Whether you’re working or partying, it also doesn’t help that the buses run only once per half-hour. Says Roni Krouzman, an organizer with the progressive activist group Boston Mobilization, " Running the bus at 1:30 in the morning every half-hour is very inadequate. I personally wouldn’t wait for that; I’d walk. That’s dangerous, especially for young women, and it’s also just inconvenient. " There’s also no guarantee that the buses are headed where you’re going. The service covers all the subway terrain, so if you’re in Jamaica Plain (along the Orange Line) or Davis Square (on the Red Line), you’re all set. But places in the city that are served by commuter rail — such as Hyde Park, West Roxbury, and Roslindale — won’t run late. And only seven of 165 bus routes will be on the Night Owl service: the #1 from Harvard Square to Dudley Square via Mass Ave; the #9 from Government Center to City Point in South Boston; the #28 from Dudley Square to Mattapan Square; the #57 from Kenmore Square to Watertown Square via Cambridge Street in Allston and Washington Street in Brighton; the #66 from Harvard Square to Dudley Square via Allston (along North Harvard and Cambridge Streets), Coolidge Corner, and Brookline Village; the #77 from Harvard Square to Arlington Heights; and the #111 from Haymarket Square to Woodlawn Avenue in Chelsea via the Tobin Bridge and Route 1.
That covers a good swath of Boston and the immediately surrounding cities, but outlying areas with bus service (such as Waltham) were overlooked, as were a number of popular inner-city routes. Jodi Sugarman-Brozan of Clean Buses for Boston wishes the program had included the #23 from Ashmont Station in Dorchester to Ruggles Station via Dorchester’s Four Corners neighborhood. Khalida Smalls of the T Riders Union, a Roxbury-based activist group, was rooting for the #15 (Fields Corner to Ruggles via Uphams Corner) and the #19 (Fields Corner to Ruggles via Grove Hall and Dudley Station). The T wouldn’t have known where transit activists and the general public wanted the routes, however, because the agency didn’t hold any community meetings or seek input before the new routes were announced. " One question that keeps pushing into my head is, how did they come to this particular set? " asks Smalls. " What were the criteria they used to pinpoint these buses? " She thinks a community forum would have been helpful: " As long as people see [the MBTA is] making a good-faith effort to work toward something, they’re not as angry about things. "
Pesaturo says the agency made decisions based on the hard evidence of ridership figures. The bus lines selected " primarily are some of the busiest routes in the system and cover areas that aren’t covered by the subway and streetcar line, " he says. The busiest routes during the day may not turn out to be the busiest routes at night, however. And although T officials pledge that they’ll adjust the pilot program according to usage, it’s a lot easier to cut underperforming routes than to add new ones.
IT’S A foregone conclusion that the T will lose money on Night Owl service. But then again, the agency loses money on every type of service. Says Pesaturo, " We’ve never claimed this is a break-even [business]. " The T measures its deficits " per passenger mile, " which means that the commuter rail — because of the long distances traversed — appears to be the cheapest, with a loss of only 15 cents per passenger mile (compared to 65 cents per passenger mile on buses, 30 cents on light rail, and 23 cents on heavy rail). However, a Boston Globe analysis in May measured the deficits, more sensibly, per rider. The results are dramatically different, with a loss of 86 cents per subway rider, $1.34 per bus rider, and $2.73 per commuter-rail rider. (Pesaturo couldn’t confirm the figures, but he noted that the MBTA generally considered the story accurate.)
Even though the agency’s losses are heaviest with the commuter rail, however, it embarked on a $1.6 billion commuter-rail building spree during the last decade, using 40 percent of its capital budget. The T opened the Old Colony Line on the South Shore in 1997, and brought service to Newburyport and Worcester. It even fought to restore the controversial Greenbush branch of the Old Colony Line, which many Hingham residents bitterly opposed. (It was finally approved two weeks ago by Secretary of Environmental Affairs Robert Durand.) Pesaturo says the agency’s insistent pursuit of commuter-rail expansion was in part legally required — the mass-transit antidote to the Big Dig, which will ultimately make roads clearer (and thus more appealing) for commuters. He notes, " We made commitments under Central Artery mitigation to do everything possible to get cars off the road and encourage people not to take their cars into the city. "
Yet the T’s focus on improving service for commuter-rail-riding suburbanites — a scant 11 percent of the MBTA’s daily ridership — drew criticism from urban activists. After all, Central Artery mitigation also required the agency to improve inner-city transit; for example, the T was supposed to update its buses and subway cars and expand the fleet. The T’s failure to do so resulted in a 1998 lawsuit from then–attorney general Scott Harshbarger and the Conservation Law Foundation (see " MBTA Fails Urban Riders, " News and Features, March 10, 2000). In September of last year, the state’s Executive Office of Transportation and Construction, on behalf of the MBTA, signed an agreement admitting the delays and setting up a revised schedule for meeting the requirements, which effectively ended the lawsuit.
