Dear MBTA Officials-

I am a resident of Somerville. I moved to Somerville because I am unable to afford a car, and Somerville looked- by all the MBTA maps- to be close to public transportation. However, as a resident of Winter Hill (on the #89 and #101 lines, with slightly more distant access to the #95 and the #80), I have found myself STRANDED in the BERMUDA TRIANGLE of the MBTA! Bus service here is wretched. The service in this area is pretty much useless unless you happen to be lucky enough to have one of those standard, Monday through Friday, 9-5 jobs, and never dare to leave your house on nights or weekends. Most folks in Winter Hill, however, do NOT have one of those jobs. We work nights, late nights, and weekends. And going out for the evening, or on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon, becomes a nightmare of waiting for buses.

The most expedient way, for instance, to get to my first job on Sunday nights would be to take an 89 or a 101 to Sullivan and from there an 86 to Harvard. But the 86 stops service all together on Sundays after 7pm. This means that I must walk for an hour- in Sun, Rain, or Snow- to get to Harvard square to go to my place of work, and do it again to get home, as I cannot afford taxis. Weekend mornings I must leave not one but TWO hours early if I want to catch the T to go scarcely a few miles away, because the busses are so infrequent. And there is a similar scenario for getting almost anywhere in the greater Boston and Cambridge metro area. The 91 bus, which goes to the other neighborhood I work in, is not only absurdly infrequent, but completely undependable, arriving early and late and all kinds of other hours not listed on its schedule, rendering it pretty much useless. And the CT2, which would be a good bus line, once again runs only during those hours that middle and upper class people work.

I am able to make this walk because I am young and able- I feel tremendously sorry for other residents of the neighborhood, many of whom are elderly or disabled, and are not up for a nature hike every time they need to leave Winter Hill. Lacking any kind of community center, unable to walk miles at a stretch, they are left to rot in front of their televisions, or hang out at the illustrious Walgreens, until they drop dead. This lack of transportation has also decimated the local economy. We have a whole row of store fronts- a whole block of them, called Magoun Square- HALF of which are empty. The remaining stores struggle frantically to remain in business, and it certainly isn't a pleasant place to hang around. Improved bussing in the neighborhood could really turn things around.

I have noted there are NO buses running from North to South in my neighborhood. They travel from the industrially blighted east to the depressed, suburban west on their dreary, infrequent, and unreliably timed trips. The people who live here, it would seem, are expected never to go out other than between those hours of 9-5, Monday through Friday, and only to travel from the east to the west- apparently we are not good enough to be permitted travel into Cambridge. It would make sense to run buses up and down the North and South bound streets, like Central Street or School street, in order to have more contact with Cambridge. Many former residents of Cambridge who could no longer afford the housing prices there are now living in Somerville- but we are being kept from even visiting the community we had tried to make our homes in by the lousy transportation options here. Most people I talk to here work in Cambridge as well, because there is little work in Somerville, which is mostly residential. The best way to improve this problem would be to drastically improve service on the #85 line, by running it on nights and weekends and with greater frequency, and have it run all the way up to Broadway in Winter Hill, via Central or School street. You could also have the #89 bus loop into Davis Square, instead of having it drop us off at the College Ave Traffic Rotary- a truly absurd option for folks who are not driving. Or you could change the #80 bus from being so infrequent and undependable as to be insanely useless to being a real bus line- like the #1, #66, #47, or #69 in other neighborhoods- giving us easy access to East Cambridge and the Green line.

There has been much discussion of late regarding the Silver line, the relocation of the Orange line from the predominantly black neighborhood it once served, and institutionalized racism. I was furious to read that service on the #1 bus- which was already quite adequate- was improved this Fall, while service to most of Somerville remained in a dismal state. Classism is a more prevalent ill than racism, but a trickier beast. Is there some specific reason why people from Somerville are not allowed to use public transit to get to Harvard Square on Sunday evenings? Do you have a problem with the working class people who live in this neighborhood? We are, after all, the people who cook your food, wash your cloths, clean your houses, baby-sit your children, drive your taxis and delivery trucks, sell you what you buy over the counter, fix your homes, serve in the armed forces, and service your cars. For many here, owning a car is a huge financial hardship, since we don't tend to have snazzy office jobs with big salaries. We deserve to have transportation as frequent and reliable as other people in the Boston metro area.

I certainly hope to see the transportation situation improve in Winter Hill soon.

-Katt Hernandez

81 Moreland Street

Somerville, MA 02145

617-776-1940