Packed Like a Sardine Can, the T is the Last Resort

 With ridership down across the MBTA’s modes of transportation and traffic creeping up to pre-pandemic levels, the T is taking aggressive measures to lure folks back. An MBTA spokesperson said that, at the end of October, bus ridership was down to 59% of pre-pandemic levels, subway ridership 44%, and the Commuter Rail was 42% of pre-pandemic ridership.

The in-house campaign, which cost about $69,000 in radio and gas pump ads and an additional $14,470 for ads in the city’s two newspapers, is slated to run through the end of the month. It uses several mediums to attract riders, including MBTA-owned billboards plastered with images of gridlocked cars with messages like, “Bottlenecks. Take the T” and “You could be reading something interesting. Next time take the T.”

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