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_hephaestus t1_iu1cons wrote

Reply to comment by The_Pip in ‘A 24-hour neighborhood’: Wu outlines plans to bring downtown Boston back to life - The Boston Globe by TouchDownBurrito

Yeah, I just went through their plan. They even cite Paris extending transit hours as something other cities are doing they can learn from but I couldn't find any mention of bringing back late night service.

People can complain about its ridership not being high but you absolutely cannot be a 24 hour city with trains shutting down at midnight.

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IronworkRapunzel t1_iu2jppu wrote

Reminds me of a comment I read from another thread where someone said that Boston's nightlife suffers because the lack of adequate transportation to and from especially after midnight.

People either: A.Go out to events and have fun for a bit, but leave early so they can catch a train home

B.Go out, and limit their drinking/don't drink so they can safely drive home after

C.Don't go out all

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_hephaestus t1_iu2kqsv wrote

Or D) drive drunk and endanger the people around them.

Or I suppose pay expensive Ubers or live somewhere they can walk, but I imagine there's lots of instances of D.

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bobby_j_canada t1_iu5cmoh wrote

The extra "going out" commercial travel is fine, but not as important as the tends of thousands of people who have to take an expensive Uber to work because their shift at the hospital/airport/etc. starts at 4 AM and nothing is running.

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rslashplate t1_iu2di86 wrote

I mean ridership sucks because the T sucks. I moved to nyc a few years back and am still stunned that nyc can run trains, all interconnected with as little as 2-3 minutes between trains, running nearly 24 hours if not 24 hours on varying schedules. The T is a disgrace of public transportation. No reason why most Bostonians wouldn’t want to commute on the T, but limited parking, limited trains, limited times etc

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_hephaestus t1_iu2gmd0 wrote

I meant late night ridership. It's been tried a few times and canned because the trains aren't packed.

NYC is much better won't as argue that. But Boston is sadly in the top 5 for US public transit.

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rslashplate t1_iu36pob wrote

Totally agree, and I sincerely hope the recent MBTA issues/spotlight will help turn them around because public transportation can really elevate a city to "world class"

I believe you its top-5, but if so thats still sad because so much needs improvements, across all of the US, NYC included.

If ridership is low during late night hours run half a train or something. there are solution.

Not having happy-hour sucks, but not having any trains past like midnight just kills a city. Boston needs to embrace is metro and really focus on accessibility, as it kind of has been progressing to, to make it a more global, affordable, enjoyable place to work or move to for work.

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ggtffhhhjhg t1_iu3zslg wrote

They’ve been rated in the top 2 or 3 which says a lot about the sorry state of public transportation in this country.

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CreativeLemon t1_iu4m6ea wrote

FWIW, 2-3 mins between trains is really only the case in lower manhattan during work hours. Think most trains run every half hour past like 2am or something? But the point stands, 1am shutdown on the MBTA (more like 12:15 if you want to guarantee you want get stranded going from Southie to Brighton)

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bobby_j_canada t1_iu5cbrw wrote

Tracks do legitimately need downtime for maintenance, but the great thing about late night is that traffic is usually pretty light so buses can actually be good.

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Sheol t1_iu56r9o wrote

It's a chicken and egg problem.

Our city nightlife is structured to wrap up around midnight, so why would we run empty trains in the middle of the night?

Our trains all end at midnight, so why would places stay open later than that?

I honestly think extending T hours is the wrong first step. It's expensive, poor service, and has big trade offs for maintenance. The easiest thing we can do is stop arbitrarily making businesses close early. If a taco place wants to serve until 4am let them.

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