Make Red Line free until repairs done

To paraphrase Bananarama, it’s been a cruel, cruel summer for Red Line riders.

The June train derailment at JFK/UMass damaged signal bungalows there and dashed any hopes of normal commuting on the line during the summer months.

First, there were days of switching trains at JFK/UMass in order to continue a trip. And while service was restored to the line, T workers have had to operate signals manually, a slow process which turns a commute from a slog to a crawl.

MBTA officials had an air of resolve early on, estimating that these delays would last until at least Labor Day.

“While we recognize anything but full service falls short of our customers’ expectations, our current recovery schedule reflects the MBTA’s urgent approach to the massive task of returning the Red Line to full service,” said T General Manager Steve Poftak.

We got it — something terrible had happened and fixing it was a massive undertaking.

Then the T raised fares from $2.25 to $2.40 each way. Riders fumed and vented their frustrations to the Herald.

“It’s not right,” said Tammy Constabile, 51, of Quincy. “They’re raising the price at the same time (as the delays). How are people supposed to get around?”

And now the word is: Expect this mess to last into fall.

“We are still working really hard to get everything back. We expect everything to be back at some point in October,” Poftak announced.

But they feel our pain. “We know how frustrating this has been,” Poftak said. “It’s been frustrating for us, and having ridden the Red Line a bunch of times, I understand how frustrating it is for commuters.”

A bunch of times?

Try boarding at Braintree only to “stand by” at North Quincy station and again en route because of “traffic up ahead” as a commute stretches from 40 minutes to well over an hour. Both ways. Every day.

If the T understands riders’ frustrations, then we say: prove it: Make the Red Line free until repairs are finished.

It won’t shorten the commute, but at least riders won’t be paying full price for diminished service.

Free fare isn’t a novel idea for the T — we’re sure some readers remember the halcyon days of above-ground, outbound Green Line trains being fare-free. That perk ended in 2007 in a revenueboosting move.

Those were also the days when a rider could exit the train above ground through whatever door was closest. Now the “front door exit only” routine involves making one’s way to the front door, a salmon-swimming-upstream maneuver if you’re in the second car and the aisle is full, and joining the line to get out. Efficiency in action.

That, too, is a revenue-boosting move, a bid to end scofflaws from getting on through the open middle and rear doors. As this “front door exit” policy is in force only after rush hour, one assumes peak-time commuters are honest to a fault.

There’s a reason the free-fareuntil-repairs-are-done idea — or any notion of respite for commuters — hasn’t occurred to the T brass.

“The MBTA understands the frustrations customers have experienced, and that’s why the T’s entire focus is on continuing to make incremental service improvements between now and the full restoration of automated signaling,” spokesman Joe Pesaturo wrote in an email to the State House News Service.

We appreciate that T workers are doing their best to fix the signal bungalows, but making the Red Line free until everything’s back to normal won’t negatively impact repairs.

In fact, it might serve as incentive to speed things up.