A few minutes before 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, Sean Hennigan, 39, ventured onto a crowded L train at the Bedford Avenue stop. He gestured around the noisy train car, which at that point was standing room only.

“You ride the subway at 2 o’clock on a weekday afternoon, it looks just like this,” he said. “Just less drunk people.”

Mr. Hennigan was in the early stages of a roundabout commute home: because of weekend service changes, he had to return to Manhattan before doubling back to Brooklyn on a different line.

It was a vibrant late-night scene on the Bedford Avenue platform, where an amateur guitarist belted out “Hotel California” for tips and cuddling couples stared longingly down the tracks, seeking the lights of the next train.

“The subways cleaned up their act a little bit,” said Danielle Lanzet, 22, a student at the Columbia Publishing Course waiting for a train to Manhattan. A couple of weeks ago, she and a friend rode an uptown No. 1 train at 4 a.m. on a Saturday. “There were hundreds of people on it,” she said. “The platform looked like a morning rush.”

In the past five years, weekend trips have grown at twice the rate of weekday rides. At the same time, weekend service has been reduced; because of budget cuts last year, many trains during the weekend now run once every 10 minutes, up from eight minutes, forcing more passengers into fewer cars.

As crime has receded and an older fleet gave way to brighter, newer trains, a generation of city dwellers has never experienced the subway’s darker, grittier era. Many do not think twice about a wee-hour ride after a night on the town.