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Superintendent: Cambridge buses improving but system fragility may require schedule changes
Summary
Interim Superintendent Murphy told the committee the district now transports about 3,500 students daily and reported steady improvements in on‑time arrivals. He warned three-tier start times and frequent construction create fragility that could require systemic changes such as adjusted start times or routing changes.
Interim Superintendent Murphy told the committee the district transports roughly 3,500 students each day and has seen steady improvements in on‑time arrivals thanks to recent work by transportation staff and technology fixes.
"We typically use the number 3,500 or so," Murphy said when asked about the scale of the system, adding that recent tech failures (EduLog) created manual work that has since been largely resolved. He cautioned that Cambridge’s current three-tier start times — with fleet turnover every 30 minutes — make the operation fragile in the face of traffic, construction and occasional human error.
Committee members urged a roundtable with the city’s transportation staff and city council to discuss street-level impacts, construction hotspots, and whether smaller buses, more buses, or adjusted start times would be cost‑effective. Vice Chair Hunter and Member Hudson recommended succession planning for senior transportation staff and better public communication explaining the root causes of delays; Murphy said the district is building internal capacity and new routing technologies to reduce overreliance on individual expertise.
