Celebrating 10 Years Of Advocacy: TransitMatters' NightBus Initiative That Pushed the MBTA to Pilot Late-Night Bus Service

TransitMatters is celebrating 10 years of advocacy! For the next 4 weeks, we will be highlighting landmark moments in our history so far. Next up: Our NightBus initiative that pushed the T to pilot early-morning and late-night bus service.

In 2014, the MBTA launched late-night service until 2:30am on Friday and Saturday nights. The T had no ridership goal, but late-night service on weekends served around 16,000 riders a night. By the next year, late-night service ridership had halved and the MBTA's Fiscal and Management Control Board (FMCB) planned to kill the service.

From the start, the MBTA focused on the wrong ridership base when providing late-night service. The T's late-night service was designed to fail: routes did not connect nor form a comprehensive network, late-night demand was not restudied to see how it differed from daytime coverage, the coverage area omitted key low-income and Environmental Justice communities, and promises for additional outreach and marketing of late-night service were not fulfilled.

Without an equity analysis, the T officially cut late-night service in February 2016. According to data collected by the T in 2015, 54% of late-night bus riders were minorities and 64% were low-income.

NightBus concept route map.

In March 2016, we outlined a new late-night service in the Commonwealth Beacon called NightBus. In our initial proposal, NightBus consisted of: overnight service, 7 days a week, the use of current bus stops and corridors, and a pulse point in Copley Square. In September 2016, we pitched NightBus to the FMCB and they directed MBTA staff to survey for demand and interest in overnight transit service! The next month, we regularly met with the T and the Cities of Boston and Cambridge to draft survey questions.

Survey outreach.

The MBTA, the Cities of Boston and Cambridge, and TransitMatters volunteers spent the end of 2016 distributing and sharing the survey. The Cities of Boston and Cambridge also surveyed employers and collected other sources of information about existing overnight travel in the region. 

From March to July of 2017, we worked with the T and the Cities of Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville to draft a pilot proposal for overnight service. In July, we presented the proposal to the FMCB. In August they approved Phase 1 of overnight service, which extended early-morning bus routes and in October, they voted to forward Phase 2 of overnight bus service, which included late-night service!

In January 2018, the T began looking for a vendor to provide vehicles and drivers for the singular overnight bus route between Mattapan, Downtown, East Boston, Chelsea, and Revere. In June, the FMCB voted to pilot late-night buses on key routes starting in September. The pilot included extended service until 2:00am, an added trip at the "end" of the night, and improved frequency between 10:00pm and 12:30am to alleviate crowding.

TransitMatters helped the T promote early-morning and late-night service on social media.

The FMCB deemed Phase 1 successful in December and, in April 2019, early-morning service became permanent! We planned to work with the FMCB in 2019 to make overnight service permanent, but in June, the FCMB voted to end the pilot, citing low ridership.

Although we did not secure overnight service, NightBus did succeed in providing riders with more early-morning and late-night trips. TransitMatters and our partners also changed the conversation about late-night transit from serving “drunk college kids” to serving hospitality and third-shift workers.

Our work on NightBus also produced data that is still proving helpful in illuminating how people travel in the overnight period and TransitMatters' collaboration with the municipal, private, and nonprofit sector was a model for the future! For the future of NightBus... the City of Boston is exploring late-night transit options as a part of a study on local transit needs beyond T service. Stay tuned…

Media Statement: NightBus Overnight Bus Service Pilot

BOSTON, June 4, 2018 —  TransitMatters is grateful for today’s action by the FMCB to advance the NightBus overnight bus service pilot. We began our advocacy for NightBus in early 2016, developing what we believed was a cost-effective response to the MBTA’s decision to end the prior late night service. Over time we were joined by dedicated municipal co-sponsors from Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Revere and Chelsea. Our collaboration with an equally committed MBTA staff has led to this milestone achievement. Overnight bus transit in Greater Boston, open to all but designed primarily around the transit needs of the late night and early morning workers, needed to keep our city running; in short: NightBus will respond to the economic realities of a city and region that functions on a 24/7 basis.

It has been a long road since we first brought our NightBus concept to the T in March 2016 and now we are close to seeing the tangible results of that effort. Our thanks are extended to the FMCB, MBTA staff, the City of Boston & our other municipal co-sponsors, and all who supported us. We look forward to continued collaboration to provide the transit service people need, want and deserve in a city and region that never stops working.

Media Statement: Overnight Service

BOSTON, September 26, 2016 —  Today, the MBTA Fiscal Management and Control Board encouraged MBTA staff to move forward in working out details for NightBus, a proposal for overnight bus service put forward by TransitMatters earlier this year.

A number of local and state representatives, allies, and citizens lined up this afternoon to submit public comment. We thank them for their support and appreciate their ongoing advocacy as we move forward in our work with the T.

Boston doesn't stop working after midnight; neither should its transit system. Our plan responds to the realities faced by people every day. Numerous people work late nights and early mornings in businesses and industries that make Boston attractive as a place to live, play, work and invest in: at Logan airport; at our great hospitals; at restaurants and hotels; in the innovation sector that competes globally and works around the clock. We are not responding to these needs and are not providing the mobility that other great cities provide their citizens.

One way to test whether our public transportation system is responding effectively to the needs of our citizens is to ask whether it leaves anyone without affordable and reliable service. Until we establish cost effective overnight service we won't be able to answer that question the way we all should want to.

We share the Board’s concerns about forward progress on the proposal that we have worked with MBTA staff to develop. We also agree that we should have better data to shape the face of this service and that we need to establish success factors for any overnight service.

Today’s outpouring of support shows there is latent demand and we appreciate that the MBTA will continue to collaborate with us to fill this current void in Greater Boston’s transit service. We are committed to working through this process to see year a NightBus service that responds to clear needs implemented by the end of this year.