ANOTHER RED FLAG ON RED LINE
Train derails at Kendall/MIT, shuttle service extended
Another Red Line train has derailed, lengthening the number of stops commuters will be using shuttle buses for this weekend.
“Earlier this morning, the first wheel set of an out-ofservice Red Line train slowly derailed while switching from the northbound to the southbound tracks in the work zone outside of Kendall/MIT station,” the MBTA tweeted at 11:20 a.m. Saturday. “No passengers were onboard the train and there were no injuries.”
Trains were scheduled to cross from northbound to southbound at Kendall “due to a pre-planned suspension of Red Line service” between there and Alewife stations to make room for “signal upgrade work,” said Joe Pesaturo, spokesman for the MBTA.
Shuttle buses already deployed to accommodate travelers during this work have been extended from their planned use between Alewife and Kendall another two stops to Park Street Station, according to Pesaturo. That means people are using shuttle buses from Alewife to Park Street.
Many on social media who were already displeased with Tuesday’s lifting of mask requirements on the T took to Twitter to air their complaints on using crowded shuttle buses.
“@MBTA you simply cannot make the busiest part of the red line all shuttles during the day,” tweeted a user named Caleb Rhodes.
“I’m sorry but the red line is a nightmare today. MBTA workers are all here to help, but we’re all still walking in circles trying to find the right stop. Standing room buses packed like sardines,” tweeted a user named Danielle.
The Red Line last featured in the news when Robinson Lalin, 39, of Boston, got his arm caught in a train door and was dragged to his death the morning of April 10.
A report on the safety of the T — assembled by a group of analysts including former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood — released in 2019 “determined that the T’s approach to safety is ‘questionable,’ and has conspicuous ‘deficiencies’ in nearly every area of safety maintenance and practice,” the Herald reported then.
That report, which came following a year that included multiple high-profile derailments, including one that wrecked the Red Line’s signal system south of downtown, spurred public demand for change.
In January, a Green Line train incident — which the MBTA said was not technically a derailment — at Park Street station suspended service between Arlington and North stations for three hours.
The previous September, a Red Line train derailed at Broadway; a Green Line train crashed on July 30; and an Orange Line derailment that March suspended both Orange and Red line service around Wellington station for weeks.