Last call

State lawmakers are pressing the MBTA to run later on the weekends. It's a good idea, but don't raise a celebratory glass just yet.

Transit by Jason Gay

You whine, you complain, but every once in a while, your elected officials do a smart thing. Last week, members of the state's House Transportation Committee instructed the MBTA to develop a pilot program to test late-night service on the weekends. If the program is launched as planned, the T's main routes -- which now cease operations at around 1 a.m. -- will run until 2:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, starting in early 2000.

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An outburst of subway sanity

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From a public-safety perspective, late-night service is a no-brainer. Right now, the T shuts down long before the 2 a.m. closing of Boston's bars and nightclubs, leaving patrons to rely on cabs or, worse, their own cars. Keeping the T open later would encourage more partygoers to leave their cars behind, and any measure that can keep a potential drunk driver off the streets should be wholly embraced.

What's more, a late-operating transit system is in sync with Boston's aspirations to become a bona fide nighttime metropolis. City leaders talk ad nauseam about becoming a "world-class city," but world-class cities don't shut down their buses and trains before Conan O'Brien has welcomed his first guest. Keeping the T open later would breathe new life into Boston's after-dark scenery, and not just for the bar crowd. Restaurants, theaters, hotels, even art galleries would stand to benefit from expanded service.

"Not all of us turn into pumpkins at 12 o'clock," state senator Steve Tolman (D-Brighton), who proposed a new feasibility study on late-night T hours, said at a May 13 transportation-committee hearing on the issue.

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But before everyone starts getting carried away, realize that there are serious roadblocks to making late-night T service a reality. Last week's developments, while promising, represent only a tiny first step. Unless lawmakers, the business community, universities -- and, most important, the general public -- hold the T's feet to the fire, late-night service will absolutely, positively, not happen, for a number of reasons.

First off, the MBTA's top brass doesn't want anything to do with it. In part this is because T management frets that late-night service would compromise maintenance of the trains and tracks, which, as we all know, are rickety and in constant need of fixing. (Another part of the problem is that T trains operate on a single-track system, whereas New York and Chicago, whose systems run 24 hours, have parallel tracks, allowing trains to run on one track while another is repaired.)

The MBTA also thinks that the cost of late-night service would far outweigh its benefits. There would be increased expenses for equipment wear and tear and for personnel; under its current contract with the carmen's union, the T pays its night staffers a higher per-hour rate. Because expanded hours would raise safety issues as well, there would need to be an additional law-enforcement presence. This, too, would cost money. The T estimates the added costs of running round-the-clock, seven days a week, at $27 million a year.

That ain't cheap, and, understandably, it raises red flags at MBTA headquarters, where management is already under fire from the legislature to bring its spending under control. "It's a little perplexing," says Michael Mulhern, the T's chief operating officer. "On one hand, we're under tremendous pressure to contain costs and operate like a business, and on the other hand, we're being asked to provide unlimited service."

But the T may be protesting a bit too much. Most of its objections are based on studies of 24-hour service, seven days a week, which almost no one seems to be asking for. Most late-night proponents argue for a more limited plan, such as staying open later on the weekends, and perhaps on Thursdays as well. When pressed, Mulhern acknowledges that a limited late-night system would not be as expensive (the T estimates that expanding Friday and Saturday service until 2:30 a.m. would cost $2.5 million), and it wouldn't dramatically compromise repair and maintenance.

What's more, it's unlikely that late-night T service would actually involve trains. Both T managers and the carmen's union (which favors extended hours, since it means more jobs, more work time, and thus more money for its members) prefer a night-owl "rubber rail" service, where buses would run along train routes. Not only is bus service less expensive than train service, it's considered safer for riders and operators, since buses run above ground, in plain view. (The T might run portions of the Green Line late-night, since many of its routes run above ground.)

