Transportation planners are weighing several options to improve the crippled 55 bus route, but residents are skeptical of any changes that don’t restore its hours to serve people going to and from work.

The 55 bus once ran from early morning to almost midnight, making trips from the West Fens to the Common. When COVID-19 hit, however, service was reduced enough to drop ridership by 93%. Every route has seen losses since the beginning of the pandemic, but the 55’s are almost twice as severe as the system’s average. Residents at a June 9 meeting characterized the 55 as seldom meeting their schedule or location, and as very unreliable when it did.

Those complaints match up almost directly to cuts made to the 55. It has fewer buses running on it, and no longer stretches into the Downtown. Data from 2019 shows trips to the cuts station made up most of the line’s ridership.

The line now begins service at 10am and ends at 4pm, missing the bulk of commuters in both the morning and evening.

“There was a big service change at the start of the pandemic. It used to go all the way to Park Street, seven days a week every half hour. We got around 700 people on an average weekday, mostly making trips from either end,” said Joe Poirier, a senior associate with planning firm Nelson Nygaard.

“Now it turns around at Copley Square, still seven days a week but with a significantly lower level of service, every 40 minutes.

The magnitude of ridership is dramatically smaller than it was.”

Now officials are figuring out how best to return the 55 to prominence. Reopening the line’s Downtown stops was at the forefront of the discussion, but three other routes were also suggested as potential alternatives.

Those could take the 55 north to Kendall Square, south to Ruggles or west into the Longwood Medical Area. Planners are also looking at making the line accessible to disabled residents, a top request of community surveys next to restoring the 55’s schedule and coverage.

“Right now, the bus as it exists is almost worthless to a large amount of people,” said area resident Helen Cox. “I just talked to a woman who’s lived here 40 years, and she said to me, ‘I never know when the bus is coming.

It doesn’t even start until ten in the morning and stops at 3, it’s worthless to me.’ Half the people have just given up.”

“I’ve lived in the West Fens for 39 years, and 38 years ago I gave up my car because of the 55 bus,” said another resident. “I’ve worked Downtown since 1989 and used the bus most of that time, but obviously that hasn’t been possible for the last two years. I’m disabled. There was a stop ten paces from my front door, but I can’t walk all the way to the green line.

Planners are still working to gather data and refine it into concrete suggestions for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). Another public meeting occurred on the 15th, and month month will likely be required after that to wrap up analyzing the numbers.

“The MBTA has a fairly long lead for getting feedback, they’re looking at some time in the fall to finalize their plan,” said Ruth Bonsignore, founder of Flink Consulting and former Director of the Board of the Massachusetts Transportation Department.

“To be quite honest, we had hoped to be turning this study around more quickly, but we slowed our pace a bit to get more public input. After the fifteenth I would say we’ll be through our technical analysis in about four weeks.”