Local news

PVTA redraws six bus routes before the semester starts

The B43 loses its Florence loop, the 38 runs later on weekends, and riders have until August 24 to comment.

By Priya Chandrasekhar · August 5, 2026

The Pioneer Valley Transit Authority has proposed changes to six bus routes that would take effect Monday, August 31, a week before UMass classes begin. The B43 would lose its Florence loop, the 38 would run two hours later on weekends, and four other routes get smaller changes to schedules and stops.

Riders have until 5 p.m. Monday, August 24, to comment. The PVTA advisory board votes on the package Wednesday, August 26.

The authority is working with a $2.1 million shortfall in its fiscal 2027 operating budget and has said since May that it would close part of that with service cuts rather than a fare increase. These six routes are the first round. Planning director Sunita Raghavan said a second round covering the Springfield-side routes is likely in January.

"We are cutting the trips that carry the fewest people per hour, and that is the whole method," Raghavan said. "It is not a popular method. It is the one that keeps the routes that carry 40 people an hour running at all."

The B43 and the Florence loop

The B43 runs Northampton to Amherst along Route 9 and is the busiest route in the northern half of the system, about 3,400 boardings on a school-year weekday. Since 2013 every other northbound trip has swung off Route 9 to loop through Florence center by way of Main and Maple, adding about eleven minutes.

Under the proposal that loop goes away. The B43 would run Route 9 straight through, and Florence would get the 39 instead, which runs hourly now and would go to every 45 minutes on weekdays.

The PVTA counted an average of 71 boardings a day on the Florence loop stops last October, against roughly 1,900 riders a day sitting through the detour. That math has not gone over well in Florence.

"Every 45 minutes on the 39 is not the same as every half hour on a bus that goes to Amherst," said Naomi Pressler, who has taken the B43 to a UMass job from the Maple Street stop for six years. "It means a transfer at Pulaski Park in February. I have done that transfer. It is fifteen minutes standing in the wind next to a shelter with no side on it."

Raghavan said the authority looked at keeping the loop on morning trips only, and it did not save enough to matter.

The 38 runs later on weekends

The one clear gain in the package. The 38, which runs Amherst center to South Amherst and the Atkins corner area, makes its last weekend trip at 7:12 p.m. Under the proposal it runs until 9:15 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, six added trips a weekend.

The authority is paying for those trips with the hours it takes off the B43 loop, a trade Raghavan said out loud at the July meeting. Amherst has asked for later weekend service on the 38 in four consecutive budget letters going back to 2022.

The other four

The remaining changes are smaller and mostly involve timing:

The 31 (Sunderland to Amherst) drops its 5:40 a.m. weekday trip, which averaged nine riders, and adds a 6:50 p.m. trip.
The 46 (Holyoke to Northampton) shifts its weekday schedule seven minutes later so the connection at Holyoke Transportation Center works in both directions. Riders have been missing that transfer by three or four minutes for two years.
The R29 (Easthampton to Northampton) loses four midday weekday trips, going from every 40 minutes to hourly between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
The 30 (Amherst to Belchertown) drops two Federal Street stops that each sit within 500 feet of another stop, and holds its schedule.

The R29 midday cut is drawing the second-most mail after the Florence loop. Roy Talbert, who manages a hardware counter in Northampton and lives on Union Street in Easthampton, said the midday buses are how people without cars get to medical appointments.

"Nobody schedules a doctor at 8 a.m. or 5 p.m.," Talbert said. "They schedule you at 11:20. An hour between buses means you are gone three hours to sit in a chair for twenty minutes."

What the authority says about the money

The shortfall comes out of state contract assistance that has been flat since fiscal 2024, a 14 percent increase in the operating contract that took effect in July, and ridership that is still about 82 percent of 2019 on the non-campus routes. The campus routes have fully recovered. That is part of why the cuts land where they do.

The advisory board looked at a fare increase from $1.50 to $1.75 in June and did not take it up. Two members said an increase would cost more riders than it would bring in dollars, and the modeling the authority commissioned agreed with them, barely.

Raghavan said she expects the January round to be harder than this one.

How to comment

Comments go to the PVTA through the form on its website, by mail to the Springfield office, or in person at two public meetings. The first is Thursday, August 20, at 6 p.m. at the John Olver Transit Center in Greenfield. The second is Friday, August 21, at 5:30 p.m. at the Northampton Senior Center on Conz Street. Both take Spanish interpretation if requested by August 18.

The deadline is 5 p.m. Monday, August 24. The advisory board meets Wednesday, August 26, at 1 p.m., which is a time almost no bus rider can attend, and that has been pointed out to them before.