KENDALL SQUARE in Cambridge is a thriving innovation center, complete with MIT and companies like Google and Microsoft and the many biomed and research centers that are essential to the region’s resilient economy.

There is reasonably high demand for access to Logan Airport from Kendall Square, but today’s transit options leave much to be desired. The Red and Blue Lines do not connect, and travel from Kendall via Red and Silver Lines can be prohibitively time consuming. These barriers to taking transit mean most travelers in the Kendall/Logan loop choose to take a form of auto mobility (personal vehicle or ride-hailing), adding to urban traffic congestion and increasing emissions in the inner core and in environmental justice communities such as East Boston. 

It should not be acceptable that, in greater Boston in the 21st Century, a traveler cannot easily and conveniently connect by transit from one of the nation’s most important innovation and academic centers to the international airport, a mere three miles away. We can do better, and we must do better if we want to do more than just pretend that we live in a livable, sustainable region.

Students taking my Urban Planning and Policy class at MIT this fall were given an assignment: come up with a viable plan to improve travel between Kendall and Logan via some form of public transportation. As part of their assignment, students were asked to write an op-ed that would present their ideas to a wider, non-academic audience. What follows are portions of four of those op-eds, reflecting the work of four students. Three are graduate students; one is an undergrad. Their ideas are creative, practical, and achievable. I hope these ideas may spark a larger dialogue at the MBTA, Massport, among key municipal stakeholders in Boston and Cambridge, and among the members of the Kendall Square business community.  

— JIM ALOISI

Run a Logan Express bus to Logan

While the Red-Blue Connector project is a north star to better connect Cambridge to East Boston and the airport, it is unclear when it will ever happen. The simplest and most elegant solution now is to work with Massport to run a Logan Express (LEX) service between Kendall Square and Logan International Airport.

This service would most likely emulate the highly successful Logan Express Back Bay route, which is set to more than double FY23 ridership in FY24.

Massport has a chance to step in where the MBTA and transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft cannot and fulfill their mission to reduce car congestion on the way to the airport. The Logan Express Back Bay causes mode shift away from single occupancy vehicles. More than half of LEX passengers said they would have used a rideshare, like Uber or Lyft, to get to the airport if the Logan Express from Back Bay were not available.

From Back Bay, LEX costs passengers $3 to get to the airport (60 cents more than the MBTA). The ride back from the airport is free. Buses leave Back Bay and Logan Airport every 30 minutes seven days a week. Schedules are consistent and reliable. LEX passengers can even skip to the front of the TSA security line!

The drive time from Kendall to Logan would only take around 12-15 minutes and only 9 minutes without traffic. In contrast, the time it takes to ride the Red Line to the Silver Lind to the airport can be around 40 minutes or longer. Instead of taking the third harbor tunnel, the LEX Kendall Square would travel via the Central Artery under the Callahan tunnel en route to Logan (and take the Sumner Tunnel on the way back). This route would attract riders from Harvard University, MIT, life science companies around Kendall Square, and other passengers in the Cambridge/Somerville area.

In 2019, Massport restructured its Uber and Lyft rideshare program requiring both a pickup and dropoff fee of $3.25 at Logan Airport. Using the fee restructuring, Massport was able to expand all its LEX service offerings. In order to pay for the proposed LEX Kendall Square, assuming the costs are similar to the current LEX Back Bay, which is projected to cost around $5.4 million in FY24, Massport may want to raise its pickup/drop-off fee for rideshares at Logan to help fund the LEX Kendall Square service. Currently, Logan is in the middle of the pack as it relates to airport rideshare fees. Because the Boston region is growing so rapidly with so much road congestion, raising the TNC fee makes sense.

— NOAH KAHAN

Logan Express gets another vote

To accommodate the growth that is propelling Kendall Square forwards, the area needs a slew of transit updates, some of which are already gaining ground. The MBTA is investing in improving capacity across the Red Line with signal upgrades and a new fleet. The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority has begun studying whether the area could support a future transit service along the Grand Junction rail line. And in October, the MBTA confirmed $30 million in funding to begin designing the long-awaited Red Blue Connector project linking the two lines at Charles/MGH station.

These long-term investments are certainly welcome and come with compounding benefits that will reverberate across the system. But the timelines for these projects are years or even decades in the future. Kendall Square also needs transit investment that will have an impact in a much shorter time frame, and a new Logan Express shuttle out of the Kendall T Station would be a great way to start.

If you live in the vicinity of Kendall Square or further north in Cambridge and Somerville, you’re likely already aware of the difficulties in reaching Logan Airport by transit. Riders are faced with two unattractive options: taking the Red Line to SL1 at South Station and enduring potential traffic delays to reach your terminal, or embarking on a Red-Green-Blue-Airport Shuttle journey with three transfers, requiring you to put an inordinate amount of trust in the system to get you to your flight on time.

