MBTA to offer late-night weekend service on subways, certain bus routes in Boston area
Starting Aug. 24, service will be extended by about an hour on all subway lines, as well as eight frequent bus routes, on Friday and Saturday nights.
Some bus routes will have later service seven nights a week, and certain ferries will also run later, the T said.
"We have been able to get to the point where we've improved our system, we've built up the workforce, where we can now strategically add extended service on our subway system," MBTA General Manager Phil Eng told the agency's Board of Directors on Tuesday.
Right now, subway trains make their final stops between midnight and 1 a.m. on the weekends. Eng said extending service at night will help businesses and people who work late.
The MBTA is also going fare-free after 9 p.m. for five consecutive Friday and Saturday nights, starting Sept. 5 through Oct. 4.
"We're doing this within our operational budget," Eng said. "It is super exciting."
The Red, Orange, Blue, Green and Mattapan Lines will all see nearly an hour of extended service on Friday and Saturday nights.
Bus routes 1, 22, 39, 66, 110, SL1, SL3 and SL5 will also run about an hour later on Friday and Saturday nights.
The busy Route 23, 28, 57, 111 and 116 bus lines will have an extra hour of service every night of the week, the MBTA said.
On the water, the Hingham/Hull ferries will run an hour later on Friday evenings. Service is being extended to 10 p.m. on the Charlestown and East Boston ferries on Friday and Saturday evenings.
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Tying it all together is the Norwottuck Branch of the Mass Central Rail Trail, a 10-mile bike and pedestrian path that wends its way through downtown, and then over the Connecticut River amid the region's spectacular scenery on a lattice-truss bridge to neighboring towns, including Amherst, home to the University of Massachusetts. 'It is a beautiful place, and it has a unique combination of rural beauty and cosmopolitan sensibility,' said Jonathan Stevens, a baker whose James Beard Award-nominated bakery, Hungry Ghost Bread, is located just off the Smith campus. That rural beauty has long been known beyond Massachusetts, thanks partly to an 1836 painting, 'View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow,' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which captures the untamed landscape of Northampton. Northampton's proximity to the Connecticut River and its location 100 miles west of Boston and 90 miles east of Albany, N.Y., have conspired historically to make it a crossroads for ideas. It was the first town to have a municipal theater — the Academy of Music, which continues to host top acts. It's also where women's basketball got its start, with Smith College claiming responsibility for that first. Still an incubator of ideas, Northampton has lots of coffee shops but virtually no Starbucks locations in the downtown business district, testament to the absence of anything cookie-cutter here. In 2022, Eater Boston asked if Northampton didn't have the most coffee shops per capita of any town in Massachusetts. Eater's conclusion: 'It certainly seems that way.' One of the most striking places to have coffee in Northampton is Familiars Coffee & Tea, a hip, one-of-a-kind café located in an old rail car that has retained the original windows and some woodwork. Other distinctive places to get caffeinated include Sip 143, about 3 miles away in the neighborhood of Florence, which is also home to Miss Florence Diner, whose retro rooftop sign can be seen a block away. Other spots for coffee downtown include Tart Baking, which doubles as a laboratory of sweets. The small, pristine bakery produces delicious almond croissants that are as good as any you will find in the US. The glazed cider donuts and chocolate chip cookies are also quite good to nibble on while gazing out the broad storefront windows at Main Street, one of two main thoroughfares in town that are lined with local shops. Tart Baking churns out truly exquisite pastries but baked goods as a whole are a town specialty. On the edge of Smith's campus, you'll find Hungry Ghost Bread. Not content merely to make tasty breads and sweets, co-owners Jonathan Stevens and Cheryl Maffie have endeavored to convince farmers in western Massachusetts to grow wheat — as the Puritans did in the early 1600s — that can be milled into flour for their bakery and others. Stevens bakes all day, using a woodfired oven, and if you visit the bakery without finding what you want, come back in a few hours. His sourdough starter French bread is available every day and other items that are popular include fresh, hot pretzels, scones and chocolate chip cookies the size of a small plate. The restaurants and food vendors that shine the brightest in Northampton tend to be those that focus on local ingredients or community or both. And they take pride in annual homespun events that bring it all together, especially Summer On Strong, which is an annual seasonal street closure that allows restaurants to cover the street in tables and chairs, creating a giant, street-wide patio. 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