WORCESTER — On Thursday, May 21, 2026, the Worcester City Council’s Standing Committee on Public Service and Transportation reviewed possible improvements to the Worcester Regional Transit Authority (WRTA) bus service, including later buses, better Sunday service, route changes, same-day paratransit and a review of the agency’s hub-and-spoke system.
During the meeting, the committee took up Item 3A, an order filed by Councilors Gary Rosen, Robert Bilotta, Morris Bergman and Khrystian King requesting public hearings and recommendations encouraging the WRTA to improve bus service for Worcester residents and businesses. The order listed several potential areas of review, including the implementation of rapid transit, route changes, a same-day paratransit pilot program, improved service times, a review of the desirability of their hub-and-spoke operations, and improved metrics.
Public comment focused in part on the limits of current WRTA service hours. Worcester resident Frederick Nathan said later bus service could help reduce reliance on cars, noting that the latest bus he can currently take leaves at 9:30 p.m. He recalled that about 13 years ago, he was able to take a bus home at 11 p.m.
“There are a couple ways you can take cars off the road,” Nathan said. “Having public transportation running until the hours that it does or even later.”
After public comment, and at the request of Chairperson Robert Bilotta, Transportation and Mobility Commissioner Stephen Rolle gave the committee a brief overview of Worcester’s mobility action plan, which he described as the city’s long-range transportation framework.
“The mobility action plan is really the all-encompassing long-range transportation plan,” Rolle said. “It focuses on safety, connectivity, equity, and came up with 46 broad strategies to further those objectives in the city over the long term. And it really is a forward-looking plan.”
Rolle said the mobility action plan was completed about a year and a half ago and is intended to guide Worcester’s long-term transportation priorities. He said the city’s first annual report on the plan’s progress is expected to be submitted to the City Council at its next regularly scheduled meeting.
Rolle also said improving transit came up frequently during public outreach for the plan, including ways to complement the WRTA’s hub-and-spoke system — a model built around routes that run to and from a central station — and continued support for fare-free service.
WRTA Administrator Joshua Rickman then discussed the first three transit strategies outlined in the mobility action plan, beginning with the first and last-mile plan to improve access to transit.
Rickman said the WRTA has made progress on the first and last-mile initiative through a Metro Mobility e-bike rack at the WRTA central hub. He said the program, which began in the summer of 2025, allows riders to unlock a bike through an app and return it to the rack after use, and has seen “tremendous utilization.”
Vice Chairperson Luis Ojeda then returned to Nathan’s concern about later bus service, asking Rickman how late WRTA buses currently run and how many routes or locations offer late service.
Rickman said WRTA customer feedback and the authority’s Comprehensive Regional Transit Plan identified expanded service hours as a major priority for riders.
“Right now, we do have a couple of buses that go past 11 o’clock, but they’re not the majority of the buses,” Rickman said. Later adding, “And the weekend Saturday service is less than that and Sunday service is less than that.”
Rickman said riders have also asked for improved Sunday service, noting that starting bus service at 10:00 a.m. on Sundays does not help many people. He said the WRTA has the fleet capacity to expand service hours, but doing so would require operational funding and would be considered a major service change. Rickman said Routes 11, 19, 26, 27 and 30 are usually among the WRTA’s longest-running routes.
The committee then discussed expanding WRTA’s services through additional cross-town routes, which would allow riders to travel across parts of Worcester without relying as heavily on transfers through the central hub. Rickman said about 70% of riders surveyed strongly agreed or agreed that the WRTA should consider cross-town services. He said the WRTA could explore cross-town service in the short or medium term by changing existing routes, but creating a new cross-town service with new buses and funding could take two to three years because bus procurement alone can take about 24 months.
Rickman said frequency — meaning how often buses run on a route — would be critical to whether cross-town service works. He cited Route 825, which he said operates about every hour and a half, as an example of a route that is not frequent enough to function effectively as a cross-town option. He said future planning would need to consider route frequency, road infrastructure, population density, employment centers and the ability to connect with other routes.
In response to a question from Chairperson Bilotta about what role the city could play in improving traffic flow for cross-town bus service, Rolle said the city could support cross-town service by helping create reliable bus corridors through measures such as transit priority at signalized intersections and short bus-lane segments known as queue jumps. He said reliability is important because a route that takes 20 minutes one day and 40 minutes another day is difficult for a transit agency to schedule.
The committee also discussed the possibility of creating on-demand microtransit, a demand-response service open to the public that allows riders to reserve trips, typically through an app. The service generally uses software algorithms that completely automate the scheduling of trips, collection of fares (if applicable), and determine the route for the driver.
Rickman said microtransit is generally suited for areas where there is not enough population density, employment density or infrastructure to support fixed-route bus service. He said the Plantation Street, North High and EcoTarium area has been identified as an area worth studying.
Rickman said the WRTA is going out to bid next month for new paratransit and demand-response software that would include a microtransit module, allowing the agency to potentially operate microtransit internally instead of relying entirely on a third-party contractor.
The committee voted to hold Item 3A so discussion of the WRTA service proposals can continue at the next meeting.
