The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, outlining a long-awaited proposal for redesigning town bus service, has agreed to keep Winthrop’s service to Point Shirley after an extensive lobbying campaign by residents and government officials.

In a new MBTA bus route reorganization, covering 11 clusters of bus service in the greater Boston area, the agency did decide that one of the town’s two bus routes to the Orient Heights station instead would run to the Beachmont station.

The plan to preserve Point Shirley as the termination point for both buses from the MBTA stations, while still awaiting a period of public comment this summer, marks a reversal of the MBTA’s previous plan to end the routes at the town’s ferry landing.

The new plan also describes all Winthrop buses running to the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, as opposed to the current situation in which many buses start and end their runs at the intersection of Washington and Shirley streets.

Local pressure

The decision was celebrated across town leadership, after a campaign on its behalf led by state Senator Lydia Edwards and former Winthrop Town Council member Hannah Belcher, who met with the MBTA’s general manager, Phillip Eng, as part of their bid to reverse the Point Shirley service elimination.

“When they first shortened the service, it was devastating to our most vulnerable,” Senator Edwards said. The lobbying work first convinced the MBTA to extend service from its original termination proposal of the Washington-Shirley intersection to the ferry landing, and the agency now it has agreed to keep service all the way to the existing Deer Island stop, Ms Belcher said.

The proposal for Winthrop would rename the current Routes 712 and 713 as Routes 119 and 120, and send the 120 bus – roughly matching the current 712 route through much of Winthrop – out through the northern part of town to the MBTA subway station at Beachmont. The 119 bus would largely match the current 713 bus route to the Orient Heights station.

And in Winthrop, the proposed map shows the new 120 route skipping the business district along Crest Avenue and instead staying on Shirley Street to Revere Street at Governors Park and then into Revere.

Hearing planned

MBTA officials said they were not immediately prepared to answer questions on the route changes, but said they would hold an online public hearing on the matter scheduled for June 15.

A current member of the Winthrop Town Council, Joseph Romano, whose precinct covers Point Shirley, publicly thanked numerous “residents who have worked hard to fight for this issue, including former Vice President Hannah Belcher for the countless letters she had written to the MBTA during her tenure on the council.”

Another former council member, Joseph Aiello, called the apparent preservation of the bus lines to Point Shirley “a result of the dogged work of Senator Edwards and Hannah Belcher.”

Ending the bus service at the ferry landing would have meant a half-mile walk for some residents of Point Shirley, the MBTA said in a previous version of its proposal. That would have brought “hardship for residents” and others including employees of the Deer Island plant, said a resident of Point Shirley, Scott Mahoney-Wright.