How could you get around in a big city like Boston without driving a car? I was wondering how could we get survived without our car in Boston. We used to live in a smaller city like Rochester. Our public transportation is the city bus only, every half hour in the morning and afternoon during peak time, otherwise, every hour between the peak hours. Since this time we flew to Boston and didn’t plan to rent a car because the hotel we were staying had several bus lines and two train lines going through. So I decided we could use public transportation in Boston, which called Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority(MBTA). I planned to take the airport shuttle to Train station when we got Boston, buy a 7-Day Pass in the train station, then take the train to our hotel.

When we got outside of the airport, the airport had several shuttle lines to serve the passengers. They could take you to all the directions where your destination was. We took the one to T-station(Subway Station). The shuttle came pretty quick, about every 5 minutes. We got on, to the T-station, got off right outside the door. Several ticket machines were sitting in the hallway, you could choose any type of ticket from there. They had a single ride ticket, 1-Day Pass, 7-Day Pass, and Monthly Pass. We purchased four 7-Day Pass. Why? Because we planned to stay 5 days in Boston.  Since we need to rely on the buses and trains all the time, so the 7-Day Pass was the best choice for us. We could ride the bus and train unlimited time. The pass was good for the Commuter Rail and the Ferry too if you need to ride those.

From this subway map, it is easy to figure out which color line you should take and how to transfer between different lines. The transfer station is the station on the joint of two color lines. I couldn’t believe we took all the color lines within the five days stay! For example, we took a Blue line from the Airport to the Government Center, switched to the Green E line to the Longwood Medical, where our hotel was located. When we went to Harvard and MIT, we took the Green line to the Park St., switched to the Red line to MIT and Harvard. When we went to Chinatown, we took the Green line first, switched to Red Line, then change to the Orange line to Chinatown. It was comfortable and convenient. Just remember to avoid the peak time for the people who took a subway to work.

Except for the subway, we took a lot of buses too. There were 5 bus lines outside of our hotel. We could take one of them to the subway station, and then you are on the road no worries. There were also Taxi and Uber as the supplemental choices. But we were pretty good with public transportation, didn’t have a chance to try the Uber at all.

So my suggestion is to find a hotel on the bus line, according to how many days you plan to stay, buy a public transportation pass. Then you are all set to go.