Getting around the Seaport District by car can be a royal pain, especially during the evening commute. According to the Boston Herald, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA) thinks it has the solution. It wants to get into the shuttle bus business.
Many of the area's businesses already offer shuttle bus services for their employees. Fidelity (through Boston Coach) and Vertex, for example, offer their employees transportation to the T and to their other office locations. There are currently 20 different companies offering service, many with multiple buses per line (the Herald article says there are 74 buses on a typical day), which adds to the congestion even as it decreases the number of cars on the road.
The MCCA figures a way to improve the situation is to reduce the number of shuttle buses. It is proposing to take over control of shuttles going in and out of the Seaport and replacing them with a fleet of its own buses. The MCCA would replace the 74 buses with as few as 19, and reduce the number of routes from 20 to just 3.
They'd have to get area companies on board with this, which might require some strong-arming on their part. Businesses may want to remain in control, and it's highly likely that many employees would protest, given the inconvenience of having to wait longer for (shared) buses and have to walk to get to the buses (instead of them being right out their buildings' front doors).
The transportation problem in the Seaport will only get worse if nothing is done. The Seaport is booming: according to the South Boston Waterfront Sustainable Transportation Plan that was released in January, ten million square feet of development was built between 2000 and 2013, bringing in more than 4,100 new residents and 7,700 jobs, and over the next two decades, another 17 million square feet of development is underway or planned - including 5,300 new residences, 6 million square feet of new office and research space, nearly one million square feet of port and maritime-related uses and (possibly) more than a doubling of convention and hospitality space.
So, something's got to be done.
A longer version of this post can be found on my other website.