Anyone who has ever stayed until last call at a Boston bar will know that they had better be prepared to pay big bucks for a ride home.
Boston is one of the only major cities in the country without late-night public transportation, which means that anyone who needs to get around after about 1 a.m., whether for work, travel or entertainment, has few options.
“Despite the reputation Boston has as a sleepy city, the city never actually really sleeps,” said Jarred Johnson, executive director of the advocacy group TransitMatters. “There are folks who clean our hospitals, folks who are working in the hospital in the ER overnight. Obviously, our hospitality industry. There are many labs that are open 24/7. There are tons of people who are going to and from work during those hours, and relying exclusively on … Uber and Lyft isn’t really sustainable for a lot of folks.”
Because of this, Boston officials are exploring off-hours transportation solutions, which they say are key to the city’s viability as a place to live, work and play.
Critics regard the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority as less than reliable during the day. But with few options late at night, transit advocates say even that level of service would be better than the status quo, especially for third-shift workers who travel to and from work at irregular times when there is a lack of public transit.
A survey of MassLive readers received almost 50 responses and more than 100 comments on social media from MBTA riders who said they had been negatively affected by the lack of overnight service.
Multiple respondents said they had to rely on rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft, which can be expensive and sometimes unreliable, to get to and from their jobs. Some even said they had been unable to take better or higher-paying positions because they could not afford rideshare fees. Rideshare services have increased in cost in recent years — one Boston resident said she spends nearly $1,000 per month on Uber rides.
The regular fare for a one-way MBTA bus or subway trip is $1.70 and $2.40, respectively. Commuter rail fares range from $2.40 to $13.25, depending on the distance traveled.
“On weekdays, we have limited options to commute from late-night work responsibilities, for instance in the hospitality industry,” said Alexander Shirley of Brookline and Springfield. “Rideshare or parking adds up, and although it’s been a while since I’ve worked in a restaurant, I do feel that living in Boston, to pull those shifts must be entirely unsustainable now.”
Others who answered the survey reported struggling to get to and from Boston Logan International Airport for early or late flights, and some even said they had been unable to schedule health care appointments or get to the emergency room.
A history of MBTA late-night transit service
Service on the MBTA’s subway system ends around 12:30 a.m. each night and starts up again shortly before 5 a.m. For most bus routes, service hours start between 5 and 6 a.m. and end around 1 a.m., though a handful of high-ridership routes spread throughout the city and into the suburbs go later into the night or start earlier in the morning.
On the commuter rail, the first inbound train generally leaves between 4 and 5 a.m. during the work week on most lines and the final outbound train leaves Boston between 11 p.m. and midnight.
Historically, Boston’s subway system did have regular 24-hour service, but that ended in the 1960s when the MBTA took over operations from the Metropolitan Transit Authority, according to historian Steven Beaucher. He told MassLive he has thus far been unable to determine why the T ended overnight trips.
In recent decades, the transit agency has tried several pilot programs running extended hours, generally without success. In 2001, it introduced the Night Owl bus, which ran on select bus routes and along the subway lines until 2:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. The program was discontinued in 2005 due to low ridership and high costs, according to the MBTA.
“Over 20 years ago they had longer hours,” Mark Flerra wrote on MassLive’s Facebook page. “Then, they stopped it, right when my work put me on a later shift to support a national project. Driving in was a pain no matter when I went in, but I will say it was smooth sailing going home. Parking costs were still outrageous, so expenses up. Would have saved hundreds a month with T service.”
Parking at T stations costs between $2 and $9 a day depending on the location.
In 2014, the MBTA ran a late-night subway pilot, extending operating hours to 2:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. The pilot ended in 2016 after it was determined that ridership levels were not high enough to justify the costs associated with the program.
After the program ended, the Federal Transit Administration cited the MBTA for failing to conduct a civil rights analysis to see if removing the late-night service would disproportionately affect people of color and low-income riders, the Boston Globe reported at the time. The analysis was required for any major service changes, but the T said at the time that because late-night trips were always meant to be temporary, it did not consider ending them a major change.
More recently, in 2018, the T piloted late-night and early-morning bus service, prompted in part by advocacy from Transit Matters. The program offered later and more frequent service focusing on areas where riders relied on off-peak-time buses, such as Dorchester, Roxbury, Charlestown, Everett, East Boston and Lynn.
Early-morning trips were added on routes 16, 19, 31, 32, 65, 70, 104, 109, 117 and 455, and were made permanent at the end of the program. However, according to an MBTA spokesperson, the late-night pilot running from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. was less successful, and only about half of the trips added during the pilot were made permanent, including on routes 34E, 66, 104, 109, 111, 116 and 117.
Johnson said he believed part of the problem with the various overnight programs was that the routes were not well-thought-out to serve the communities that really needed them. He said some of the buses stopped at train stations where the subway was no longer running, and for the Night Bus, it was sometimes difficult to follow the routes traveled by subway cars during the day.
