After success of fare-free transit, what’s next for PVTA?

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For riders like Sarah Hougen, a Northampton resident who does not own a car, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority’s shift to fare-free transit has changed how she uses the regional bus system. 

“It gives me the permission to ride more of the in-between things that I wouldn’t normally choose. I wouldn’t want to pay $1.50 to just go this little distance,” Hougen said. 

Hougen, who has mobility issues that make walking difficult, said the cost savings have made it easier to rely on the PVTA for everyday trips, including errands and physical therapy appointments. 

“Sometimes I can’t walk well,” she said. “When it’s free, I don’t feel so bad popping on various little spots, so it does increase frequency.”

With 55% of PVTA riders living at or below the federal poverty line and nearly 70% reporting that they have no other way to make their trips, the system plays a critical role for low-income residents. 

Since eliminating fares in 2024 as part of a statewide “Try Transit” initiative, a program backed by $30 million of state funding to expand access and increase ridership across the state’s 15 regional transit authorities, the PVTA has seen ridership increase and system usage rebound to pre-pandemic levels. Following a 27% increase in ridership — from 7.3 million rides in fiscal year 2024 to 9.3 million the following year — and additional funding allocated by the Healey-Driscoll administration in subsequent budget cycles, the PVTA announced in July 2025 that Try Transit would be extended through June 2026.

“A large portion of our population is low-income and minority,” said PVTA Administrator Sandra Sheehan. “The push was to kind of equalize some of the disadvantages that those individuals have.” 

State. Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, said that fare-free funding has been included in the state’s upcoming fiscal year 2027 budget.

Before fares were lifted, the cost of riding posed a visible burden for some passengers. Sheehan recalled seeing riders sorting through coins to pay for a daily pass. “You could see that they had some issues struggling to make ends meet,” she said. 

Yet even as more people ride, data The Shoestring obtained via public records reveal gaps in service coverage and frequency across the system, with many lower-density communities remaining outside reliable walking distance of transit.  

Now, the PVTA is planning a series of new bus routes aimed at expanding service to underserved communities, including proposed express lines in Ludlow, Chicopee, and Westfield, and just launched a new route between Northampton and Southwick. Transit officials say the routes could improve access for hundreds of thousands of residents. But whether they become a reality depends on a familiar constraint: funding. 

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Even before the pandemic, the PVTA was struggling with declining ridership tied to years of service cuts and fare increases. According to Alex Forrest, PVTA’s manager of planning and analysis, “the PVTA was level-funded by the state, so rising operating costs forced cuts.” Between 2016 and 2020, several routes were eliminated entirely while others saw reduced frequency, disrupting the schedules and routines of riders and making transfers more difficult.

The COVID-19 pandemic then brought ridership to a record low of 3.9 million riders in the 2021 fiscal year and contributed to staffing shortages across the system. “We had a lot of people that retired, and we were having difficulty hiring individuals,” said Sheehan, pointing to exposure concerns that made it challenging to hire and retain workers during the height of the pandemic. 

The goal of Try Transit, Forrest told The Shoestring, was to encourage people to ride the bus more and “try to get us back to pre-pandemic levels of ridership.” 

“To that end, the program’s been very effective,” he said. “I’d say we caught up maybe two years earlier than we would otherwise have caught up.” 

Alongside these gains, fare elimination has made the system more productive. PVTA productivity, which is measured as the number of passenger trips per service hour, operated at 80% of maximum productivity in 2019 before dropping to 44% during the height of the pandemic. Since then, productivity has rebounded from 71% in 2023 to 87% in 2025, when fare-free service started operating year-round. 

However, rider interviews and survey data point to a consistent tension: while free fares have made transit more affordable, they have not made it uniformly accessible. 

To better understand where gaps exist, we mapped transit routes and stops using General Transit Feed Specification data, an open-source framework published by transit authorities to provide riders with route, schedule, and service information. The analysis focuses on access to essential destinations, including colleges, grocery stores, and healthcare facilities. 

The results show a system that works well in some places and falls short in others. 

