Sources

Sources & method

How commute times are built

Each estimated station-to-campus time adds an official scheduled ride to a set of connection allowances. Every allowance is listed here so the figures can be checked or recomputed.

Main ride: Fastest regular weekday-morning scheduled trip from the town's main station to its downtown or Cambridge stop, from MBTA commuter rail schedules (fall/winter 2026–27, effective October 26, 2026) and mbta.com subway timetables.
Subway rides: Calculated from the first trips of the day on the mbta.com Red, Blue and Orange Line timetables (Quincy Center to Park Street 16 minutes, Braintree to Park Street 22, Wonderland to State 17, Wellington to Downtown Crossing 12, Malden Center to Downtown Crossing 15). Rush-hour trips may take longer.
Chelsea: Chelsea is the first stop on the Newburyport/Rockport Line, 12 minutes from North Station on the MBTA fall/winter 2026–27 schedule.
Red Line, downtown: From the MBTA Red Line timetable: South Station to Park Street 3 minutes, Downtown Crossing to Park Street 1 minute, Park Street to Charles/MGH 2 minutes.
Red Line, into Cambridge: Charles/MGH to Central (two stops): 4 minutes — a CDG estimate, because the official timetable page did not return these stops. Porter to Central (two stops): also estimated at 4 minutes.
Other estimated hops: Charles/MGH to Central and Porter to Central are the only estimated subway hops (see above). From the mbta.com Orange Line timetable: North Station to Downtown Crossing 4 minutes, State to Downtown Crossing 1 minute.
Transfers: A flat 5-minute allowance per transfer for walking between platforms and waiting.
Walk: 10 minutes from Central station to 250 Massachusetts Avenue (Walk Score: about 0.4 mi).
Somerville: Davis to Central (three Red Line stops) is estimated at 6 minutes; the official timetable page did not return times for these stops.
Station walkability: Walk Score of the scored point at or next to each station, from walkscore.com /score/ pages. It describes the neighborhood around the station, not the walk to it.
Not included: Time from home to the town's station, delays, and the EZRide shuttle (its ride time varies with traffic and is not published).

Prices

Massachusetts Association of Realtors town reports (December 2025, via ShowingTime), condominiums, January–December 2025 and 2024 MLS closed sales. Medians cover every condo sale in a town, not only units matching the brief, and do not account for seller concessions.

Other measures

Walk Score and Transit Score from walkscore.com city and neighborhood pages. No city-wide score was found for Chelsea, Somerville or Swampscott.
Station-area Walk Scores from walkscore.com /score/ pages for each station's location. Eastern Ave (Chelsea) and Montserrat (Beverly) returned no score.
Water and sewer from MWRA's community list and municipal or district sources.
Population from the 2020 Census.
Diagrams are schematic and not to scale.