Cambridge needs to look for a third time at making the No. 1 bus free to ride, city councillors said Tuesday.
The bus runs between Harvard Square in Cambridge and Nubian Station in Boston along Massachusetts Avenue, serving more than 10,000 riders on an average weekday, but consistently ranks among the slowest and least efficient, councillor Ayah Al-Zubi noted in a policy order. (It nodded to the route’s “wins” in the annual Pokey/Schleppie Awards given by the organization TransitMatters.)
The problem in a past exploration of subsidized rides was the price of up to $1.3 million that Cambridge would be billed by the state.
“There was a major barrier with the state level, which I don’t want to lose sight of,” Al-Zubi said. “This order does not spend anything. It’s just asking the manager to get the MBTA’s boarding data so that we know our updated share.” Information is needed to know where the project would fall under federal guidelines and how it would affect the upcoming city budget, she said.
A total price of up to $3.2 million would be shared with Boston, which has a fare-free bus program paid for through the year. “Boston is working out with the MBTA what comes after that. If we want the No. 1 in that conversation, we have to say so,” Al-Zubi said.
A Fare-Free Working Group of councillors and Community Development staff worked in 2022 under mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, with the No. 1 coming out as the top candidate for subsidized rides. The council returned to the idea in 2024, when the cost estimate crystallized the obstacles captured by the working group. “It was quite challenging to make that happen,” Siddiqui said Tuesday. “With the caveat that it’s going to [complicate] this renewed effort, I’m hoping it works.”
Support and a skeptic
The only voice of skepticism was from councillor Cathie Zusy, who – despite expressing appreciation for the fare-free silver line from Logan Airport – questioned the focus on the No. 1 bus considering its likely expense and the city’s tightening finances. “I wonder if what we really shouldn’t be focused on is the MBTA figuring out the bunching issue,” Suzy said, referring to traffic issues that cause gaps in bus arrivals followed by two or more buses arriving at stops at the same time. “If we could just solve that, we would have better public transportation that would dramatically improve the route … there may be some other way that we can better support low-income workers.”
The order was still adopted unanimously, and it drew words of support from councillors Marc McGovern, who last month attended an urban mobility conference in the Netherlands, and Patty Nolan, who has been a longtime champion of fare-free transit and has pushed for a comprehensive and easy-to-use network of shuttles around the city run by businesses and universities. “We need to be doing more to make public transit the mode of choice for many, many more people in Cambridge,” Nolan said.
There was good news last month from transportation commissioner Brooke McKenna for people trying to get around the city: Harvard affirmed that residents can ride its shuttles for free, is making sure its drivers know it too and was joining the CityMapper phone app to make catching a ride easier; the Longwood Collective was also working toward making it easier for residents to catch rides on its shuttles; and the Getting Around Cambridge by Transit page was updated with information about shuttles open to the public.
Fare-free shuttles
Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley was in Cambridge on Oct. 13 for a trip on EZRide, a fare-free shuttle connecting Lechmere and Kendall Square with North Station in Boston, and talk about expanding such networks.
EZRide has grown “by leaps and bounds” over 20 years (including a 2025 merger with The Wave, the CambridgeSide mall shuttle) and is amid a two-year test of full-day, weeklong service, now averaging about 500,000 passengers annually, said Jim Gascoigne, executive director of the shuttles’ operator, the Charles River Transportation Management Association, in a call Friday. Around 60 percent of riders are work commuters.
The shuttles run every eight minutes at peak commuter hours, every 10 to 15 minutes during off hours and every 20 minutes on weekends, paid for by developers such as Boston Properties, Divco West and BioMed Realty and companies such as Biogen and Novartis. MIT is the largest single funder, Gascoigne said.
The city is preparing a shuttle survey that will consider adding routes in Cambridge and connecting existing services. “There are very interesting possibilities with the Seaport TMA in Boston, Assembly Connect, and there’s some some stuff going on in Watertown,” Gascoigne said. “Part of the concept here was taking existing shuttles and putting them into a joint service.”
Medicare for all
Support for nonemployer-funded health care known as “Medicare for All” was another issue proposed Tuesday by Al-Zubi and drawing broad support. The policy order puts Cambridge on record as supporting state bills calling for single-payer care. They would be refiled in January after lapsing in the current session.
Cambridge’s budget sets aside $119 million for health insurance for its employees and retirees that could shrink to as little as $30 million under the bills, Al-Zubi said, and “our workers should not have to trade wages for premiums at the bargaining table.”
Zusy had a poignant example to show why she supported the order – the death on Saturday of engineer and civic activist Stephen Kaiser after a bout with pneumonia. In helping Kaiser over the past months – during which he got “absolutely extraordinary” help from Somerville Cambridge Elder Services, Zusy said – she learned Kaiser didn’t have health insurance.
“I don’t know how he was going to pay that bill. I guess it’ll be paid from his estate. He needed tests and couldn’t pay for the tests. He was at the hospital, and there are going to be huge costs for his hospital stays,” Zusy said. “We’ve got to fix our health care system in America. Everyone needs to have access to health care.”
This post was updated Oct. 21, 2026, to say that EZRide merged with The Wave shuttle in 2025.