In the grand scheme of things, a typical transit rider taking an Uber or Lyft for their airport trip may not seem like it will have too much of an impact on the system at large. At scale, however, the collective decision of Cambridge and Kendall Square residents to drive to Logan to avoid these options continues to add traffic to an area that is already struggling to contain the impact of vehicular congestion.

The urgent need to reduce congestion and vehicle emissions is a matter of climate change, network efficiency, and equity. The impact of air pollution from Logan’s operations is felt most disproportionately by environmental justice communities in East Boston and Chelsea, where advocates have called for a targeted reduction of vehicular traffic to and from the airport.

Funded and operated by Massport, the Logan Express (LEX) shuttle service provides one solution to this problem that is proving popular with riders. The LEX service operates on four suburban lines with parking facilities and one urban line at Back Bay. While the pricing depends on the line, at Back Bay riders pay only $3 for a ticket to Logan and can ride free on the return trip. The shuttle goes directly to Logan terminals and has space to store luggage on board. As an extra perk, riders can also receive security line priority access after riding the shuttle.

It is time for Massport to add a new urban line at Kendall Station to build on the Back Bay shuttle’s success. In a moment of increasing revenues from Logan due to a current travel boom, Massport is in a good financial position to find ways to fund this new line. With increased parking, shuttle use, and fee collection, Logan Airport’s annual revenues increased by 17.3 percent from FY22. The Logan Express is also growing – ridership in FY23 grew 6 percent from FY22.

The new service would create several benefits. Local companies would have a direct transit line to the airport for regular business travelers. Massport, MassDOT, and the City of Boston would benefit from the reductions in congestion coming into the airport from Cambridge, while riders would get a convenient, affordable, and direct transit option to Logan. University students living in Cambridge and Somerville would get access to a year-round airport shuttle, rather than service restricted to the holiday season or end-of-semester travel. The benefits from the emissions reductions would reach communities in Cambridge, East Boston, and beyond.

For Kendall Square, the lack of quality options to reach Logan Airport is also a matter of competitiveness and the attraction and retention of both employers and residents. Creating an essential link between this center of commerce and the region’s most important airport is a winning strategy to begin to carve out transit solutions that can be quickly implemented, evaluated, and adjusted. The roll out of the project should focus on determining a convenient pickup location, advertising the service broadly, and understanding the impact of the new service on mode shift and emissions.

— MENA MOHAMED

Red- Blue connector is the real answer 

As an undergraduate student at MIT, I encounter difficult questions regularly, and often they require complex solutions. Every year, though, a question is asked of me that I don’t believe has a right answer: what’s a good way to get from my dorm to Logan Airport?

I can’t drive; I don’t own a car, and I’d have to figure out parking. I could take an Uber or a Lyft, but I’d prefer not to, partly on principle, and partly because they’re pricey, especially around the holidays. I love the T, but making two transfers with a backpack and suitcase through a cramped Green or Orange line train? Not fun. The Silver Line is promising — until you realize it has to fight Boston traffic. There’s just no good answer. Not yet, at least.

Luckily, in October of this year, the MBTA submitted a Notice of Project Change to its plans for the Red-Blue Connector. This project has been in the works for decades, and aims to extend the western end of the Blue Line (which the Airport station lies on) to the Red Line at the Charles/MGH station underneath Cambridge Street, finally linking the only pair of lines not to have a direct connection. This would allow travelers from MIT, or in fact from anywhere on the Red Line, to have a smooth, single-transfer trip to Logan Airport, creating a new route that is cheap, reliable, and relatively fast.

The Red-Blue Connector means more than just easy airport access — the Blue Line serves mostly “environmental justice populations, low-income households, and transit-dependent communities,” according to the Notice of Project Change, and many of the residents of the area are essential workers. Linking the Blue and Red Lines means transit equity for East Boston, Revere, and Chelsea residents who do not have an efficient, easy commute due to the lack of connectivity in the metro network. It means ensuring a safe ride environment for riders who, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, were perpetually jammed into Blue Line trains, and who, after the pandemic, had to request additional service just to make sure that crowding would not reach dangerous levels.

The Red-Blue Connector is a promise of convenient transit access to healthcare at the MGH complex, where currently Blue Line riders must alight multiple blocks away at Bowdoin Station. This may not seem like a meaningful difference at first, but taking into account that Bowdoin Station is ADA noncompliant, it could be make-or-break for the sick and elderly, who need healthcare the most.

