MBTA bringing back late-night service with focus on workers

The MBTA will be reviving late-night service this fall after two failed attempts — this time focusing on people going to or from work in the early morning hours instead of partying college students, with more buses headed to outer suburbs instead of Boston’s neighborhoods.

The T’s Fiscal Management and Control Board approved spending $1.2 million yesterday on a series of expanded bus routes — requiring six new drivers — to run between midnight and 5 a.m. The routes are part of a pilot program that began this spring, with expanded early morning routes, and could eventually build into an “overnight network” of bus routes.

Two prior attempts at latenight service have failed. The “Night Owl” bus service of 2001 to 2005 used bus routes to replicate subway lines on weekends and eventually saw minuscule ridership. Late-night service on both bus and subway lines from 2014 to 2016 led to maintenance concerns and was axed due to a budget deficit. But Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack said the third time could be a charm.

“There were times when the T was a little discouraged about whether there was a version of late night that would meet the various constraints we put on it, but I think this is a great idea,” she said at the meeting.

The plan includes expanded Silver Line service to the airport and Dudley Square, and increases late-night rides north of the city, sending additional trips to Malden, Everett, Chelsea and Lynn, with one increase on the 34E line to Walpole.

Some lines will increase only on the weekends but others will see added weekday service as well, and additional routes will shut down at the normal time but see increased frequency of trips at the end of the night, with a total of 113 new trips.

Laurel Paget-Seekins, the T’s director of fair policy and analytics, said the northern routes were chosen based on which lines see the largest late-night ridership.

“It’s really being driven by where we were seeing demand during late-night trips and also by the board’s recognition that we wanted to focus service on filling the needs of low-income workers,” Paget-Seekins said, adding the plan lets the T “test out what’s working and what not working and incrementally add service as we see demand and build toward an overnight network.”