Boston-Logan International Airport, now handling roughly 42 to 43 million passengers a year after a strong post-pandemic rebound, is looking for a new operator for the express bus line that serves travelers from the South Shore of Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Port Authority, known as Massport, posted a solicitation this month to hire a private company to run the Braintree Logan Express route, which carries passengers between Braintree's MBTA Red Line and commuter rail station and Logan's terminals. The posting suggests the current operating contract is expiring and being rebid, a routine practice for Massport, which contracts out Logan Express operations rather than running them directly.
The stakes are real. Logan sits on a 2,400-acre peninsula in East Boston with no room to grow its road or parking footprint, and its access routes through the Ted Williams and Sumner-Callahan tunnels are chronically congested. Massport launched the Logan Express concept in the 1980s precisely to keep suburban drivers off those roads by offering remote parking lots with direct bus service to the terminals.
The Braintree location is one of the network's most strategically valuable stops. It doubles as both a park-and-ride facility and a genuine multimodal hub, connecting to Red Line subway service and commuter rail for a South Shore region that spans Plymouth and Norfolk counties, home to more than 500,000 residents. Route 3 and the Southeast Expressway, the main corridors linking that region to Boston, rank among the most congested commuting routes in the state.
But the service operates in a competitive environment that has grown tougher since 2015, when ride-hailing apps exploded in popularity and gave travelers a door-to-terminal alternative. Massport responded by imposing per-trip fees on Uber and Lyft and cutting Logan Express fares sharply, bringing most routes down to $3 to $7 per ride. The Back Bay route was made free in 2022. Whether a similar price-conscious strategy holds for the Braintree route under the new contract is unclear; the full solicitation would contain fare and service details not available in the public posting.
Massport is also navigating Massachusetts' climate goals. The state's 2021 Climate Roadmap Act sets a path to net-zero emissions by 2050, and shifting airport trips to high-occupancy buses is one of the cleaner levers Massport can pull. The authority has been exploring electric bus transitions for Logan Express routes, though no electrification timeline for Braintree has been publicly announced.
The reliability of the MBTA's Red Line, which has faced chronic delays and service problems in recent years, could affect how many South Shore travelers trust the Braintree connection enough to leave their cars behind. That's a variable entirely outside Massport's control, and it hangs over any operator taking on this contract.
The contract term and value were not disclosed in the public posting. Massport will select an operator through the competitive bidding process, with the timeline determined by when the current contract expires.
