Now that Boston has a new mayor-elect, the time for campaign fundraising, getting out the vote, and debate preparation and execution is over, the policies and inquiries that used to staredown Mayor Tom Menino are heading Marty Walsh’s way.
A new report by the Boston Globe states that advocates of Walsh’s “24-hour city” promise are trying to hold him accountable for his words.
One of the most impacted communities of limited overnight services is Boston’s college students. Currently, the Globe reports, “the T’s Rider Oversight Committee is considering ways to encourage more students to buy discounted passes, with the money helping to fund the after-hours service; and campus associations are surveying students in an attempt to document their desire for late T service.”
Part of the Oversight Committee’s plan – presented in July – includes having participating schools purchase “heavily discounted” passes for full-time students. The revenue generated by the new program would be used to fund overnight MBTA service.
Mayoral candidate Mike Ross was a strong advocate of Night Owl bus service – in place from 2001 to 2005. Now, transportation experts are trying to determine how overnight services could be “revived with public-private partnerships helping to foot the bill.”
Unwavering support from Boston’s Mayor-elect would go a long way to help foster a new program’s success.
“If Marty is suggesting that this is an important priority to him,” City Councilor Ross told the Globe, “partners would see it as an important priority to them, too.”
While Ross made Night Owl services a major talking-point during his run for office, Walsh touted his legislative experience on Beacon Hill.
During the campaign, Walsh offered this response to a Globe survey on the issue of extending T hours:
“Having represented Boston for 16 years on Beacon Hill, I am the candidate best positioned to win the necessary support from the Legislature. Beyond that, I would work with private institutions, especially universities whose students are likely to be major users, to fully fund the extended service.”
According to a 2009 internal MBTA report regarding a potential Night Owl revival, a plan to have buses “replace subway trains for a few hours on Friday and Saturday nights” would cost around $2 million annually, “with most of the money going toward overtime wages and associated benefits.”
Other transportation experts, such as Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser and Kimberly Vermeer, president of Urban Habitat Initiatives, believe that, despite the lackluster performance of the Night Owl, a revival is possible.
Vermeer told the Globe that real-time mobile apps may make a revived service more popular.
Glaeser, meanwhile, touted the financial flexibility buses allow for, telling the Globe that the “beauty of buses” is “you don’t have to sink money into infrastructure.”
President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO Steven Tolman told the Globe, he thinks MBTA general manager Beverly Scott “would be supportive of something like this.”
