Late-Night T at Last

Change has come to the T at last. While cities such as New York have long enjoyed late-night public transportation, Boston largely shuts down at 1 a.m., the T’s closing time.  Starting in the spring, though, all subways and popular bus routes will run until 3 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday under a pilot program for at least one year. This is nothing but beneficial. We commend Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 and his administration for prioritizing and implementing a long-awaited shift in MBTA policy of this sort—it is a major improvement both for individuals and for the general social and economic life of the Boston area.

Late-night T service better aligns Boston with its substantial youthful demographic. The city is in large part a college town, with 50 universities in the metropolitan area alone, including those in nearby locales like Harvard and MIT in Cambridge. For students, the T’s current 1 a.m. end-time is often at odds with when they actually need to utilize public transportation. Longer weekend T service, as such, makes it easier for students to leave the proverbial campus “bubble.”

Moreover, many who come to the Boston area for education stay in the area after graduation, working in fields such as Boston’s booming technology sector. These young people, as Governor Patrick noted, often have work schedules and lifestyles that keep them up late. As such, the current system forces them either to curtail their schedules to catch the T or to go without. This is the opposite of how a city should ideally function—public transportation should accommodate the lives of residents, not the other way around. In fact, tech and restaurant workers have been among those visibly pushing for late-night public transportation. The new T policy gives these individuals a greater level of convenience, providing them with a safe and more convenient way to commute.

This change also enriches the Boston area as a whole, making it a more appealing place to live and work. Extended T service enables greater late-night weekend mobility, allowing for a freshly vibrant nightlife—an attractive feature for young people in particular. More broadly, this has tremendous potential to enhance Boston economically as well as socially. Many businesses that depend on late-night patronage such as restaurants and bars are at the mercy of the T’s 1 a.m. curfew, which limits the pool of potential customers. The new 3 a.m. “curfew” should thus allow residents to enjoy a more robust urban life while both businesses and the government benefit from the economic uptick. It is a concrete step towards maintaining Boston’s reputation as a world-class city in the modern era.

Certainly, the late-night pilot program faces obstacles. For it to succeed, it will need to generate enough ridership and corporate sponsorship to justify its costs. However, if this new policy is popular, then it may become permanent—and given the tremendous, ever-growing demand for comprehensive late-night T service, there is very good to reason to expect that it will indeed be successful.  We look forward to it.