Late night T service take 2

IN MEMORIAM

LATE NIGHT T IS OFFICIALLY DEAD.

T board votes to end late-night service
By Nicole Dungca GLOBE STAFF FEBRUARY 29, 2016

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority will end late-night weekend hours no later than March 18, after board members voted 4-0 on Monday to ax the service.

The elimination of the service, which currently extends MBTA service on all subway lines and some bus lines by 90 minutes on Fridays and Saturdays, was met with consternation by proponents of the pilot program.

Full article:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...tml?s_campaign=bostonglobe:socialflow:twitter
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in-memoriam.jpg
 
Womp. It was fun while it lasted.

Quick, name the "best" cities/urban-areas in the country that completely close their public transit as early as the T will/was. Counting night-time replacement bus service (Bay Area has All-Nighter bus service, LA has 24-Hour Owl Service, even Miami has a Night Owl bus).

Dallas?
MARTA in Atlanta is arguably open later than the T.
 
bigeman312 said:
Womp. It was fun while it lasted.

Quick, name the "best" cities/urban-areas in the country that completely close their public transit as early as the T will/was. Counting night-time replacement bus service (Bay Area has All-Nighter bus service, LA has 24-Hour Owl Service, even Miami has a Night Owl bus).

Dallas?
MARTA in Atlanta is arguably open later than the T.
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Courtesy of WGBH: https://news.wgbh.org/2016/02/24/local-news/how-bostons-late-night-mbta-service-compares-rest-world

Note: This does not take into account late-night/all-night bus service in most of those cities.
 
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rip in peace

Bridj is promoting a replacement proposal at http://www.bridjlatenight.com/, it's short on detail for now and I doubt it's going to be that much more successful than the Night Owl buses, but more options are always welcome.
 
Almost all of those cities operate all-night bus services.

Barcelona, BTW, is a bit of an odd one: they run 24-hour Metro service on Saturday only (for Saturday night), but Friday is a regular schedule.
 
Matthew said:
Almost all of those cities operate all-night bus services.

Barcelona, BTW, is a bit of an odd one: they run 24-hour Metro service on Saturday only (for Saturday night), but Friday is a regular schedule.
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Yep. I did some research on the 20 largest urban areas in the country, to really nail this point home, and here's what I found:

Cities/urban areas in the US that will have later weekend service than the T, counting bus services:

  • New York
  • Los Angeles
  • Chicago
  • Miami
  • Philadelphia
  • Houston
  • Washington
  • Atlanta
  • Phoenix
  • San Francisco
  • Seattle
  • San Diego
  • Minneapolis
  • Tampa
  • Denver
  • Baltimore

Cities/urban areas in the US that will shut down roughly the same time as the T:
  • Dallas
  • Detroit
  • St. Louis

Cities/urban areas in the US that will shut down earlier than the T:
  • _

Really think about that. How pathetic.
 
Taxi lobby- funded legislation to box Uber into a corner in 3. . .2. . .


(This assumes that deep-sixing late night T service is the "Collect Underpants" stage of somebody's three-step plan to cromulence.)
 
If we aren't going the extend late night service we should start extending hours past 2 AM.

If you stagger closing times you reduce violent incidents and the surge load on taxi/uber cars. Staggered closing times therefore would help people actually be able to get a ride home, and increase the revenue of clubs/bars and taxis.

Hell, increase closing times to 5 AM and then people can catch the first trains home.
 
Scipio said:
rip in peace

Bridj is promoting a replacement proposal at http://www.bridjlatenight.com/, it's short on detail for now and I doubt it's going to be that much more successful than the Night Owl buses, but more options are always welcome.
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This could be a win win win

Win 1 -- people get service at a reasonable price point and the taxpayers don't get the shaft
Win 2 -- Bridj get's a major anchor customer [in the sense of Boston] to showcase what it can do
Win 3 -- far more flexible than rails or even fixed route buses -- a view to the future

Why not we are the HUB of INNOVATION
 
Um I am pretty sure bridj will not be cheaper than the MBTA at least for each individual. Part of the advantage to public transit is that it follows the same path and has the same stops each time so bridj's flexibility is actually a disadvantage to some extent because the routes would be very different from what people usually use to get around which as F-Line mentioned is why the original Owl Bus plan didn't do well. I just don't see it as a positive solution for the lack of transit.

I think the best solution would be to run all of the subway lines until later and skip running the busses or to run the busiest 20 or 30 bus lines and not run the subway lines. That seems like the best compromise just run whichever option is more cost effective.
 
citylover94 said:
Um I am pretty sure bridj will not be cheaper than the MBTA at least for each individual. Part of the advantage to public transit is that it follows the same path and has the same stops each time so bridj's flexibility is actually a disadvantage to some extent because the routes would be very different from what people usually use to get around which as F-Line mentioned is why the original Owl Bus plan didn't do well. I just don't see it as a positive solution for the lack of transit.

