All subway lines and eight frequent bus routes will get an extra hour of late-night rides Fridays and Saturdays starting Aug. 24 as part of fall service changes, and five bus routes – those with the most late riders – will get extended service every day of the week, the MBTA said Tuesday.
To encourage riders to take advantage of the extended service, all subway, buses, ferries, commuter rail and Ride trips – which serve seniors and people with disabilities – will be free Fridays and Saturdays from 9 p.m. to the end of service in September and Oct. 3–4, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officials said.
Frequency during the hour of extended T service will be about every 30 minutes on the Ashmont and Braintree branches of the red line and each of the green line branches, and about every 15 minutes between Alewife and JFK/UMass on the red line. (Orange and blue lines also get the 15-minute headways.)
The extended weekend services is for the bus routes 1 and 66, which have Cambridge stops, and the 22, 39, 110, SL1, SL3 and SL5 – all coming around once every 30 minutes. (The bus routes getting extended daily hours are almost entirely outside Cambridge and Somerville: the 23, 28, 57, 111 and 116.)
“We know that people travel at all times of the day and night, whether they just wrapped a night shift or were enjoying our incredible restaurants, nightlife, sports or concerts, so having this extended nighttime service will make a real difference. It’s also great that the T is offering free service on the weekends to encourage students coming back to school and workers returning from vacation to take the T,” governor Maura Healey said in a press release.
The MBTA shut down its Night Owl late-night rides in 2005. The last time the agency tested late-night ridership was in the spring of 2015.
Added hours won applause Tuesday from business groups, including restaurant workers, as well as the advocacy group TransitMatters. “Extending MBTA hours isn’t just about convenience – it’s about building the kind of reliable, affordable transit system our region needs,” said Caitlin Allen-Connelly, its executive director.
The current cost of the extended service on subway lines and bus routes for additional operations personnel hours is approximately $2 million, the MBTA said.
“Extended service is something that we have been working toward, and I’m proud that the investments being made in the MBTA allows us to now provide later service on subway, bus and ferries, giving the public the opportunity to choose transit,” MBTA general manager and chief executive Phillip Eng said.
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