WMATA and MBTA late-night closures

[randomness]

Because our cities think bar and restaurant workers should take ride-sharing services, Washington DC joins Boston in ending late-night weekend service.

Unlike other nearby cities whose transit authorities provide overnight bus services when their rail transit stops, there are no replacement buses for this closure.

(Don't even talk to me about New York. They're clearly out of our league.)

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Chicago's rail transit also run 24 hours a day?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yes, Chicago's Red and Blue lines run overnight. But Chicago's outside my (entirely personal and arbitrary) "nearby city" definition.

That definition is "what am I willing to drive to and back for a long weekend". Empirically, this seems to be a little over 500 miles, each way. DC makes that comfortably. Toronto's a little bit of a stretch. Chicago is definitely too far.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Oh, OK. Missed the "nearby" constraint. Sorry.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

No problem! (and no apologies needed.)

There are a few systems that run all night. Quartz did a piece on London's tube service extension that talked about them:

All night service of any type is a rarity on the metropolitan subway systems of the world. New York City’s MTA is joined by Copenhagen’s driverless all-night Metro in offering true all-night, underground train service, while Berlin’s U-bahn (Underground train) replaces its trains with buses for overnight service. Most major metropolitan transit systems, including those in Singapore, Boston, Tapei, Tokyo, Seoul, and Washington, D.C. shut down from 11:30pm-12am until 5am-6am.

...

Correction: Vienna also offers late night subway service. Our original criteria were that each system be primarily underground and that the late service option offer access to the majority of major subway routes. An expanded definition would include even more systems, like Chicago, Barcelona, and Stockholm.

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

I am in the arbitrary "near by"! Yay!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

:)

*hugs*

I'm going to try and come down again before the weather gets much warmer. The proposed Korean food expedition to Annandale which was cancelled on me last time never got rescheduled, so that's a thing that might happen on my next visit. Or we can just go ourselves again and not try to cooordinate with anyone else.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, late-night services attract sufficiently few riders that they take an unusually high subsidy per-rider. The question seems to be where to get that money.

I recall seeing a proposal to increase the MBTA's subsidy from the state government. The legislature allocated an increment to the gas tax to pay for the MBTA. It was repealed on a referendum. Only recently did I realize that the tax was a really bad idea: gas taxes fall heaviest on rural and exurban people who are out of range of the MBTA and lightest on urben and near-suburban people who use the MBTA. The best way to pay for the MBTA is to increase its levy on the cities and towns within its territory -- which I notice was not the approach the legislature took.