Public transportation in Boston

We find the T trains really easy to use - tend to be quite frequent service and we feel quite safe in the stations even at night. The only downside for us is that the subway maps show interchanges between different routes, but actually negotiating movement from one line to another from within a station can be quite trying - signs can be hard to interpret and the different lines may not be particularly close - I would certainly advise people to allow LOTS of extra time if they have to make an unfamiliar change. Also the changes can involve going up and down a lot of stairs, which might be an issue if you have kids, mobility problems, lots of luggage etc.

But we have had lots of problems with areas not serviced by the trains. The buses are not very frequent and stops can be hard to locate. We have had a couple of 'strandings' - a Saturday midday-ish in suburban Woburn, when it turned out the bus only came once an hour, and Monday evenings getting home from Medford to Cambridge, which is not all that far, but the bus stop was hard to find and was a bit scary to wait in, buses were almost an hour apart, and it was hard to get advice/information at the bus stop or from drivers.

We also have had trouble with taxis, as the companies we had used tend to have small areas they cover, so for example we couldn't locate a taxi company that would help us get from Woburn to Cambridge when we missed our bus.(This is very different to our home city of Melbourne, where taxi companies are networked so one number will work for any locations.)

We DO recommend Zip Car, which we have signed up for and used a couple of times when we weren't confident in public transport.