The expected shifts in Winthrop’s bus routes to better cover Point Shirley and reach the Beachmont station reflect advocacy and equity more than ridership numbers, MBTA officials said in outlining the new agency plan.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority announced the intended changes Wednesday, after extensive lobbying from Winthrop residents and policymakers opposed to the agency’s initial proposal to cut Point Shirley from the town’s two bus routes.

Yet in describing the process, MBTA officials said they didn’t have actual data on ridership levels on Point Shirley, and didn’t challenge suggestions that the buses there often involve few customers.

Instead, agency officials said Thursday, the MBTA appears to be on a path to increasing, rather than eliminating, bus service to Point Shirley because its advocates were persistent and because their demand fit with the MBTA’s wider equity considerations – including considerations of an area’s income, racial mix, and levels of vehicle access.

“Our overall bus network redesign plan focuses bus service where we see the highest need,” said Justin Antos, the MBTA’s senior director of bus transformation. “We are prioritizing bus resources toward those neighborhoods and those riders,” he said.

Clear reversal

Winthrop currently has two bus routes, both connecting the town and the subway station at Orient Heights. Only about a third of those routes run all the way through Point Shirley to reach the visitor parking lot at the Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant. The new plan, described by the MBTA as a proposal from agency staff, would shift one of the routes from Orient Heights to the subway station at Beachmont, and make the Deer Island lot the other turnaround point for all runs on both of those routes.

The Deer Island decision is a clear reversal from a plan approved by the MBTA’s Board of Directors, which in 2022 agreed to cut the Point Shirley service and make all runs on both lines turn around at the intersection of Washington and Shirley streets. That touched off years of lobbying and delays over the question, that apparently ended with the new plan issued Wednesday.

Mr Antos acknowledged the heavy community pressure from residents and leaders who included state Senator Lydia Edwards and former Winthrop Town Council member Hannah Belcher. “In the intervening time” since the 2022 board vote, he said, “we’ve heard quite loud and clear from the folks on Point Shirley and toward Deer Island that they don’t like that, and that would leave them with no bus service. We’ve heard you loud and clear, and we agree, and we’re now proposing to walk back that 2022 decision.”

The new plan is likely to be somewhat more expensive for the MBTA, and it still needs the formal approval of the agency’s governing board, Mr Antos said. But that plan is now expected by various parties to win implementation since Winthrop leaders are understood to widely back it. With that, such changes could occur within one to two years, Mr Antos said.

Ridership overlooked

In an indication of the low weight that ridership levels played in the new decision, Mr Antos said he did not know the bus usage numbers for the 712 and 713 routes until asked – and still doesn’t have numbers specific to their Point Shirley portions. At his request, Mr Antos said, agency staff produced data showing the 712 bus for the past few years has had an average daily ridership of about 1,200 to 1,400 people, and the 713 bus has had about 900 to 1,000 daily riders.

Under the new plan, Routes 712 and 713 would be renamed as extensions of the existing Routes 119 and 120 in Revere, with the 120 leaving Winthrop to the north into Revere to Beachmont and beyond. The decision on Beachmont in part reflects a goal of helping riders in Winthrop reach new destinations in Revere without necessarily using the Blue line, he said.

Such changes come with no guarantees of how long they will last, Mr Antos said. “This is a living breathing plan, and we are in the business of planning with the communities we serve, rather than planning for and at the communities we serve,” he said.

The MBTA plans to hold a formal hearing on the new plan on June 15 in an online format, and officials said that the agency expects to hold occasional in-person discussions of the idea at various subway stations.