The former 84 bus. / Photo via Wiki Commons
Town Meeting approved the town’s MBTA of $3.5 million at the May 7 session. Unlike the past two years, the assessment – the amount Arlington pays the state agency for public transportation – was passed without comment in 2025 as part of the full $231.5 million budget for fiscal 2026, which begins July 1.
To see how your Town Meeting representatives voted on the town’s budget, Article 49, click this link. >>>
In both 2023 and 2024, Arlington’s Town Meeting considered warrant articles regarding the quality and type of service the town receives from the MBTA. Some five months after the 2024 public debate, MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng responded to the Town of Arlington over concerns related to public transportation, particularly bus service, in a three-page letter to the town.
Eng’s written response came after transportation activist Paul Schlichtman, a School Committee member and Town Meeting member, gave public comments at an MBTA board meeting. Reached after the Town Meeting vote on Article 49, Schlichtman said that the MBTA budget vote was handled according to Town Meeting procedure.
But the budget approval comes as the MBTA is reworking bus service and at a time when town residents have raised questions about the service the town receives, particularly since Covid, when Routes 84 and 79, heavily used lines that connected to the Red Line, were eliminated. Eng’s 2024 letter confirmed those routes will not return.
The MBTA has been working on service to the town, including a promised return to the 77 bus running every 15 minutes, and Eng met with Arlington officials this spring, but no information on that discussion was released publicly.
Arlington’s $3.5 million assessment is the BTA and CEO General Manager Phillip Eng responded to the town of Arlington over concerns related to public transportation, specifically bus service, in a three-page letter that was received by the town on Oct. 8.
The October 2024 letter was in response to Arlington Town Meeting’s Article 66 Resolution in 2024 that questioned “several different components of the authority’s presence in Arlington, and we appreciate these issues being brought to our attention,” Eng wrote.Addressed to the Select Board Chair, the Town Clerk and the Town Moderator, the letter outlined a few plans for various bus route updates and changes, including the Route 67, which runs only on weekdays along Pleasant Street to Alewife Station. “Route 67 is not planned to continue in its current form,” Eng wrote.
As previously reported by YourArlington, that line would be replaced by a new, seven-day line – Route 54 – will “provide cross-town connections between Waltham, Belmont and Arlington—locations that are geographically proximate, but not well connected by the current radial bus network that forces riders to travel into the core and then back out,” Eng wrote. The elimination of the Route 67 bus means that one fewer Arlington route ends at the Alewife T station.
Eng’s letter confirmed that Route 79, which ran through Arlington, down Mass Avenue to the Alewife T station on weekdays and was much-used prior to Covid, will not return to service, according to Eng’s letter, nor will the former Route 84 that served Arlmont Village. Service from Arlington Center to West Medford is expected to be increased to every 20 minutes with improvements planned for Route 95, which connects Arlington to Medford, the Orange Line and commuter rail lines. Eng wrote that bus service to the recently extended Green Line will be adjusted to eliminate duplication.
This story, published May 14, 2025, will be updated.
