Andre Leroux
As a native son of Worcester, I grew up in a city that didn’t know whether it wanted to be Wormtown or the “Paris of the 80s.” We’ve always had a bit of a complex. Do we even want to be a city? Or do we want to be a town?
Things have changed over the last 20 years. Worcester has brought housing and jobs back downtown. But there’s a third piece of the puzzle: transportation.
It’s impossible to have a bustling, walkable city without a very good public transportation system.
There are two ways to accomplish this: 1) improve service so it gets you to more of the places you want to go, and 2) make it easier to get on the bus.
The pandemic disrupted mass transit everywhere. Few places were hit worse than the Bay Area
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Bay Area mass transit saw less ridership and service during the pandemic than other parts of the nation. And the recovery to pre-pandemic levels is slower here than elsewhere, according to Chronicle analysis.Nick Otto/Special to The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
The pandemic brought a world of pain to the nation’s public transit systems. Ridership plunged across the board. Services were slashed. Even as California and the nation aim to fully reopen this summer, U.S. cities with the largest transit systems predict it will take years to return to pre-pandemic ridership numbers.
Jane Week: In ‘Escape from Worcester City Hall’ you can put your puzzle-solving skills to work to break free from municipal government
Updated 12:49 PM;
Municipal governing can be tedious and boring at times, but hopefully your virtual escape from Worcester City Hall goes better than a typical board meeting.
You can put your puzzle skills to the test to free yourself from the city’s home of municipal affairs in the Worcester Regional Research Bureau’s new virtual escape room game, “Escape from Worcester City Hall.”
Meant as an informative exercise for people to learn about Worcester’s municipal government workings, the virtual escape room game is the bureau’s substitute for an in-person Jane Week celebration this year.
The Call for Making Public Transit Free Continues
In this May 17, 2005, file photo, former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation John Cogliano shows a CharlieTicket, an automated fare card, at Airport Station in Boston.
Chitose Suzuki/AP
In a surprising move, the Worcester Regional Transit Authority last week voted to end its year-long experiment with free bus service.
The program began as a one-year pilot last March offering free bus service on all its routes. Members cast their votes without giving a reason, but cost may have been a factor. The one-year trial cost the city $2 million in lost revenue. But one board member was upset. Gary Rosen said with more than $ 40 million in federal COVID-19 relief money coming to the city, the board should continue the fare-free pilot for another year.