“For some of the [subway] routes, they’re not going parallel to a major street or they’re going under people’s homes, in ways that are difficult to trace that line efficiently. And so that was a big issue,” he said. “Then when the T tried to run it with their rapid transit network, the cost of running the very large trains and keeping the stations open, as well as the need for more track access, is what doomed that pilot.”
According to the MBTA spokesperson, the overnight pilot program did include some “special-purpose bus routes” that did not run during the day, such as Silver Line trips connecting Nubian Square with Logan Airport, with a surface stop at South Station, but these routes added complexity to the bus network and did not have high enough ridership to sufficiently offset the costs.
Public transit hours hinder Boston entertainment scene
Not having public transit to rely on hurts Boston’s entertainment scene, too, according to Boston city officials. Even in a city known for closing early, bars and clubs often close after the subway stops running, and riders who responded to MassLive’s survey reported having to leave concerts, performances and sports games early to get home — or just not go at all.
Other respondents pointed out that because of the lack of transportation alternatives, people are more likely to drive drunk after a night out.
The city has been working to improve its nightlife options in recent years, with Mayor Michelle Wu appointing a “nightlife czar” last year and establishing the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife Economy, but public transit is holding it back.
Nightlife Czar Corean Reynolds mentioned the early closing of the T in a press conference when her appointment was announced, WBUR reported at the time. She told NBC Boston earlier this year that her office was having conversations about how to extend transit to help both late-night workers and residents going out for the night.
“I spend so much money on taxis, it is insane. It makes me not want to stay out later and spend more money in the economy at restaurants, movie theaters and bars,” Caroline Beach, a resident of Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, told MassLive. “People of Boston hate that there is no nightlife, but with poor transit, you cannot blame us for going home early.”
MBTA focused on fixing track problems, worker shortages
With the MBTA already working overtime to fix a plethora of issues, from slow zones to safety concerns to driver shortages, it’s unlikely that service hours are going to change any time soon.
According to a T spokesperson, the agency relies on the overnight window when the subway is closed to provide access to the tracks and stations for maintenance and construction work. When planning subway, bus and commuter rail schedules, the MBTA has to balance required maintenance, the availability and cost of vehicles and operators with the anticipated ridership, current schedules and rider feedback.
The hours from 2 to 4 a.m. are also subject to shift differentials, which means the agency must pay operators higher wages during those times.
Other cities have been able to provide public transit, whereas Boston has not. Municipalities both larger (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.) and smaller (Detroit, Baltimore, Miami, Minneapolis, etc.) than Boston offer some form of late-night transit, whether that means running trains 24/7 or extending select bus routes a few extra hours on the weekends.
Johnson said that even those cities can see some of the same issues Boston is trying to avoid. In New York, where the subway runs 24/7, express tracks and other infrastructure allow for track work that Boston can’t do without stopping service, but stations themselves are another story.
“The stations are in such terrible shape,” he said. “Look at a city like Tokyo, with incredibly high transit ridership. But those trains stop running at midnight, and that’s part of why those stations are sparkling clean and are in good repair.”
Potential solutions for overnight transportation in Boston
Early this year, Boston City Councilors Sharon Durkan, Henry Santana and Ben Weber filed a hearing order to explore establishing a municipal bus service to provide late-night and last-mile transit that the MBTA does not. They wrote in the order that transit schedules are structured around a typical 9 to 5 workday, which leaves third-shift workers with “little to no option to use public transportation for their work commute.”
Durkan said at the Jan. 24 council meeting that she hoped to partner with community organizations to fill service gaps and “create a template that puts community advocates in charge to plan, implement and operate services with the goal of providing the best value for residents.”
Durkan and her co-sponsors cited services like the Mission Hill Link, a volunteer-run bus, and employee shuttles offered by some of Boston’s larger employers, such as Boston Children’s Hospital, as models.
There are examples in other places, too, of municipalities working with transit organizations to expand service. Notably, the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority launched 24/7 service on 14 high-ridership bus routes in December 2023 within the city of Washington, D.C., funded with $12 million from the city council.
A hearing on the Boston proposal has not been held, however, and expanding service hours does not seem to be high on the MBTA’s priority list.
The T spokesperson said the most “promising” time when subway service could be expanded would be on Sundays before 6 a.m. The first train trips of the day on Sundays are typically busy, especially on the Blue Line, indicating demand for earlier trips, and shift differentials are not in effect, but this would reduce the overnight maintenance window.
Johnson said he believes building up late-night ridership with buses, both on existing subway routes and in areas where the subway doesn’t reach, would be the most effective way to start overnight service as it would be cheaper, more flexible and more scalable than the subway.
“It is really a critical need, as we think about how do we make Boston a more attractive city for folks to live in,” he said. “When you think about connecting people to jobs and allowing folks to have more opportunities to work and provide for their family, I think this makes a lot of sense.”
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