Are the bus lanes near Brookline Village working? Town, MBTA say they need six more months to find out

A key town board on Wednesday recommended extending a controversial bus-only lane pilot near Brookline Village for at least another six months to allow the town and MBTA to keep testing out the concept.

The “Gateway East” project laid down a bus-only lane last July that runs in both directions of Washington Street between Station Street in Brookline Village and the Brookline-Boston border. Ridership is high for the 60, 65 and 66 bus routes that run along the Route 9 stretch, which the T says has historically been a major bus bottleneck.

Technical difficulties with the MBTA’s traffic signaling system have led to limited data to decide whether the lane should be permanent, said Dan Martin, a transportation engineer for the town, at a July 16 meeting of the Transportation Board.

The T’s Transit Signal Priority reduces delays for buses by extending green lights or shortening red lights when a bus is approaching a traffic signal. It wasn’t tracking bus movement until June because of third-party vendor delays, said Martin, meaning that most of the year-long pilot has taken place without an essential tool for speeding up buses.

“It’s been very frustrating to us as well, because that’s a big component of this project,” said Eileen Botti, an MBTA project manager. “We really regret that this wasn’t fully functional earlier, but we’re eager to see how it will impact the project through the next analysis period, and that will give us some information on its performance.”

Pilot Assessment and Public Feedback

Data presented on Wednesday shows that, as expected given the lane’s design, buses have sped up and overall car traffic has slowed down. Congestion in the area, present before the pilot, has persisted and at some intersections delays have been longer.

Botti’s nine-month update shows that during morning and evening peak traffic times, bus travel times within the stretch improved, compared to the same time last year. Outside of the study area and along their routes in Brookline, bus travel times remained steady or slightly worsened, compared to previous months.

The data indicates that more cars are skipping Route 9 traffic and moving to nearby side streets, confirming worries residents had previously voiced.

Public feedback collected by the T through June 4 has been largely negative. Survey respondents—roughly 70 percent of whom were drivers—expressed concerns about the lane’s safety and effectiveness.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents, or 178 of 305, strongly disagreed that the bus lane improved access for those driving through the area.

In emails, drivers described worsening traffic backups eastbound on Route 9 and near the Brookline fire station, and several noted multiple light cycles to clear intersections and traffic blocking Washington, Walnut, and Harvard streets.

Others also expressed frustration about lack of enforcement, sharing photographs of cars and trucks in the lane. Cyclists raised safety concerns about biking near vehicles and abrupt lane changes.

Long-standing problems from lane setup in Brookline Village

Brian Kane, chair of Brookline’s Transportation Board, said that multiple factors contribute to the ongoing traffic problems in the intersection.

“I just feel like we kind of screwed this whole thing up when we rebuilt Gateway East and put that dedicated bike lane all the way on the right, and now we’re trying to put in a bus lane…and also putting a left turn lane in,” said Kane. “This is one of those situations where we wouldn’t design it this way from the beginning, but here we are.”

Transportation Board members expressed frustration that the project would need more time, but voted to recommend to the Select Board that the study be extended so that data could be collected with the TPS functioning, while school is in session and during cold weather conditions.

“If the pilot stops at the end of August…the paint comes up and the signs go away…that gives us five weeks worth of information with all the bells and whistles turned on, which doesn’t seem like a great study to me,” Kane said.

If approved by the Select Board at a future meeting, the T will collect six more months of data and continue to provide updates every three months, with a final vote on keeping the lane to take place in May.

The Select Board’s next meeting is on July 29.