Transportation
Getting Around Boston
Finding out how to get around Boston goes hand in hand with finding a place to live. Boston has a well-developed public transportation system consisting of buses, subway trains, and commuter-line trains that run to and from nearby suburbs.
Most students will commute to campus using either Boston’s public transit system, the BU Shuttle, or by walking or cycling. Determining what your individual commuting tolerance will be will give you a good idea of how far away from the Medical Campus you can reasonably look for housing. For students who choose to live outside of the South End neighborhood, they should expect a commute time of about 25-40 minutes.
Cars can be a faster way to get into the city from farther away, but beware of Boston’s traffic! Boston streets are notoriously confusing, narrow and are often one-way. For students intending to bring a car with them, they may want to do a test-run first of any route they plan to use regularly throughout the school year to gauge the average time it takes them to travel to class.
For more information about the different types of commutes you will encounter in the city, check out the other tabs within this section. Generally, your first stop for questions about transportation should be with TranSComm, the Transportation Solutions for Commuters Office, on campus.