That said, operations are only half of this battle. The other part of making late-night service a reality is getting people to take advantage of it. Here, it's critical for outside forces to assist the T as much as possible. Though Mulhern insists that the T will assiduously plug its late-night pilot program -- "We would make a full-fledged effort to get the word out," he says -- it's only natural to worry about an agency charged with publicizing something it doesn't want to do. (Asked if he's concerned about the T's ability to market late-night service, state senator Robert Havern (D-Arlington), the transportation committee's co-chair, says flatly: "Yup.")

In fairness, however, publicizing late-night transportation shouldn't be entirely the T's responsibility. Boston's bar and nightclub owners, who have grumbled for eons about the city's sleepy infrastructure, must step up to the plate, spend some money, and help the T market its expanded service. Such an investment would no doubt pay off for the owners -- the more people who realize they can take mass transit, the more people who will choose to spend a night out on the town.

Likewise, groups that would be served by late-night transit ought to take up the cause. There are more than 200,000 students in the Boston area, and most of them could give a rat's ass about local politics, largely because, in their eyes, elected officials seem interested mainly in breaking up their keg parties. But it would behoove them (especially when they return next fall) to contact their representatives, register to vote, and make their presence felt in the late-night T debate, since they would be a primary beneficiary of extended hours. (University administrators, who are constantly under fire for ignoring the impact of drunken students in local neighborhoods, should embrace late-night service for the simple fact that it could keep those students out of cars.)

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Early readings also suggest that proponents of late-night service may have an unlikely ally in Boston's neighborhood groups. It is the nature of many of the city's neighborhood groups to oppose everything except blue sky, sunshine, and long weekends. But late-night T service has attracted their attention, largely because it could serve to alleviate the parking crises that plague city neighborhoods, especially student havens such as Allston/Brighton, the Back Bay, and portions of Cambridge. At last week's hearing, Shirley Kressel, the president of the Alliance for Boston Neighborhoods, said she's wholly in favor of extending T hours. "I think there's a tremendous market for all-night ridership," she said.

But an even more valuable advocate for expanded MBTA hours is Mayor Thomas Menino, who could include expanded transit hours as part of his much-ballyhooed dream of a reinvigorated downtown. "[The mayor] thinks it's a great idea -- as long as there are safety precautions in place with the MBTA police patrols," says mayoral spokesperson Robin Bavaro.

Some elected officials have worried that extending MBTA hours would prompt bar and nightclub owners to lobby for later hours. Although Menino has shown some signs of softening on the 2 a.m. curfew (he told the Boston Globe's Adrian Walker he might allow hotel bars to stay open till 3 a.m.), it's highly unlikely that neighborhood groups, which have staunchly opposed last-call extensions, would budge on this position. Either way, though, it's not any reason to hesitate on running trains later. (State representative Paul Demakis [D-Boston], who worried aloud at last week's hearing that the clubs would want later last calls, nevertheless added that he has no problem with extending service "by at least a couple of hours.")

The proposed pilot program -- which has to come back to the transportation committee this summer for approval -- isn't perfect. One problem is timing: because of scheduling and planning concerns, the T doesn't expect to get it going until January. This is unfortunate, since they'll be missing out on the opportunity to promote it when students come back to school in September. Second, the pilot program should immediately be expanded to include Thursday nights, since that's when the weekend truly starts for much of the city's under-30 set.

Even if these changes are made, there will be other hurdles. It's possible that the proposal could encounter some rough seas if the T, as expected, raises its fares for the first time in five years. If riders think they're paying extra bucks to subsidize the drunken bar crowd, they could get cranky. Proponents of late-night service would be wise to point out that later hours would also accommodate legions of service-industry employees (not to mention workers at hospitals and other 24-hour businesses).

Still, there's no question that late-night service represents something of a risk to an agency that isn't supposed to be taking chances, especially with the people's money. But this is one public-service venture that shouldn't be measured strictly by its bottom line. "We have ignored for years the demographics of this city," Senator Havern said last week. If Boston's youth is ever to be served, the night shouldn't be left strictly to the bureaucrats.

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.