Bridge the Gap: Late night in review

Well, that was quick.  

It has not even been two years since the MBTA first began late night service, and already the powers that be have decided not to continue the service.  

The decision was made in a 4-0 vote of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board last Monday. In an attempt to make Bostonians feel better about the change, the T prefaced news of the decision with the feel-good story that it has reduced its operating deficit by 43 percent. Happily for the Fiscal and Management Control Board, the fact that a mere 43 percent reduction in the deficit is a feel-good story at all reflects the Baker administration’s remarkable influence over the media narrative in Boston. Sadly for the Fiscal and Management Control Board, the good feelings evaporated as soon as the Board’s votes were tallied.

Late night service has been popular among the many college students in the area. It has also been hypothesized that the service disproportionately benefits low income and minority riders. However, we don’t know this for sure because the T decided to not complete the equity analysis required by the Federal Transit Administration for major transit service cuts. This disclosure raises further questions: if the Fiscal and Management Control Board were so determined to cut the service that it declined to follow federal regulations when doing so, what other shortcuts did it take to reach this result?

For starters, the Board misconstrued ridership numbers by reporting only that late night ridership has declined since it began. Accounting for the service reductions in July 2015, though, reveals that late night ridership per service-hour has actually increased since the program began, meaning late night trains are more full today than they were at the start of service.

More seriously, the cost of the service might also have been misrepresented. Using MBTA scheduledata and MBTA-specific operating cost data from the National Transit Database, it is possible to estimate that the annual cost of late night service should be in the $5 to 8 million range. This is, in fact, how much the MBTA claimed late night service cost before the creation of the Control Board, when adjusted proportionally to the 2015 service reductions.  

Yet the Control Board claims the cost of today’s service is $19 million, which is troubling beyond the sheer sticker shock: if $19 million is correct, why would the Board cut the service instead of addressing its out-of-control costs? Reducing the cost of the service from $19 million to $5 to 8 million would save $11 to 14 million, which is how much the Board claims it is saving by eliminating the service.

Instead, late night service will disappear in two weekends’ time, deemed a failure by four penny-pinching oligarchs. But was it actually a failure?

Consider this: the MBTA’s last venture into late night service, which ran from 2001 to 2005, exclusively ran buses. If the 13,000 nightly riders of the present late night service were to ride nine bus routes (one for each of the nine rail routes in the MBTA’s rapid transit system), the routes would need to run at an average three minute headway to accommodate everyone. Not a single bus route in the MBTA system approaches that level of service.

By 2005 standards, today’s late night service would undoubtedly have been a success.