" A lot of it is politics, racism, and classism, " says Khalida Smalls. " You focus and put more attention on the riders who have a choice, the riders who have cars and choose to leave them behind and take transit. That’s good, but riders in Roxbury and Mattapan are completely dependent on the T.... I truly believe they [T officials] ignore that set of riders because it’s not like they’re going to lose them. " She believes the agency should instead focus on such goals as putting air conditioning in city buses, most of which lack it, and hastening the transition from diesel to cleaner natural-gas buses.
The T insists that buses and subway lines will soon have their day. " It’s cyclical, " says Pesaturo. " If you look at the 1980s, we expanded the Red Line from Harvard Square to Alewife and extended the Orange Line from Back Bay to Forest Hills. Eighty percent of capital dollars went to the subway. In the ’90s, there was tremendous growth in commuter rail.... Now it’s shifting again, and an overwhelming majority of the capital dollars will be spent on the inner city. " But the T’s record on making improvements is spotty. The agency, which is slowly replacing old subway cars and making them handicapped-accessible, has had a heap of trouble with its new Green Line trolleys, manufactured by the Italian-based Breda company — trouble that has kept them out of service for most of the time since they were delivered less than three years ago. The T had a major setback two weeks ago when one of the new vehicles derailed along Comm Ave in Brighton. It was the seventh derailment in just over a year.
The long-neglected buses also won’t get much of a boost under the MBTA’s five-year Capital Investment Program, which was unveiled earlier this year. The agency will devote only 11 percent of its spending to buses ($294 million). If you add in the Silver Line, a " bus rapid transit " project that will run from Dudley Square in Roxbury to downtown and, eventually, Logan Airport, bus spending still reaches only 24 percent of the total budget. Commuter rail, the beneficiary of the last decade’s largesse, will receive 19 percent, and subways get the biggest share, at 39 percent.
The Silver Line itself is extremely controversial. When the elevated Orange Line along Washington Street was torn down in 1987, the MBTA promised residents that they’d receive " replacement service. " To activists such as Bob Terrell of the Washington Street Corridor Coalition, that means light rail, and he’s outraged at what the agency is offering instead. As he told the Phoenix last fall (see " Strange Bedfellows, " News and Features, December 1, 2000), he thinks the T’s strategy can be summed up this way: " Those low-income folks, those black folks — give ’em a bus! And if they complain, too bad. But we’re not investing money in a serious system. "
Meanwhile, riders had to lobby the T for years to get free bus-to-bus transfers, so people wouldn’t have to pay an additional fare each time they switched. Finally, last fall — when the agency was raising fares — it acquiesced. But, says Jodi Sugarman-Brozan, " the MBTA dragged their feet, " and local activists " have done the bulk of publicizing the fact that the program exists. " With the T’s record of forcing residents to accept transit they don’t want, not giving them the transit they do, and failing Green Line–style in the execution, advocates worry how long Night Owl service will last — especially since it will probably be a revenue-drainer.
MBTA advisory-board member Karen McNamara points out the conflicting obligations: " Over time, the MBTA is transforming itself from a purely public agency to a public agency being funded and managed somewhat like a business. It’ll always have that dual role, to be fiscally responsible but having to be responsive to the needs of its patrons. " Local activists and lawmakers insist that one of those needs is the Night Owl service or its equivalent. " I don’t think you’re going to make money late-night, " says Scapicchio. " But it’s not really about making money; it’s about providing a service. You’re not going to have high ridership, but you will be serving a purpose. "
Even if money isn’t the only factor, though, it is very important. The agency has worked out a set of hypothetical figures for the late-night service. If 500 people use it on a given night, the MBTA loses $47.28 per rider. Get a thousand more (the number in the T’s study is 1570 people) and the loss drops to $14.51 per person. In what Pesaturo describes as the " best-case scenario, " if 5500 passengers used the service, the MBTA would run a deficit of only $3.57 for each passenger — which is still worse than even the commuter rail. Obviously, the more people use the service, the better the bottom line looks — and the more likely the agency is to stay with the program after the test year is up. " I don’t want to give anyone the impression this is just about money, " says Pesaturo, " but it’d be naive to say it doesn’t play a big role. " That’s why questions about whether the MBTA is adequately publicizing Night Owl service, or whether the scope of service is too small, cut right to the heart of whether the program can survive.
Ultimately, the decision to keep or scrap late-night service will be made by the state secretary of transportation, Kevin Sullivan, in collaboration with MBTA executives and the agency’s board of directors. In a statement, Sullivan expressed support for the program, saying: " It’s a great opportunity for workers and for those who want to enjoy a safe night on the town. " The decision may go even higher than Sullivan, however. " Something like this, it’s not uncommon for it to go as high as the governor, " says Pesaturo. The governor’s spokeswoman, Sarah Magazine, is circumspect: " Essentially, we’ll wait and see how the pilot program goes. " It’ll take political will and grassroots pressure to keep the service running after next year. But as both the MBTA and local activists know, unless the ridership numbers are there, it’s a lost cause.
Dorie Clark can be reached at dclark[a]phx.com
