Re: Driven By.... Uhh... Hello? Anybody?
I've broken down, or tried to approximate, the cost breakdown of late-night service by mode. I used the data from the summary report of the Fri/Sat 3am pilot program, so not everything is exactly on point, and I only reference costs incurred in direct operation of service. There are about 3 million in general background costs that can be applied across all modes.
Ridership Trends Late-night ridership is microcosm, albeit with more acute differences, of normal ops: heavy on rail-transit, light on bus. All told, the MBTA roughly 1.4 million late night entries over a year (March 2014 - March 2015) (about 27,000 per weekend). Ridership varies over the year: Sept-Nov and Feb-June are higher than average; highest single weekend: April 11 and 12th was the highest at almost 35,000 recorded entries (30% increase over average).
84% of late-night trips occurred on the subway, Green (33%), Red (23%), Orange (20%), and Blue (8%). 16% used the bus. Park St was, easily, the most trafficked station (1,700 per wknd, 6.3% of total entries). The top six is rounded out by State (1,050), Haymarket (975), Harvard (950), Kenmore (920), and Central (900). (note: using the top six because fuck the base-ten numeral system - but really because there's a steep drop-off between #6 Central and #7 Boylston, 900-700 respectively).
About 6,500 entered at a top-six station, that's 24% of total late-night ridership. The Silver Line copped about 590 riders per wknd - the most for any bus and more than the aboveground portion of the B (the highest grossing surface trolley route). Granted, the surface GL entry numbers, by and large, reflect inbounds, not outbounds - makes sense people are heading in prior to 12:30 and not heading back into Boston late at night. The 66, 1, 57, and 28, in that order, are the only bus lines to cop over 300 riders per wknd.
COSTS Fare recovery rations are a bit difficult because students with student passes pay less...but I don't have numbers on just how many use student cards, so I'll just use the full fares that were assessed during the pilot ($2.10 RT, $1.60 for bus), but keep in mind that doing so will produce accurate, but not precise, estimates of cost-effectiveness and doesn't include transfers at this point.
The total cost of the year-long pilot was $13 million (which has since been revised upwards I believe - I'm using $13 mil for the calculations at the time being), the service recovered $2 mil in fare revenue (15% recovery ratio, average subsidy of $7.84 per rider).
Bus ops costs were $3.1 mil, subways ops costs were $4.3 mil with $1.4 mil in additional subway-specific maint costs - total of $5.7 mil. Assuming 1.175 million subway riders paying $2.10 (see note above), that'd be in theory 2.5 million in fares, and a fare recovery ratio of 44% and a net subsidy of $2.70 per pax. About 225,000 rode the bus, assuming $1.60 per rider, they'd accrue $360,000 in fares - that's a fare recovery ratio of 12% and a net subsidy of $12.2 per bus pax.
Those numbers aren't precise and do't reflect the actual intake, but they do give a ballpark as to the relative cost-effectiveness of late-night service modes. There's something else to be said in lumping in student rebates, which are a separate subsidy, with the late-night cost-per-rider numbers.
The issue that irks me most is that late-night service, and the resultant subsidy costs, are thrown as one lump sum. The FMCB is too smart to ignore that bus ops are the main driver in higher late-night subsidy levels; I'm more annoyed that instead of looking for a solution in perhaps canceling student rebates (idk if that's even possible) for late-night service, looking for Uber, Our Lord and Savior, Blessed be Their Name (that's sarcasm folks) to partner on just rubber-tire service while keeping the rail lines open, or raising late-night fares isn't the objective, blanket cancelation appears to be.
I'm sure there's internal protocols that makes solutions that we, or I, might view as easy, more difficult, but there's certainly some pretty good numbers in theory from the last pilot. The color lines did pretty decent I think, I think it'd be a shame to cut them.