Transit service is concentrated in denser population areas such as Holyoke, Springfield, and Northampton, while coverage becomes more sparse in outlying communities. Transit planners typically define access as living within a quarter mile of a bus stop, which is about a five- to 10- minute walk. 

“We have 315,300 people within a quarter mile of bus stops for residences, and we have 153,200 jobs within a quarter mile,” Forrest said. By that measure, roughly 54% of residents in PVTA’s member communities live within walking distance of service, Forrest said. 

While these figures indicate that a slight majority of households and jobs fall within walking distance of PVTA service, accessibility varies significantly across the region. Across the member communities, buses are far more accessible in urban centers than in more rural areas. Springfield and Holyoke reported transit coverage rates above 80%. Amherst reaches 70% of its population while also having some of the system’s strongest ridership numbers, driven primarily by its large student population. 

In less populous areas, service becomes much harder to reach. Granby, Belchertown, and Pelham have coverage rates below 13%, resulting in substantially lower ridership. But transit planners generally do not expect regional systems to place every resident within walking distance of a bus stop. Forrest noted, “the 54% coverage statistic — this is a measure that PVTA keeps track of, but it’s not an explicit goal to increase that coverage.”

Implementing fixed-route service to lower-density communities can increase operating costs while serving significantly fewer riders. 

Instead, service is concentrated in more populated areas and along major travel and commercial corridors. Municipality-level data provided by the PVTA illustrates this trend as Hadley reported some of the strongest ridership numbers amongst all member communities. With a population of just 5,300, Hadley operates as a major retail hub and connector for nearby colleges and employment centers.

However, even for riders who live near bus routes, access does not always translate into reliability.

Easthampton resident James Crawford, who is unable to drive due to epilepsy, relies on buses and biking as his main forms of transportation. James said that while buses may run every 20 minutes during the day, service is far less frequent in later hours, which can be disruptive.

“Sometimes it’s really frustrating when you show up and realize it’s another 45 minutes before the next bus,” he said. “It can impact your entire day.”

Ace Tayloe, a Northampton resident and frequent PVTA rider, also pointed to limited evening service as a major barrier. 

“My big thing is seeing evening and late night routes,” Tayloe said. “Especially for folks who are working service jobs, being able to get home is the big one for that. One of my coworkers lives in Florence, works in Northampton, and has to drive and pay a parking fee because she can’t get home after her shift via bus.” 

Tayloe also added that riders with more resources tend to be better positioned to push for improvements. 

“I think it is important to, you know, convince car-havers to use the bus,” Tayloe said. “Cynically, those are the people with more money.” 

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“We have a current administration that is very pro-transit,” Sheehan told The Shoestring, pointing to recent increases in support from the administration of Gov. Maura Healey. In 2025, Healey announced a transportation plan that would invest $8 billion over the next 10 years in statewide infrastructure, including $110 million for regional transit authorities in the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget. 

This funding has created space for planners to begin imagining new routes, including proposed express lines in Ludlow (B6E), Chicopee (G9E), and Westfield (R10E). One potential route — a direct connection between Westfield’s Olver Transit Pavilion and Springfield — is expected to improve access and connectivity for hundreds of thousands of residents. 

As a regional transit authority, the PVTA relies on state funding allocated annually through a formula-based system that considers historical costs, service levels, and ridership demand. This funding accounts for 40 percent of the PVTA’s day-to-day operational costs, including maintaining routes and paying drivers. 

However, expanding service requires sustained investment in staffing, vehicles, and operating hours. Even with increased state support, those resources remain limited. 

As the PVTA looks to the future, the central question is no longer just how to get more people on buses. It is how to build a system that reaches those who need it most, while also reducing the Pioneer Valley’s reliance on cars. 

“I would love to arrange it so that everyone in the Valley has a useful bus option, even if they don’t take it,” Forrest said. “That is the encapsulation of what we’re hoping to achieve.” 

This article was written by Smith College students in a data journalism course taught by Naila Moreira and Ben Baumer, in collaboration with The Shoestring’s editors.

Update: This article has been updated to include information about fare-free funding in the state’s fiscal year 2027 budget.

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