MBTA Bus Priority Toolkit

The MBTA Bus Priority Toolkit combines national best practices with local planning context for immediately useable guidance—from engagement to diagnosing delay and selecting, implementing, and evaluating bus priority treatments.

The toolkit builds off local and national best practices to provide a clear and consistent approach to planning and implementing transit priority treatments. The toolkit summarizes the lessons learned from recent projects, outlining the benefits and tradeoffs of each treatment with detailed and illustrative implementation considerations. The toolkit guides municipal, state, and MBTA staff through each step of the planning and implementation process to streamline coordination and decision-making and to encourage the consistent application of treatments throughout the region.

The MBTA’s chief audience for the toolkit is a diverse pool of decision-makers in the more than 50 cities and towns serviced by the MBTA bus network, in addition to state partners with jurisdiction over adjacent transportation facilities. Each municipality is different with independent governance structures, social make-ups, and economic profiles. The toolkit and its corresponding document and media kit will be a critical tool for reaching each of these communities, regardless of whether they have the in-house expertise or funding resources to pursue bus priority projects.