The MBTA will conduct a new bus circulation study for the Longwood Medical Area (LMA) this year, adding on to a number of initiatives aimed at improving transportation in the Fenway.

The study will recommend new routes for buses entering the LMA and is an extension of the MBTA’s wider Bus Network Redesign project, as the area was originally excluded from it in 2023.

“The MBTA board excluded Longwood, partly because we said that the proposed routes needed a lot more careful examination, because of the impacts to emergency vehicle access and patients,” said Tom Yardley, the head of the planning department for the Longwood Collective (Collective), a non-profit organization that stewards the neighborhood.

The Collective provides services like childcare and construction updates, and even has its own system of shuttles to help patients go between the area’s four major hospitals.

Yardley said that the study was less about improving bus service within the LMA, and more about improving access from other neighborhoods and determining which routes will least impact emergency vehicles.

“There’s going to be new service coming from the Seaport, Dorchester, Union Square, Mattapan, and other places like that,” Yardley said. “It’ll add 75 percent more service to Longwood, and it’s really benefiting those neighborhoods. If you live in Mattapan, you’ll be able to get a one seat ride to Longwood, and that’s not been possible previously. We’re obviously very supportive of that. The devil’s in the details, in terms of where those buses go so that they don’t interfere with front door operations for major hospitals.”

The study will last until next winter, at which point the MBTA will make a series of recommendations for bus routes. Both Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates and Bowman Consulting will work on traffic modeling for the department.

The project will also have two periods of community engagement led by Rivera Consulting, the first in the summer to inform the community and neighboring residents about the project, and the second in the winter to gather feedback on proposed routes. An MBTA spokesperson said outreach would include emergency vehicle drivers at local hospitals to understand their local expertise and perspectives.

Though the Collective is heavily involved, other Fenway neighborhood organizations like the Fenway Community Development Corporation said they had not yet gotten engaged with the project.

The bus study coincides with a number of other transportation improvement plans aimed at the Fenway, including the city-led Fenway Transportation Action Plan which overlaps directly with the study area on Brookline Avenue, and the construction on the Green Line E branch at stations like South Huntington and Brigham Circle.

“These things all overlap with one another,” Yardley said. “Hence why Longwood kind of has a planning department, and that’s where I spend a lot of my time. The fact that we are able to have a study that’s specially focused on Longwood, I think is extremely important for the region, candidly. We’ve got to get it right.”