by Marty Green ·
Friday, December 19, 2025
Harvard’s already limited public transportation has been sharply reduced this month. The Montachusett Regional Transit Authority (MART) ended shuttle service from Harvard, Ayer, and Shirley to Emerson Hospital on Dec. 15. The on-demand rides that MART provided to medical offices on Baker Avenue Extension were included in the cancellation. And last week, MART announced it was also ending the commuter shuttle from Harvard to the Littleton MBTA station, effective Dec. 26. The reason MART gave for discontinuing all these services was extremely low ridership.
The commuter shuttle had been running since late 2023, offering rides from St. Theresa’s Catholic Church or the business plaza at 285 Ayer Road to the MBTA station in Littleton in the morning and back to those locations in the evening. The shuttle to Emerson was put in place after the closure of the Nashoba Valley Medical Center in August 2024.
MART CEO Bruno J. Fisher wrote in an email, “There was essentially no ridership” for the Emerson shuttle. But he emphasized that on-demand rides are still available through the MART Connects service. “The remaining funds from the Emerson shuttle grant are being repurposed for the MART Connects project,” Fisher wrote.
Debbie Thompson, director of Harvard’s Council on Aging, said MART Connects has some important advantages over the two discontinued programs. Unlike the shuttles, MART Connects picks people up at their home addresses, so there is no need for someone to drive to a pickup location or find a ride to get them there. MART Connects also offers rides for longer hours: 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
But there is also a major disadvantage—MART Connects rides are available only for Harvard residents going to or from locations in Ayer, Devens, Shirley, and Lancaster. (Several other towns that were formerly members are no longer part of the program.) And MART Connects passengers have to book a ride at least a day in advance and pay a small fee (from $4 to $7) each way for their trip.
MART Connects rides can be booked by calling 978-345-7711 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. More information is available at the website www.mrta.us/services/mart-connects.
Perhaps the most important service MART still provides for Harvard is supplying one of the two vans used by the Council on Aging, as well as maintenance for that van and training for all COA van drivers. MART also reimburses the town for COA payments to drivers of the MART van. (The other van is owned and maintained by the town.)
“We are trying to do as much as we can to support our rural communities,” Fisher wrote in an email, “as we know all too well the significant challenges they are faced with [for] seniors, the disabled, and transportation dependent residents needs.”
Chelsey Patriss of the Nashoba Health Equity Partnership agrees, saying “Transportation is absolutely critical.” But she said in a telephone interview that the discontinued MART shuttle services had reached only a very narrow population. NHEP is focused on improving health through a range of approaches, she said, including making healthy food available and supporting mental health services. Access to health care, she said, could also be improved by bringing more services into the community or even directly to homes, as well as through expanding telehealth programs.