People have been discussing linking inner Boston neighborhoods together using a transit Urban Ring for about a century at this point. Unfortunately, it looks like the CT2 is the best we're gonna get. I used the bus to hop from Mission Hill to Kendall Square and it was always so much faster than E train to Red Line, even though I had to first walk to Longwood. I've moved out but the bus is still useful to get from Kendall to Cambridgeport, BU, or Fenway after work. Its big flaw when I rode it was the horrible traffic snarls at the BU Bridge and at Fenway whenever there was a baseball game. It's always crowded, but I've never seen it bypass people waiting at a stop.
This is a bus desperately needs to run more often and later into the night, and maybe throw in some weekend service as well. Until we get an Urban Ring (keep dreaming) this'll do. read more