COMMUTER RAIL RIDERSHIP has rebounded to 96 percent of pre-pandemic levels, a testament to the MBTA’s and Keolis’s successful implementation of a 100 percent ridership recovery plan focused on improved and sustained frequency and reliability.

At a recent meeting of the MBTA Advisory Board commuter rail committee, Keolis Commuter Services CEO Abdellah Chajai reported that, as of February 2024, ridership approached 100 percent of pre-COVID levels, representing the highest percentage ridership rebound among all US commuter rail systems.

MBTA commuter rail attracts back riders the old-fashioned way, with frequency and reliability. In the midst of the pandemic, the T and Keolis devised a return-to-ridership plan in 2020, implemented it in 2021, and saw results from it starting in 2021. This plan rested largely on transforming the schedule to provide all day service, every weekday, attracting new riders, and becoming a viable alternative for leisure travel with expanded late-night service and improved fare programs (like the $10 weekend pass).

The Commuter Rail schedule of 2019 was similar to that of 1969 — geared towards moving people into downtown Boston terminals in the morning, and home to suburbs in the evenings. During the pandemic, work-from-home and lockdowns caused average weekday commuter rail ridership to drop 90 percent between January and April 2020. Keolis looked to its international colleagues and developed the 100 percent ridership recovery plan, and the MBTA leaders embraced the innovative ideas and created or reshaped fare products to fit the more flexible needs of the riders.

By 2021, rail schedules were less “peaky,” with service more evenly distributed all day long, and trains scheduled to arrive on most lines at least once per hour, if not more frequently. Additionally, the T and Keolis added more late-night, holiday, and weekend trains to attract non-work trips on the rail network. Wednesdays are now commuter rail’s busiest days of the week, and some weekend commuter rail lines witnessed a 200 percent increase in ridership in 2023 compared to 2019. By the autumn of 2024, Keolis expects total ridership to equal pre-pandemic levels.

The MBTA and Keolis have also invested in resiliency and redundancy initiatives to steadily improve on-time performance. In 2023, Keolis reports, 93.15 percent of all trains on average arrived at their terminal stations within 5 minutes of schedule, compared to 88.59 percent in 2019, and 83.86 percent in the snowmageddon year 2015.

In 2023, the Fairmount Line had the highest average on time performance rate at 97.9 percent, with the Fitchburg Line the lowest at 89.1 percent. The Fairmount Line is the MBTA’s newest line, with its final station only opening in 2019.

Elsewhere, the MBTA has invested in resiliency efforts to double-track entire commuter rail lines, add long sidings to other lines, or create pull-over areas to store defective equipment and reduce rail line blockages. Additional dollars were recently invested in new signals and switches for the entire rail network as part of positive train control and automatic train control initiatives. Installations of the train control systems are complete on all southside lines, and will be completed on northside lines this summer. The T will then bury a state-of-the art fiber-optic network along or under all of its tracks to add redundancy to its signal, switch, and communications systems, and improve reliability via technological upgrades.

While MBTA commuter rail has successfully attracted back most of its pre-pandemic ridership levels, challenges remain. The opening of South Coast Rail later this year will add stress to an already strained South Station, where competition for berthing space for passengers to board and alight is already tight.

South Coast Rail will also add additional capacity constraints to the 5-mile single-track segment of the Old Colony Line between Dorchester and Braintree. Once opened, all trains on the Middleboro/Lakeville, Greenbush, Kingston, and South Coast Rail lines, inbound and outbound, will have to share this one segment of single track, limiting frequency and forcing reliance on a single point of failure for four separate rail lines. On the northside, single-track segments on the Lowell and Haverhill lines also limit frequency, while the need for an expanded, modern, and expensive new drawbridge for trains into and out of North Station is well known.

At their meeting, MBTA Advisory Board commuter rail committee members urged MBTA and Keolis officials to do more to reduce major delays, and to tighten on time performance standards. A 5-minute delay would be utterly unacceptable in many parts of the world, yet is considered on-time here. The MBTA must also improve its municipal outreach efforts, especially around significant service changes.

Nevertheless, directionally, the commuter rail is moving in the right direction.

The MBTA commuter rail and Keolis deserve credit for developing, implementing, and sustaining a plan to attract and retain riders. The vision of a public transportation system leveraging safety, reliability, and frequency to attract and retain riders is not new, but in the past four years the commuter rail system has shown that it does work.

MBTA General Manager Philip Eng appears to share the same vision for the MBTA subway and bus systems. A well thought out, well researched, data-driven ridership recruitment and retention plan such as the one implemented by the MBTA and Keolis may be the model to follow to bring ridership back to the subway and bus systems.

The vision of a public transportation system leveraging safety, reliability, and frequency to attract and retain riders is not new. In the past four years, the commuter rail system has shown that it does work. We are seeing signs that this vision is beginning to materialize. The MBTA’s ongoing track improvements, replacing thousands of feet of ties and rail, resurfacing and tamping thousands of feet of track, and station upgrades are concrete steps toward achieving frequent and reliable service. With Eng nearing his first year at the helm, we can only hope that the MBTA will continue making significant progress in the months and years ahead.

Brian Kane is executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board and a member of the governor’s transportation funding task force.