The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Transit woes mount for Boston's beleaguered subway passengers
BOSTON » For Boston subway riders, it seems every week brings a new tale of transit woe.
Runaway trains. Subway cars belching smoke and fire. Fatal accidents. Malfunctioning station escalators. Rush hour trains running on weekend schedules. Brand-new subway cars pulled from service. Derailed construction vehicles.
The repeated chaos of the nation’s oldest subway system has stretched the nerves of riders, prompted a probe by the Federal Transit Administration and worried political leaders.
“It’s enraging. Everything that we’re doing trying to build more affordable housing, or empower our schools, bring jobs to Boston — it all relies on people being able to get around,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat who promised to “Free the T,” said in a radio appearance on GBH News, referring to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Wu’s comments came less than a month before a 43-year-old Orange Line subway train caught fire as it was crossing a bridge north of Boston on July 21, prompting one passenger to jump into the Mystic River and others to scramble out of windows.
And Aug. 3, transit officials announced what they called an “unprecedented” step of shuttering the Orange Line entirely for 30 days to allow for extensive track and signal work.
Two days later, MBTA officials unveiled another four-week shutdown — this time for a recently opened section of the Green Line to allow for additional construction work.
Gov. Charlie Baker, whose legacy is tied to the performance of the T, called the Orange Line fire “a colossal failure” and welcomed the FTA investigation.
But Baker said things aren’t all bad. The Republican said more than 85% of daily rapid transit trips are on time, with a somewhat lower rate for bus rides and slightly higher rate for commuter rail trains.
“That’s what the experience most riders every single day have,” he said. “That’s no excuse for the screws up and the incidents that we’re talking about, there’s no excuse for that, but there are 600,000 trips every day that, for the most part, work out like they’re supposed to.”
For beleaguered riders, however, each new mishap seems to add insult to injury.
Paulina Casasola, 24, relies on buses and the Red Line to commute to her job in Boston. Once, the bus was so late that she took an Uber costing more than $20. Another time, a late bus forced her to borrow a car, saddling her with a $90 parking ticket.
“There are a lot of neighbors who are upset and have started knocking on doors to see how we can stop the service cuts,” she said, also lamenting high fares.
“I can’t afford the monthly pass,” she said. “I just put some money in my account and hope it lasts.”
In September, a 40-yearold Boston University professor plunged to his death through a rusted subway staircase, and nine people were injured when an escalator at a station malfunctioned later that month. In April, a 39-year-old man died when his arm got stuck in a malfunctioning subway car door. More than two dozen people went to the hospital last July when a Green Line train rear-ended another trolley.
In June, a collision involving two trains sent four employees to the hospital. And in May, the MBTA notched three derailments of construction vehicles in three separate incidents on the system’s Blue Line. No injuries were reported.
The FTA has also documented reports of runaway trains in yards or during maintenance. No injuries have been reported, but the agency ordered a “safety standdown” at the end of July requiring safety briefings for employees who operate out-of-service trains.
Further angering riders, the MBTA has begun running trains on a schedule similar to Saturdays on three of its four main subway lines at least through the summer.
The MBTA blamed staffing challenges and said it was exploring “an aggressive recruitment campaign.” The move came after the FTA issued a series of directives addressing the system’s “overall safety program and safety culture.”