The MBTA started its latest round of late-night service Friday, March 28, to the delight of many Bostonians and other local T-riders. The recent, obvious – though still very much necessary – narrative being pounded into the minds of everyone who wants late-night services to stick around is simple: use the damn thing, or it could be axed, again. Well, it seems people have indeed utilized the early morning services (respectfully, I should mention). And, now, there are photos to prove it.

Writer/photographer Dan Meade published a series of photographs featuring stations and people riding the T during late-night hours Friday and Saturday, March 29, on “The Manic American.” On the website, Meade writes: “The extra ninety minutes of service also mean that more areas of metro Boston can be visited at night. To mark the occasion, I stayed out all night each night this weekend, riding all five T lines to and through 105 of the system’s stops.”

I reached out to Meade on Twitter Sunday afternoon asking for permission to use his pictures on BostInno. Graciously, he allowed us to post a few. The full set of photos (see: below) can be viewed on “The Manic American,” story titled: Up All Night: Riding the Late Night T Service in Boston. In addition to my photo requests, I asked Meade to share some thoughts on his late-night T excursion. Again, he answered the call:

What was your inspiration for doing the story?

It was a mix. We run “Up All Night” features every now and then on the site (the one from Moncton, NB is the closest to the T story). Staying up all night in any city, known or otherwise, gives you a much different look at who lives there, how the city functions, and what the nightlife is like. And as photographers, we quite often see things you wouldn’t see in the daylight. 

We’re also big proponents of mass transit (I think that came across in the piece) as it makes more things possible, and at safer and cheaper levels than driving. So when the Late Night T was announced, our first reaction was “Up All Night!” A few days later, I went to a Future Boston Alliance event, and they sounded a clarion call to publicly and vocally use the new service to make sure the MBTA and state officials are aware of the need for it. Being able to cover the launch of the service, from the perspective of riders, and help support the service all at once made the story a bit of a no-brainer. 

Could you provide a general sense of the crowd (i.e. age of the riders, were they predominantly bar goers)?

Especially as the night went on, more and more people were… let’s say celebratory or tipsy. One thing that I left out of the piece was the echoing of (cheerful) chants down the hallways of Downtown Crossing while I was waiting for the final train Saturday night. 

Broadly speaking, many of the riders were in their 20s and 30s. I think a lot of people went out to celebrate the launch of the service, so that probably upped the barhopper quotient a bit. But there were older people as well who didn’t look (or sound) like they were coming home from bars. Especially at the larger stations there was a good presence of police and MBTA officials on hand. 

There were a few people at Logan around 1 AM, some got on the Silver Line, some didn’t. I only saw one woman in scrubs, and that was aroundmidnight. No one that I saw stood out as being a late night worker (by wearing something like a janitor uniform), but then again, when wearing a big/warm jacket, anyone could be a worker or a barhopper.