I think the best solution would be to run all of the subway lines until later and skip running the busses or to run the busiest 20 or 30 bus lines and not run the subway lines. That seems like the best compromise just run whichever option is more cost effective.
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City -- no Brigj is going to be cheaper than a cab or Uber and it wont require the massive raid on the taxpayers to fund the difference between cost and price

A major part of the reason is that you will not be required to run things that were designed to meat the commuter and day users needs and have small demand in the middle of the night

Many of those things in turn either run empty to provide the frequency or they run more full but less frequently -- the demand profile of the post 10 PM to early AM is very different from what the T is designed to meet
 
whighlander said:
City -- no Brigj is going to be cheaper than a cab or Uber and it wont require the massive raid on the taxpayers to fund the difference between cost and price
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The second-shift workers paying through the nose for Bridj aren't taxpayers? What are they, then...freeloading vampires?:rolleyes:

A major part of the reason is that you will not be required to run things that were designed to meat the commuter and day users needs and have small demand in the middle of the night

Many of those things in turn either run empty to provide the frequency or they run more full but less frequently -- the demand profile of the post 10 PM to early AM is very different from what the T is designed to meet
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Pay no attention to the post 6 clicks up with the comprehensive list of comparable cities establishing comparison for what that demand profile actually is. Just let the word salad flow, because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
 
I'd love to see a through break-down of late-night ridership, not just boardings, but also alightings. I know this would be difficult to gather, but it would give a good idea of where the ridership is. Right now, all we can see is that most of the ridership is boarding downtown. We have no idea, for example, if it would be a good idea to curtail the "D" Branch at Reservoir after 1:00am on weekends. Finding the optimal service patterns is impossible without comprehensive data. GIGO.
 
What about running buses on the same routes as the subway system?(Obviously they can't run on the tracks but they could stop at all the stations) I could be remembering wrong but I believe one of the reason it was so costly to run the late night service was due to only having a limited amount of time to make repairs to the subway system.
 
They already tried that and it failed miserably as far as I can tell based on what F-Line and others have said. It is too different a route using busses even if they go to all the same stations. Also I don't think it is that big a deal as far as costs are to have more limited time for doing maintenance considering plenty of other subway systems run for longer hours or 24-7 and still complete necessary maintenance.
 
An issue they've never addressed is the on-time percentages of last trips. The only explanation they have is well it "waits for last train".

Case Study: 39 bus outbound.

The last bus is scheduled to depart Back Bay towards Forest Hills at 1:05am weekdays and 2:25am weekends. It's ALWAYS late because the last Orange Line trains don't arrive by then to Back Bay. Weekdays it leaves about 10 mins late and about 15-20 mins late on weekends. That's a whole trip's worth of headway. I'm not asking them to leave connecting travelers stranded at Back Bay, but if a trip is routinely late, make that it's departure time! To make matters worse, these last trips don't show up on any apps so if you're waiting mid-route, you give up. Ridership could be so much higher.

I've only taken the 66 from Harvard towards Dudley a handful of times, but it's last trip is about 30-45 mins late, as confirmed by reporting a "bus never came" to the MBTA only to have them email back saying it ran 45 mins late (per usual). How can anyone rely on that?
 
I used to see the 66 bus wandering through Allston after 2 a.m. even when the Night Owl service didn't exist.

Of course, it could have simply been drunk.
 
Matthew said:
I used to see the 66 bus wandering through Allston after 2 a.m. even when the Night Owl service didn't exist.

Of course, it could have simply been drunk.
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I saw 39's around 2 as well back when I lived on Huntington. The key routes in general tend to lag a little behind the official closing schedule.
 
I came across some more in-depth late-night data. After running some rudimentary numbers by some track schematics, here is my crazy (only because of the financial state-of-affairs) late-night (12:30-3:00) MBTA proposal:

Headways:
  • All schedules are clock-facing.
  • Each Green Line Branch runs on 12-minute headways.
  • Blue, Orange, Red Lines run on 15-minute headways.
  • All buses run on 20-minute headways.

Red Line: Operating between Alewife and JFK/UMass.

Orange Line: Operating between Oak Grove and Forest Hills.

Blue Line: Operating between Bowdoin and Wonderland.

Green Line:
  • "B" Branch between Government Center and Boston College
  • "C" Branch between North Station and Cleveland Circle
  • "D" Branch between North Station and Reservoir
  • "E" Branch between Lechmere and Brigham Circle

Buses:
  • SL1 (to be replaced by SL6 to Chelsea)
  • SL5
  • 1
  • 23
  • 28
  • 39
  • 57
  • 66
  • 111
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The second-shift workers paying through the nose for Bridj aren't taxpayers? What are they, then...freeloading vampires?
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F-Line -- The main point that I was trying to make was that most people who pay taxes feel that the level of subsidy of the late night service is just not justifiable in terms of the relatively few users and the difference between the fare box revenues and the cost of operations.

What you misinterpreted as some sort of Bosses versus the heroic workers --- was intended to point out that the T was structured starting way back in BERY days to bring commuters into the manufacturing / commercial core of Boston particularly during / just before normal 9-5 working hours and then to take them home

It was further structured [except for the CR frequented by the Bankers and such from the North Shore and Wellesley] to transport "payroll patriots" such as my father's elder sister who sewed shoes @ Stride Rite shoes [nee Green Shoe Manufacturing] on Harrison Ave. She lived in East Cambridge a block off of Cambridge St., and every working day for decades she took the Cambridge St. Bus to the Green Line at Lechmere, transferred to the Orange Line and rode the EL each day using either Northampton or Dudley and some walking to get to / from work.

No one then [circa 1960] or before, could have imagined today's Seaport and its new commuting patterns, other than there was one bus that crossed the Summer St. Reserve Channel Bridge into Southy proper.

And despite the fact that Green Shoe worked 24 X 6, the T's mostly daytime and early evening Schedule combined with the company's work schedule accommodated the 2nd and 3rd shifts.
 
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