If it’s later than midnight in Boston and you’re trying to get from one place to another, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority won’t be able to help you out. On weekends, you can take the T until 2 a.m., but beyond that, public transportation just isn’t an option for late night travelers.
Twice now, the T has tried offering late night services, though each time the programs were cancelled, as the MBTA found them too costly to keep up.
On Monday, right before the MBTA’s governing board was set to vote on a proposal to begin a seven-night-a-week late night bus service, the company’s new general manager, Luis Ramirez, urged the board to delay making any decision on the extension of hours, saying the plan would cost too much and interfere with bus maintenance schedules.
In doing this, Ramirez was acting like a businessman. Anyone in his position would be compelled to do the same. It’s not rocket science that a company shouldn’t be hemorrhaging money on a service that doesn’t pull its own weight. But it’s more complicated than that. The point of the MBTA isn’t to make money, it’s to help people. That’s what public transportation is all about: serving the public.
This most recent proposal was finally beginning to realize that goal, at least until Ramirez made his thoughts on the plan known. Unlike its predecessors, which were targeted at college students and people going out on the town, advocates for the new bus schedule wanted to promote the service as a way for low-income people who have to work all hours of the night to get to and from work in an affordable way.
Hopefully, Ramirez’s comments this week will not mean the death of the proposal. This is something worth finding solutions for.
Just because it’s not easy to extend MBTA hours does not mean it’s not possible. Gentrification and increasing housing costs are already pushing low-income people out from the center of the city, forcing them further and further away from the places they work. When we limit late night transportation services, we are just making Boston even less accessible to low income communities.
If this is such a money sink, why doesn’t the MBTA just charge more for these late night rides? People would be happy to pay the price if it meant being able to get to their jobs without having to spend significantly more to use ride services like Uber and Lyft. It would also mean safer transportation, with less people having to walk home from work on unsafe streets late at night.
Or better yet, why doesn’t the MBTA try to make back the millions they are losing each year from people who take the train without paying? As much as $42 million is lost annually from fare evasion. That kind of cash would definitely make a dent in the cost of late night transportation, and maybe even make up enough funds to make these buses worthwhile.
Luis Ramirez is only trying to keep the MBTA afloat, but he’s going about it all wrong. Limiting the scope of the MBTA is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we restrict the hours of trains and buses, less people are able to use these resources, which only further limits their potential. That’s not a cycle we want to get into.
If public transportation only serves the people lucky enough to work 9 to 5, then it’s not really doing its job. There is such a huge sector of the city that works during the night who could really stand to benefit from bus routes like these. Not providing them because of budgetary concerns is nothing more than a cop out. Boston can do better.
