How reliable is the MBTA?

The first thing to understand is how depended on the T is for transportation and its something that has been covered in some respects thus far. Looking here the top 20 stations' inflow and outflow are shown by line. Going into each line and station the average boarding and exiting passenger count can be seen for Saturday, Sunday and a single weekday in the fall.

Its important to notice a few things. Firstly, weekdays have a typical higher inflow and outflow than weekends. This is likely due to the dependence passengers have on getting to work. To further back this claim, notice the top stations for each line are the likes of Downtown Crossing, Park Street, Government Center and State Street aka the hub of meeting stations in downtown. This is where most Bostonians need to commute to. That being said, its also important to notice that the Red and Blue lines have much more even distribution of flow for the low end stations. This is likely because these are the main commuter lines extending into the Cambridge and Winthrop areas to the North as well as Quincy to the South.

To better understand dependencies on a day by day basis, the gated entries can be seen for each line including the silver line bus. Just to note, the gated entries do not cover every station as some stations do not have entry gates.

It is clear as day (no pun intended), that passengers need to take public transportation at around 0800 hours and 1730 hours or 8:00AM and 5:30PM respectively. These would be the times when people are going and leaving from their 9 to 5 jobs and heading home, again providing statistical proof that the MBTA is relied on by so many for work.

It is also interesting to note that the Red and Orange lines are mainly utilized but green increases in the evenings likely due to the gated stations available downtown specifically for the Green line.