MBTA worms its way ahead
Systemwide 25 mph speed restriction lifted, except for Mattapan and Green Lines
The MBTA lifted the global speed restriction on the Red, Blue and Orange Lines, but speeds remain capped at 25 mph on the Mattapan and Green Lines, Interim General Manager Jeffrey Gonneville said.
Localized speed restrictions remain on the Red, Blue and Orange Lines in areas that have not been inspected or that do not permit normal speeds, Gonneville said at a Friday press conference.
The systemwide restriction, lifted on Friday morning, was implemented at approximately 5:30 p.m. Thursday, as a result of a Red Line track inspection conducted this week by the Department of Public Utilities.
“As the MBTA continues to address these issues, I’m looking for a full and complete review of the circumstances that brought us here today,” Gonneville said. “We are asking riders to please be patient and allow us until the start of service on Monday to validate repairs and verify speeds.
“I understand that these actions will add additional travel time for people taking the T and we apologize for these inconveniences. The MBTA remains committed to operating a transit system in the safest manner possible.”
On Monday, DPU, the T’s state safety oversight authority conducted a track inspection of the Red Line, between Ashmont and Savin Hill, and sent six violation notices to the agency the following day, with orders to immediately take 17 corrective actions.
One of these letters directed the MBTA to provide a daily report of “priority 1” track conditions that are active on the Red Line, and report any new “priority 1” conditions identified by track inspections on the other subway lines.
“MBTA within 24 hours will provide DPU with a corrective action plan that will identify the actions needed and a strategy for hazard/risk analysis for prioritizing repair work,” DPU Director of Rail Transit Safety Robert N. Hanson wrote in the Tuesday letter.
The problem, Gonneville said, is that the documentation the DPU asked for, which provided results from a February track inspection that used magnetized equipment to identify defects that were invisible to the naked eye, was incomplete or missing.
Inconsistent, incomplete and missing documentation from this “geometry car test” made it difficult to determine where repairs were already made, or needed to be completed to provide safe track conditions, Gonneville said.
As a result, he said he directed operations to place a global speed restriction on all subway lines, “until we can validate that all repairs are in place, and verify that speeds are appropriate for those sections of track.”
Possible defects impacting track conditions could be anything from spacing between the rails being “a little too tight,” a slight twist in the rail, or more technical elements impacting the track, Gonneville said.
“The track is a necessary part of our infrastructure,” Gonneville said. “The risk that we would run is there could potentially be some form of incident with our trains.”
Work is continuing on the Green and Mattapan Lines to lift the global speed restrictions, and inspections are continuing on other lines to address slow zones that were added as a result of the DPU inspection.
Gonneville said there’s some areas on the Red, Blue and Orange Lines where speeds could top out at 40 mph, the normal maximum speed, but speeds remain maxed out at 25 mph in other affected areas.
Prior to the DPU inspection, there were 83 speed restrictions throughout the subway system, as of Feb. 28, according to the T’s latest slow zone report.
Additional slow zones were added this week, but a specific number was not provided by MBTA officials.
Gonneville declined to provide a timeline for how long the additional speed restrictions will remain in effect, saying that it would be dependent on the results of track inspections.
“We are conducting inspections,” Gonneville said. “The inspections, we’re expecting, could take a number, a couple of days. As it relates to predicting how long those speed restrictions are going to be in place, I wouldn’t want to project that right now.
“It depends on what is found through these investigations, and if there are repairs, what level of repairs those are going to require.”