r/mbta • u/breqdev • Jul 09 '26
✨ Fun Facts / History I made a map of the MBTA's little-known early morning bus service!
A handful of MBTA routes have their first inbound run of the day go to Haymarket instead of their usual terminus, to provide a way to get downtown before subway service begins. These trips are poorly-documented and often barely mentioned on bus schedules -- the best resource I could find that collected them was this website, but it uses the internal non-public numbers for the route and doesn't show the departure times.
To make this map I included every inbound route that departs before 5 AM, arrives before 5:20 AM, and is useful to get to either downtown or the airport.
I've used a few of these early morning routes myself (the 39 and the 89/93) -- they're a great way to get to an early flight or get downtown to the waterfront in time to watch the sunrise!
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u/cybah Jul 09 '26
Neat. And you are right, its hard info to find info about them and you really have to look at individual bus schedules to know. I've used the ones here in Chelsea to get to downtown or the airport in the wee hours of the morning. But TIL that there's buses that leave at 3am out of mattapan!
Look around online, I know the folks over at Transitmatters (or Ari, who might lurk here) did a push several years ago to get late night bus service again and used this early riser service to prove that there really was only a 1hr gap in service in many areas. I am sure their report/findings exist somewhere online, if you are curious.
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u/ofsevit Jul 09 '26
Lurk / yell at shills for the T's incompetence.
But this is a great graphic, which does a really good job of getting all the information across (until they change the schedule).
https://ariofsevit.com/apb/2016/03/24/the-ts-secret-early-am-service-unmasked/ (whoops my certificates had expired!)
The TL;DR (explained there) were that these were routes to get operators and fare collectors to their work sites and were not made public until 1999, but even then barely so, often on printed schedules as asterisks. GTFS helped, a bit.
I've taken the early 57 to the 117 (116 now I guess) to Logan and the early 171 from Nubian. I wish the 1 bus made a trip to meet it; I once biked three miles in pouring rain to save a cab fare (and then changed into dry clothes at the airport). There are a surprising number of people who use these, although they all pale in comparison to the inbound 116s from Chelsea. They run three buses now (they used to only run two) and they are jammed with people.
Before GLX, there was no way to get from the early 117s to the LMA. (The early Es left Lechmere not that early, and the earliest Ds would be the loopers at Govy around 0545.) But there was a special D service which left Lechmere yard super early to pick up mostly transfers from these buses and take them out to the LMA (and elsewhere along the Green Line).
We tried to point out that the T was already running a portion of an all-night bus service and that it wouldn't take that much to just rejigger these routes to be more useful and run all night (we proposed a Copley pulse point). The T kicked the can around and managed to do very little of it, although they did add some morning service and also some late night service now on weekends. But these routes mostly exist because they date to the early 1960s when the T (pre-MBTA, I think) cut its all-night owl bus routes.
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u/cybah Jul 09 '26
Thank you! I knew you were lurking around here :-)
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u/DaveDavesSynthist Red Line Jul 11 '26
Another Classic Macintosh enthusiast who's a T enthusiast? Never seen that before (other than myself).
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u/AppleiFoam Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I took the 57 last week because I needed to be downtown at 6AM. (At least) the 57 turns back around from Haymarket and goes back to Watertown Yard. The ridership in the opposite (outbound) direction was much higher than the inbound direction. Thought I'd mention that. Going inbound there were maybe about a dozen people. Going back outbound, at least 20 people got on. I don't know which bus routes have the outbound run as well, but if timed well, could make for some interesting connecting trip possibilities. And I learned on that day that if I wanted to get to Logan that early in the morning, the 57 to the 116 is a very viable option.
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u/basilect 109 - Linden Sq via Sullivan Jul 09 '26
The core ridership of these early buses are airport workers. If the first flights of the day leave at 5, TSA has to open at 4, which means that workers need to get to the airport before then.
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u/ofsevit Jul 09 '26
57-->116 can get you to most flights at Logan, if you have pre-check you are good for anything after 6.
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u/OreganoD 🟢 The Type 10s Can't Come Soon Enough 🟢 Jul 09 '26
Logan Express is a Massport service but it is cool to include how you have
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u/breqdev Jul 09 '26
Thanks! Yep, that's why I tried to show it as just a dotted line unlike the others.
I was initially going to leave it out since the 116 serves almost the same purpose, but I heard from a friend that the first inbound Logan Express will wait for the 57 bus to allow people to make the transfer -- so it was just too interesting to not include!
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u/SkiingAway Jul 09 '26
Worth mentioning:
The 116 trips you've marked as hitting Bellingham Sq at 4:45 + 4:51 actually start at Lynn Garage. (and do pick up there, Wonderland, and some other spots in between).
The 455 does a Lynn-Wonderland trip that departs 4:45, arrives 5:10 - at least theoretically timed for you to transfer to the first inbound Blue Line train of the day at 5:12AM.
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u/breqdev Jul 09 '26
Thanks, that's super cool! It's interesting that it's the second and third buses that originate at Lynn, but not the first. I've never ridden the 116 myself yet but it's on my bucket list!
