It’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday, and even though you told yourself you’d catch the last T, you’re still downtown, just heading out of Ned Devine’s. You’ve already dished out a couple of bucks for two beers, but you need to get home somehow. With T service long over for the night, you try feebly to hail a cab, but with such high demand it isn’t until 20 freezing minutes later that you finally get one and hand $15 plus tip to the driver before walking up the stairs to your Mission Hill apartment.
Next weekend, this all too common predicament will be a thing of the past. On March 28, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) will officially roll out its late night ride pilot program, a new private and publicly funded initiative that will keep subway trains and popular bus routes running approximately 90 minutes later on the weekends.
The program marks the second time the MBTA has gone the late night route. The then-highly anticipated but now-defunct Night Owl bus service ran from 2001 to 2005. It was eventually canned due to low ridership, possibly due to the lack of availability of the T’s most widely-used bus routes, according to the Boston Globe.
Late night rides will cost the MBTA about $16 million, over $1.5 million of which is offset by corporate sponsorships from businesses such as Dunkin’ Donuts and the Boston Red Sox. The Future Boston Alliance (FBA) launched a crowd funding campaign with the goal of raising $20,000 from residents and riders. The FBA also contributed $5,000 itself. But that still leaves enormous costs in the hands of the MBTA, and if late night rides do not generate enough traffic, the program could be scrapped by March of next year, according to the Globe.
In a March 13 announcement about when late night service would begin, MBTA General manager Beverly Scott mentioned college students as one of the target demographics she expects will take advantage of the late night service.
The T is spending a lot of money to make late night service a reality. If we as students want this pilot program to become permanent, we should utilize it. Only then will the program become a permanent fixture in the city, and hailing a cab at 2 a.m. will be a problem no more.
