TDM Thought Leadership

Our Mobility Partnerships – the A Better City TMA and Allston Brighton TMA – use a data-driven approach to inform our strategies and build our commuter services and programming to best meet your transportation and sustainability goals. As outside experts on Transportation Demand Management (TDM), our data tools visualize your unique mobility patterns and uncover the distinct areas of opportunity within your organization. We overlay that information with the MBTA and Bluebikes systems, design targeted interventions for your distinct user-groups, and make specific cost-projections for each. Our goal is to help you best leverage your resources to foster robust Return to the Office (RTO) adoption while reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and roadway congestion. Explore our TDM Data Tools below to learn more about what you have access to as an A Better City Mobility Partner.

Zip Code Analysis Tool

Our custom-built Zip Code Analysis Tool visualizes the geographic distribution of your workforce overlaid with more than a dozen transportation datasets to create a robust mobility profile for your organization. From a simple list of five-digit ZIP codes — one for each person associated with your organization — we conduct a completely anonymous summary of your workforce relative to Greater Boston’s mobility networks. Our tool emphasized proximity to the MBTA Commuter Rail and Subway service, Bluebikes station, and the growing network of bike paths and cycle tracks in the region. For each transportation feature, we estimate the catchment area of service according to standards provided by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). By coupling this information with our dynamic cost calculators, we provide recommendations for mobility benefit policy and program adjustments that meet your organization’s goals and create a cost-conscious roadmap for the future.

We know that people highly value choice and flexibility in their mobility options and this tool helps identify where you can enhance your support to make commuting as flexible as possible for your people. To support RTO initiatives and help commuters avoid Boston’s horrendous roadway congestion (Boston ranked 4th worst in the nation on the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard), it is important to know where people are coming from, to know which transportation options are best suited to them, and what the associated costs are. This analysis provides a robust foundation on which to build a comprehensive mobility benefit program that can be tracked and tweaked over time, for maximum impact. 

MBTA Employer Cost Calculator

Our MBTA Monthly Pass Subsidy Calculator computes the actual monthly cost to subsidize MBTA passes for your workforce. Simply enter the number of employees you'd like to cover, their commuter rail zone, and the portion of the fare that your organization would contribute. The tool then provides the cost per pass and the total monthly cost to cover that number of employees, bringing budgetary clarity to the HR benefits process. We recommend using this tool to understand the ramifications of adjusting existing benefits or to justify the cost to launch a new program.

BlueBikes Corporate Membership Calculator

Greater Boston has one of the longest-running bikeshare networks in the country. The expansive Bluebikes network, launched in 2011, has 460+ stations and 5000+ bikes, including 750 electric bikes, and provides a flexible option for short trips in the core municipalities of Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, and Somerville and has expanded to 13 communities in total. Our analysis team has uncovered the large extent to which Bluebikes stations overlap with the MBTA – 71% of MBTA Rapid Transit stations have at least one Bluebikes Station within 200 meters. This overlap provides a high level of choice and flexibility to people for first-mile or last-mile connections with the MBTA, extending the range of sustainable mobility through multi-modal trips.

Those with an annual membership pay no fee to unlock a bike and get 45 minutes of riding included, with additional minutes billed at 10 cents each. Through the Corporate Membership Program, employers can subsidize Bluebikes memberships at three different levels – Gold, Silver, and Bronze.

Subsidy at 100% = Gold;   50% = Silver;   25% = Bronze

Our Bluebikes calculator allows you to quickly assess the cost associated with initiating or increasing your Bluebikes corporate membership for your people. For context, the employer cost per Gold level membership costs just 28 cents per employee per day! Explore the Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers below, and see how far a membership can go for your commuters. 

GoMassCommute Analytics

GoMassCommute is our online platform to administer mobility benefits and programs for your people. Each of our Partners has a unique network where their people can sign up for free to access any of our Commuter Programs, log the trips they have taken, access incentives and promotions, participate in raffles, and more. 

As employees track their MBTA, bicycle, walking, driving, or telecommute trips each day in the trip logger, this trip data becomes available in the network management dashboard in GoMassCommute. Key datapoints include mode of each trip, distance traveled, time of travel, estimated GHG emissions saved (as compared to driving), and more. 

By increasing your workforce’s usage of GoMassCommute, you can uncover hidden trends and unique insights on what kinds of transportation options are most popular and impactful, which helps with resource allocation decisions.