The benefits extend further than just Red and Blue Line riders. The Red-Blue Connector would relieve pressure at key subway stations like Park Street, Downtown Crossing, and Government Center, which today have to bear the weight of not only the lines they lie on but also Blue/Red Line commuters. It would provide an extra degree of resilience in the subway network in case trains break down elsewhere, allowing passengers to still have connection options. It could turn the Charles/MGH area, which lies near to the historic Beacon Hill neighborhood, into a true commercial hub.

Despite design plans only being 10 percent complete, the Notice of Project Change estimates ground could be broken on the connector as soon as 2026, with tunnel construction set to take around 5 years. This coincides with the construction timeline for the Longfellow Project, which will repair and replace the viaduct over Charles Circle as well as upgrade the Charles/MGH Station. In fact, since both projects modify Charles/MGH, they could be combined in places, potentially reducing logistics cost and importantly reducing the amount of time businesses and residents in the area are impacted by construction.

— PHI CHANG

No need to innovate – iterate

As Boston’s leading tech hub, Kendall Square is used to innovation. But sometimes to make the most progress, you don’t need to innovate – you need to iterate. Every breakthrough in tech (or any other industry) must be followed by iteration, as the new process, gadget, code, or idea is honed, applied, and made the best version of itself. Successful iterators pursue multiple pathways of improvement at the same time since different strategies may address different deficiencies or move at different paces.

When people in Massachusetts talk about transportation, desperation at the current state of affairs too often drives them towards ill-conceived “innovative solutions” that would only make the problem worse. What we really need is harder to achieve: sustained iteration to build up the infrastructure we already have and make it better.

How might you apply this approach to improve transit from Kendall to Logan?

Back the bus: Let’s start simple: Add a bus. Logan Express has long been a fixture for getting suburbanites to their flights while ditching the car. Since a 2019 reboot, Massport has also had great success attracting Bostonians to the service with the Back Bay route. For just $3, travelers can catch a bus to the airport every half hour between 5:00 AM and 9:00 PM, with stops at each terminal and priority access to the security line. A Kendall Logan Express route could do even better since it wouldn’t have to compete with a one-transfer subway ride. And it will be fast! A non- stop trip could be as short as 10 minutes if traffic in the Callahan Tunnel cooperates.

For all these reasons, Massport should be happy to get the service up and running, but if not, it doesn’t hurt that the agency is under a legal obligation to expand Logan Express. (Another advantage of iteration: calling in on promises previously made.)

Build up Blue: Of course, even if Kendall gets Logan Express, Kendall connections to the airport and the region will still have plenty of room for improvement. Everyone agrees that the Red-Blue Connector will be a game-changer not just for Logan connectivity, but access to Kendall from the entire North Shore. Yet we don’t have time to just wait around for it to happen. Massport, the MBTA, and stakeholders like the Kendall Square Association should be thinking about what they can do right now to bridge the gap that the Red-Blue Connector will eventually fill.

What about putting a free transfer in place between Charles and Bowdoin? Or even a shuttle bus? If those near-term actions were taken to improve connectivity between Kendall and the Blue Line before Red-Blue construction even begins, it would build the case for the Connector with every CharlieCard transfer tap or busy shuttle making its way down Cambridge Stree

Consider what the trip could look like: taking an airport shuttle bus to the Blue Line, then the Blue Line to Bowdoin, walking down Cambridge Street to Charles, and finally taking the Red Line one stop to Kendall. You might laugh, and wonder who would do such a thing, but in the evening rush hour, that actually can be faster than taking the Silver Line directly from the Logan curb to South Station and making the Red Line transfer there – that’s how bad the Ted Williams Tunnel traffic can be. Which brings me to…

Speed the Silver: We can’t rest on laurels while waiting for the Red-Blue Connector, and while a Blue Line shuttle will garner high ridership, it could face capacity limitations if bus lanes cannot be provided on busy Cambridge Street. Hence, speeding the Silver. It has long been a travesty that Boston has one of the best bus subways in America only for it to abruptly end at a traffic light that always seems to be red. We can’t undo the past decisions that built a busway that ends with a loop halfway around the seaport just to get between the busway and highway. But we can iterate on the legacy infrastructure that we have. For the Silver Line, that starts with the Boston Transportation Department retiming the signals at the end of the tunnel and around the Seaport so that buses get priority. Where it goes from there, only time will tell. A bus lane in the Ted Williams Tunnel, perhaps? Don’t rule out the next iteration before you try it!

— MICHAEL WHELAN

James Aloisi is a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation who leads MIT’s Transit Research Consortium and serves on the board of TransitMatters. Noah Kahan, Mena Mohamed, and Michael Whelan are graduate students and Phi Chang is an undergraduate at MIT.