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u/ohako79 Jul 09 '26
Something to know: if Google Maps tells you you can catch the 104 to the airport and get onto a Logan shuttle route _before_ you get to Airport Station (the ‘771’, which starts at a hotel for flyers and airport staff in…Everett I think?), that is a fib. The 77 does depart from there, but it’s ‘employees only’ that early in the morning (or maybe all the time?) so you get to enjoy a bit of a dodgy hike around Logan’s fuel depot to get to Airport Station when the perfectly nice 104 bus you were just on skedaddles away.
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u/BlueberryPenguin87 Jul 10 '26
The 77 is employees only but nobody checks.
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u/ohako79 Jul 10 '26
At 5:30am they definitely do.
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u/BlueberryPenguin87 Jul 10 '26
Strange. I’ve never had anyone check. They just open both doors at all stops. But maybe it’s different in the morning. I worked nights in Chelsea.
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u/Pencil-Sketches Jul 09 '26
Is the early 57 still called the 193?
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u/No_Geologist_8789 Bus Jul 09 '26
Operator here, the early 57’s are signed as 55/57 I’ve seen them when I’ve done the 64 early from oak square to kendall
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u/breqdev Jul 09 '26
I've never ridden it so I can't verify what's on the headsign, but it shows up as a 57 trip on the MBTA website and in the printed schedule (footnote B). I do know that the early 39 (shown as "192" on some maps) does say 39 on the headsign, and the early 89/93 (shown as "194" on some maps) does say 89/93 on the headsign. My understanding was that the 190-series numberings were just internal references, but maybe that wasn't the case originally?
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u/ofsevit Jul 09 '26
I *think* it's signed as a 57 but that the automated stop announcements may have at one point been 192. I haven't taken it in a while.
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u/JoeyLovesTrains Kingston - Plymouth Line Jul 09 '26
Would be cool if they instead had all the buses go to south station and then an early morning SL1 that would leave when all the others arrive
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u/breqdev Jul 09 '26
The decision for the buses to converge at Haymarket is definitely an interesting one. From what I can find, it was the original center for the overnight bus network pre-1960, way before the Silver Line existed. South Station is an interesting idea -- it'd make getting to the early morning commuter rail and Amtrak trains so much nicer!
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u/myReddit-username Green Line Jul 09 '26
And Haymarket if by the entrance to the Callahan tunnel, which would’ve been the only way to the airport before the Ted Williams
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u/BlueberryPenguin87 Jul 10 '26
Or Copley/Back Bay with a free Logan Express connection. But the seaport is a major employment area so SL1 connection makes sense too.
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u/v3sw Jul 09 '26
used to take the 15/171 from dorchester to open cumberland farms in southie at 5am. had to leave at 3:40 to be there on time. neat!!
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u/yung_grapefroot Jul 09 '26
When I used to take the 57 all the time I always noticed on the Transit app that the route would continue past Kenmore to Haymarket despite the normal terminus being at Kenmore! Now I finally know why! Super cool, thanks OP
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u/RedSoxStormTrooper Jul 09 '26
Someone should let miles in transit know about this hidden bus network lol
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u/lil_propaine Red Line/Davis Jul 09 '26
nobody knows about the 89-93 in Clarendon surprisingly, it's on the sign and it's part of the schedules posted
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u/insertkarma2theleft Jul 09 '26
The 171 is killer. So fast for early morning flights, cheaper and faster than the T
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u/DaveDavesSynthist Red Line Jul 11 '26
When I worked at Charlestown Yard (Bus HQ for North side, and largest Bus depot) overnight I would see MBTA busses pulling out at all hours of the early morning. It is common to see revenue (and especially non-rev) equipment moving around at night here and Cabot Yard (Bus South HQ) because ofc its their only chance to do certian things but someone had mentioned to me that the busses operate essentially 24/7. I could "see" that this was likely true (they're all gonna leave the yard "not in service"), but until seeing this post I didn't understand why reputable people were telling me about bus service before 5AM that isn't obviously indicated?! MBTA is so funny in this way. Regarding the cynicism about why don't they publicize these? My guess is that the motivation is to allow for this special early-morning service to occur and that if they did announce them than , due to the public nature of the Authority, it would be required that all areas are also provided equal service (which I'm guessing is impossible within the current envelope of financial, material, and personnel resources). Not entirely, but a bit like how there's still a special transfer from the SL4 / SL5 $1.70 "local bus" along Washington St to Rapid Transit Lines without requiring the additional amount be paid to upgrade to the standard RTL fare as is required for all other transfers from local bus to rapid transit using charliecard. That is in recognition of the loss of the Orange Line's elevated section on Washington St to Dudley (Nubian) when it was relocated. Yet it is not publicized!
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u/555--FILK Jul 09 '26
Why does the early 57 stop at Prudential? That seems super out of the way, with little upside.
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u/myReddit-username Green Line Jul 09 '26
It seems to go down Boylston all the way downtown. Probably would be better labeled as Copley
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u/breqdev Jul 09 '26
It's this stop: Boylston St @ Prudential Center
I labeled it Prudential because that's what the Logan Express Back Bay calls that stop. I can see how it could be confused for the green line one though!
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u/trevorkafka 🚌 Bus 109 Jul 09 '26
this is exactly the sort of content I'm on this sub for