

Mapping Ridership Recovery

Introduction As MBTA ridership continues to recover from its drop in 2020, certain areas of the region are recovering at different rates. This blog post examines spatial patterns in the recovery of ridership across the MBTA’s bus and rapid transit systems. We measured ridership recovery by calculating ridership in the fall of 2021 as a... Continue reading

Ridership in Review: 2021 and Early 2022

At the beginning of 2021, we took a broad look at ridership throughout 2020 to identify some of the changing trends we were seeing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to do this at the end of 2021 as well, but just as things seemed to be reaching a steady state, the rise of... Continue reading

Analyzing Ridership Demographics Throughout Boston

How can we understand the demographics of riders across our system, to make equitable transit decisions? Depending on resources available, there are multiple methods transit agencies can use to try to estimate their ridership demographics, both to comply with Title VI and supporting policies and to make better decisions about their system regarding equity. A previous... Continue reading

Massachusetts Statewide Bike Survey: Summer 2021

The Massachusetts Statewide Bicycle Survey was conducted over the Summer of 2021 to get a holistic picture of the state of biking across Massachusetts and how it was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. We were interested in how, when, and why people biked both before and during the pandemic, and how they imagined their biking... Continue reading

Improving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Bus Network

The MBTA strives to provide good service to riders, but what does providing “good service” really mean? In this post, we will explore this concept as it relates to bus service. For over a decade, the MBTA has been redefining our approach to “good bus service” to better capture the benefits bus service can provide... Continue reading

MBTA Station Prints 2 – The Answers

Thank you for taking our second Station Prints Quiz! Let’s take a look at the answers to see which station matched which prints.

The MBTA’s First Service Delivery Policy Annual Report

OPMI is proud to release the first-ever MBTA Service Delivery Policy Annual Report.

MBTA Station Prints Quiz 2

Here on the Data Blog, we previously posted a station prints quiz where readers were given daily ridership graphs for anonymous stations and tasked with identifying which station the graph belonged to (we also provided the answers). With new travel patterns emerging because of the pandemic, we would like to put our readers’ subway knowledge... Continue reading

Creating a Road Map of “Busable” Streets

Greater Boston's makeup has changed significantly in recent years, with shifting demographics, emerging employment districts, increasing traffic congestion, and changing travel patterns. Meanwhile, up until recently, much of the MBTA bus network had not seen any changes since the 1960s. To remedy this, the MBTA created the Bus Network Redesign, an initiative that aims to... Continue reading