Surprise! MBTA Learns That Everyone Wants Late Night Service

Everyone wants the T to run later. The MBTA surveyed riders to find out whether people were interested in late night service, and if so whether they’d be willing to pay more. Surprise! Everyone wanted late night service. The MBTA expected about 500 responses to their survey and instead received about 26,000, most of them saying they’d be willing to wait longer and pay more for buses and trains at night. Of course, for now, this seems to have been an exercise in unneccessarily raising everyone’s hopes. “We realize it’s something a lot of people would like, and it’s something we want to explore,” MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo tells the Globe. “But we can’t do that until we stabilize our finances.” Ugh. [Boston Globe]

Who run the world? Elizabeth Warren. Just as the New York Times reports that women hold increasing power in the Senate, David Bernstein publishes his final piece for the Boston Phoenix, a profile of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who seems to be settling in mighty quickly to her role as a powerful voice in the chamber. Her popularity among her base is such, Bernstein says, that she’s become “almost untouchable” or “too big to fail.” Just don’t use that metaphor on a more physically cumbersome politician. [The Phoenix]

Mayor Menino still talks a big game. He hasn’t said whether he’ll run for another term and take on declared candidate John Connolly, but Mayor Menino continues to talk like he’s running, this time to WGBH’s Adam Reilly. “What have you done as an elected official for the last several years?” he asks of Connolly. “What can you point to? I can tell you when I was a city councilor there’s a million things I could have pointed to.” Them’s fightin’ words. [WGBH]

Markey doesn’t want your help. Ed Markey criticized the hedge funder Thomas Steyer, who wrote a letter threatening that unless Markey’s opponent Stephen Lynch reverse his support for the Keystone XL pipeline, Steyer would unleash millions to ensure his defeat. That’s nice for Markey, but a little awkward given his positions on the poisonous influence of outside money in politics. [WCVB]

Oh, Harvard. Harvard’s surprising upset in the March Madness tournament ruined everyone’s bracket and gave us all an excuse to make more Harvard jokes than usual. The Globe notes that if the Crimson wants to make it into the Sweet Sixteen, they’ll have to beat No. 6 seeded Arizona. Meanwhile in Cambridge, we imagine, the partying continues unabated.

Crazy riots at Harvard after last night’s win: twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew…

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) March 22, 2013