At Circuit, we see firsthand how local leadership shapes the way communities access basic needs, downtowns, and transit networks. Microtransit services are championed by people willing to rethink how cities function and prioritize access, safety, and everyday practicality.
In this blog series, we highlight Microtransit Champions, leaders in their communities driving change and ensuring transit is accessible and equitable for everyone.
Stoneham launched its Circuit shuttle with the support of Erin Wortman, Director of Planning and Community Development for the town. With over two decades into a career in municipal planning, Erin has dedicated her time into building the case that suburban communities deserve real mobility options, and then building them herself.
When Erin arrived in Stoneham, the town had one bus route. It ran north to south, once an hour, five days a week, and stopped entirely on weekends. The last bus left at 6:20 p.m.
The MBTA counted Stoneham the same as denser, more urban communities, grouping it alongside cities like Somerville as a community with service, but Erin didn't see it that way.
"There was just a true lack of value for shared transportation in suburban communities. Some people view denser or urban communities as higher value, as if you should just be happy you have a single bus line."
Erin didn't arrive at the idea of an on-demand shuttle overnight. She spent years laying groundwork: pushing for weekend and later bus service, championing complete streets planning, and shepherding a 32-year effort to build the Tri-Community Greenway on an abandoned MBTA rail bed. She was named a National Complete Streets Champion for the way she shifted the conversation in Stoneham from reactive fixes to intentional, inclusive design.
When COVID hit, Erin coordinated a town-run command center alongside six department heads, partnering with Stop & Shop to fulfill and deliver groceries for residents who couldn't get around. It was an improvised solution to a crisis, but it clarified something she already suspected: the gap between what people needed and what transit could actually offer them was real, and it wasn't going away. The Town was recognized in 2021 with the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s Kenneth Pickard Municipal Innovation Award for this program.
The MBTA's Better Bus program eventually promised an east-west bus route through town. The timeline was five to six years, but Erin decided the city couldn’t wait for stronger transit connections.
"The bus is the most vulnerable piece of public transportation. We know from bus data that it serves the most underrepresented populations. But it can go away at any point. There's no infrastructure in the ground. So once we heard the Better Bus program was going to expand service, I said, why don't we do something in the interim to get people around and figure it out."
Erin's goal was never just ridership. From the beginning, she framed the question differently.
"We're not answering whether people will use it. The real question is whether this is a necessary service. If five people rode the shuttle a month, that's still a success because then we know the service isn't something people need. But to have over 1,200 riders every month, that tells us something."
The data has confirmed what she already knew on the ground. Month after month, the top destination in Stoneham is Stop & Shop, the town's only grocery store. The Stoneham Housing Authority and Senior Center round out the list. The average trip is over 1.5 miles, meaning the shuttle isn't just solving first and last mile connections to the commuter rail. It's filling gaps in movement and become a service the community relies on.
Stoneham also has a senior van that is in high demand around the town, and Circuit hasn’t replaced that service. It's taken on a different set of trips entirely: the weekly hair appointment, the physical therapy visit, the spontaneous run to the pharmacy. Things that, for someone without a car or a license, used to require arranging help days in advance.
"I think about those people who no longer have a driver's license or a vehicle, and how they used to have this reliance on other people. Knowing how they feel empowered to take back that control, to move around how they used to move around, is so great."
Riders aren't just using the service. They're becoming its advocates, calling Erin's office to suggest new stops, bringing friends on for their first ride, and building a small but real community inside those vehicles. Drivers hired from the town know their passengers. Passengers know each other.
"I get calls from people being like, 'Oh, I had this driver and it was so good to see them, I haven't seen them in a couple days.' They're sharing rides and just building community. What's happening in the walls of those vehicles is really special."
Erin is quick to name something that doesn't show up in ridership reports. Getting the funding was the straightforward part. She submits an eight-page monthly report to maintain it, documenting metrics, outcomes, and progress for funders who need to see the investment validated in writing. She coordinates with Circuit's team on service adjustments, fields calls from residents with feedback, and keeps troubleshooting as the program grows.
She's still a department of one.
"People are like, 'Oh, it's so great you got that grant.' And I'm like, right, but now the work begins. Getting the funding is the easy part. Maintaining it and the labor that comes after the giant check, that's the part people don't see."
As immediate past president of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, Erin works across more than a hundred communities in Greater Boston. She sees the same assumption play out repeatedly: that shuttle programs are for feeding people into commuter rail lines, which makes them a harder sell for towns like Stoneham that sit between commuter rail stops and don't have a hub to anchor service around.
Stoneham's results push back on that assumption directly.
"Stoneham proves that this is a real mobility solution that can be implemented anywhere, and implemented differently based on your community. We're not trying to get people to a commuter rail. We're keeping people here, keeping people moving, and maintaining a shared service model. And we're a very classic suburban community. We have 24,000 people, families, seniors, individuals, people who work in town or don't. This works for all of them."
Her advice to other planning directors is simple: there is no single solution to mobility, and waiting for perfect infrastructure is not a plan. The bus might disappear. The commuter rail might not reach you. A community that decides to figure it out in the interim, with data, flexibility, and genuine attention to who actually needs to get somewhere, is a community that ends up ahead.
As Erin put it: "Keep fighting. Keep advocating. Keep doing the good stuff. And try. What's the worst that can happen? They say no. Okay. Try again next year."
• Circuit Champions: The People Moving Cities: Yvette Drucker
• Pregnant in Trenton? This electric shuttle service is offering free rides
• Driving Independence: Senior Mobility in Chula Vista
• Reconnecting the Rockaways: Affordable Mobility for an Underserved Community