By Kiran Jivnani, news correspondent
Although the MBTA board has been taking a lot of heat recently for its performance following blizzard conditions, it must make another tough decision by April 15. With scarce financial resources, the MBTA must decide the future of its late-night service. The four options under consideration are elimination, cost reduction, fare increases and increased sponsorships.
When the late-night service started on March 28, 2014, the public benefits were seen almost immediately. The extended T times meant people paid less to get around later at night. Fifty-nine percent of monthly pass owners make up the majority of the late-night customers, according to a booklet entitled “An Interim Review of the MBTA Late-Night Service Pilot Program.” The booklet was given out at a meeting hosted by MBTA officials on March 4 at the state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) building. The annual cost for the pilot run was estimated to be $16 million and re-evaluated and cut down to $12.9 million.
Since the launch of the pilot, the MBTA has mounted seven marketing, advertising and PR campaigns. Still, it barely made a dent in the cost of running the service. If unable to match the costs of running an overnight service, the MBTA will be forced to shut down the program.
Melissa Dullea, senior director of service planning at the MBTA, said that although people have been using the late-night T service, the ridership is much lower than at other times of the day. This brings the subsidy up to an excessive $7.68 per passenger.
For Lisa Weber, a frequent T rider and Bostonian who has attended many MBTA meetings that discussed the future of the program, the discontinuation of the late-night T service is simply not an option.
“I think it darn well better,” Weber said when asked if she thought the service would survive at Wednesday’s meeting.
Weber suggested having local universities help keep the program going by issuing university T passes (U-Pass). With such a pass, all students at participating universities would have a buy-in with the MBTA for a separate fee on their university bill.
The Student Government Association (SGA) at Northeastern has been weighing the option of a mandatory U-Pass since fall 2014. If implemented, all students in classes at the university’s Boston campus would be required to purchase an MBTA pass at a university discount, regardless of their T usage.
“We don’t know how deep the discount would be, but we know at minimum it would be 50 percent for an unlimited monthly pass,” Noah Carville, SGA president and senior economics major, told The News in November. “Personally, I love U-Pass. I think the more people we can have commuting to campus in a way that is environmentally sustainable is fantastic.”
Gil Propp, a Boston Streetcar member who attended the Wednesday meeting, said that increased advertising would be one of the main solutions to the budget problem. He proposed informing more people about the existence of a late-night service and setting up booths to advertise the program.
“When you get these comments, publicize the comments, people and sponsors can see just how important it is,” Propp said. “As long as people don’t know about late-night service, they won’t use it.”
In order to gain public feedback, the MBTA staff will hold meetings through March 11 to discuss the future of late-night service. The next meeting is Monday, March 9 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Sheraton Commander Hotel in Cambridge. A recommendation will be made to MassDOT’s board of directors on April 15.
Photo by Scotty Schenck
