T mulls late-night service bid from Bridj

MBTA board members are mulling a $1.5 million proposal from Bostonbased Bridj to run late-night service, an oft-failed venture the T has twice shut down because of escalating costs.

The bid from Bridj, a fledgling private bus company, is among the first the MBTA received under a new program it created to spur unsolicited proposals. Another proposal presented yesterday would outsource the T’s call center and cut as many as 27 union positions.

The Fiscal Management and Control Board is holding off any action on the Bridj proposal, waiting to see the results of a survey it’s conducting with a nonprofit and the City of Boston that could detail what T riders are looking for from a late-night service option.

“I think we need to be a much more thoughtful about how we’re doing this. It just feels like we’re rushing into something,” board chair Joseph Aiello said. “I don’t think we do something like this without it being a competition about ideas, a competition about costs, a competition about customer service and thinking about fare structure.”

The MBTA shuttered the first “Night Owl” service in 2005 after four years. It then launched another attempt in 2014 to initially extend hours from 12:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. on weekends, but faced with a $14 million annual price tag and flagging popularity, T officials shut it down earlier this year.

Bridj’s proposal, submitted last week, calls for 10 buses for five hours a night at $85 an hour per bus, for an estimated annual cost of $1.55 million. The T would collect revenue from the fares.

Board member Monica Tibbits-Nutt said the board would have to settle on what to actually charge, but said the set-up would allow the T to learn “who these riders are and what kind of services they need.”

The T also got an unsolicited bid from a company offering to outsource the agency’s call center, where 27 union members currently work.

Brian Shortsleeve, the T’s acting general manager, said the bid from Ameridial, as structured, could save the MBTA $1.8 million a year by switching the center, which took 360,000 calls last year, to a pay-per-call approach, at a rate of $2 to $2.70 per call.