A proposed redesign of Boston's Blue Hill Avenue to include protected bike lanes and bus lanes serving around 20,000 bus riders daily. Image courtesy of the city of Boston

The working-class neighborhoods at Boston’s heart are poised to get a big upgrade to their transit infrastructure following the announcement of a $15 million federal grant.

The Department of Transportation made public its list of RAISE Grants – formerly known as TIGER grants and distinct from the $1 trillion infrastructure package signed by President Joe Biden on Monday  – Friday morning. The list of awards includes $15 million for a pair of center-running bus lanes, pedestrian refuges and protected cycling lanes along Boston’s Blue Hill Avenue. The lanes will allow the roughly 20,000 riders on the Route 28 and 29 buses, plus several others, to dodge traffic jams, double-parked cars and turning vehicles between Mattapan Square and Grove Hall, speeding up journeys and making the bus significantly more reliable.

The 28 bus is currently free to all riders thanks to a pilot program launched earlier this year by former Mayor Kim Janey that brought its ridership up to 92 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Mayor Michelle Wu has asked the Boston City Council for $8 million in federal pandemic aid to extend the pilot by two years and to add the 29 and 23 buses to it.

The project, which will cost $40 million overall, will follow a template first set out on Columbus Avenue earlier this year, where bus stops are moved to protected islands next to the bus lanes and given shelters and displays showing the next arrival times for buses, making the riding experience much closer to a subway than a traditional city bus and improving transit access for disabled riders. The lanes will repurpose Blue Hill Avenue’s current concrete median, according to a DOT fact sheet, and will mark the first time since these areas of Mattapan and Roxbury have dedicated transit lanes since Boston converted streetcar lines in the area to buses in the 1950s.