Hey, there! Log in / Register
MBTA to shut part of the Red Line and the Mattapan Line for 16 days in October
By adamg on Thu, 08/24/2023 - 10:57am
The MBTA announced today it's shutting the Ashmont branch of the Red Line and the Mattapan Line between Oct. 14 and 29 for "critical track work."
The T says this will let it do the sort of slow-zone-removing work on some of its oldest stretches of tracks, similar to the way it said shutting down the Orange Line for a month last year would improve service, only it didn't, because of all the new problems it found as federal regulators breathed down the T's neck.
This diversion will allow crews to replace rail, ties, and ballast to improve reliability and reduce maintenance needs. The MBTA is able to expedite this important work by working around the clock for 16 days with unencumbered access, which would have otherwise taken six months to complete if crews only worked during nights and weekends. Following this work, 28 speed restrictions will be alleviated in this area, improving travel times for Ashmont Branch and Mattapan Line riders. The MBTA also plans to maximize these full-access closures by identifying additional work opportunities along both lines to improve the rider experience through station enhancements, such as painting, power washing, and repairing lighting fixtures; vegetation removal; the removal of tripping hazards; and accessibility improvements.
In a statement, T General Manager Phillip Eng said:
Safety of the MBTA system is paramount, and this 16-day closure allows us to address many of the Red Line’s worst speed restrictions much faster than we’ve been able to accomplish during night and weekend work. We understand service changes can be frustrating, and I want to thank the public for their patience while we perform this critical and targeted work between JFK/UMass and Ashmont Stations and on the Mattapan Line.
Free, handicap-accessible shuttle buses for the roughly 40,000 daily Ashmont riders and 3,700 Mattapan Line riders? Of course, although the T said it won't mind if riders hop on the Fairmount Line or local bus routes instead.
Shuttle buses will operate every 5-6 minutes during weekday peak hours and every 10-15 minutes during weekday and weekend off-peak hours.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Old Man Here
They shut it down for months in 1981 - 1982.
Buses ran fine on Dot Ave.
Get it done. Slow zones are bordering on civil rights violations. (Any speed restrictions on Cleveland Circle or Riverside? - Nope).
Cost and benefits
The shutdowns in the early 80s led to a considerable expansion of the system and some [at the time] nice new stations.
What angers people is when they shutdown the line only for nothing to change or things get worse. If they need the time to make fixes, so be it. But the fixes need to be considerable and lead to measurable improvements.The orange line shutdown last year only made things worse.
80's Shutdown
Was just to replace the tracks between the then Columbia Station and Ashmont. Nothing else.
It worked for about 39 years or so.
Buses
I don't remember the buses during the 80s shutdown, because I switched to driving to work from Fields Corner to South Boston. Driving wasn't that bad back then. Dot Ave is a frequent clusterfxxx these days. We will see.
But on the plus side, unlike the Red Line, buses during these shutdowns are usually modern, comfortable, and the A/C actually works!
From roster.transithistory.org/MBTARouteHistory.PDF (pg 248-249)
The largest long-term shuttle operation undertaken by the MBTA to date occurred between June 1981 and January 1982, when the Red Line Dorchester (Andrew-Ashmont) branch and Mattapan-Ashmont line were completely shutdown for track reconstruction. An extensive multi-route shuttle bus system was put into effect to replace rail service. Buses fed into Andrew or North Quincy stations were passengers could connect to the South Shore (Braintree) branch of the Red Line.
The routes were as follows:
In addition to the special shuttle routes, some normal bus routes were affected as well. Extra service was operated on Route 27 Mattapan-Ashmont via River St., Route 18 Ashmont-Andrew was effectively replaced by Route 618, Route 20 Fields Corner-Adams and Neponset belt had rush-hour service extended to North Quincy Station, as Route 620 Fields Corner-North Quincy via Adams and Route 621 Fields Corner Station-North Quincy via Neponset, Route 240 Ashmont-Randolph was rerouted Monday-Saturday via Gallivan Blvd. to North Quincy Station as 640 North Quincy-Randolph or Avon Line, and Brockton Area Transit rerouted their Brockton-Ashmont bus to Braintree station.
There are speed restrictions on the D
There are significant speed restrictions on all in-tunnel green line segments and the entire D line has a 11-24 mph speed limit.
I remember it
As a wee-un, we used to take the shuttle bus from Columbia Road to the Marr Boys Club.
Fun times, especially since I was not a commuter.
There were also several different routes, including a few that went over to North Quincy from Ashmont. Perhaps someone at the MBTA could track the maps down.
The "Marr Boys" Club...
...sounds like a great name for that odd and fugly stretch of Marr monopoly on Dot Ave between Broadway and Andrew stations.
Same family
I ran into one of them at the airport in Miami a few decades ago, and they gave me the breakdown of how Daniel Marr created an empire. Didn't care for the guy, but dad did endow a youth center.
After months of increasing slow zones and no communication...
Do this for every line in rotation IF they can guarantee running at "line speed" after the fix
I'm a sucker for punishment, so I'm currently live-streaming the MBTA Board of Directors meeting:
- Philip Eng acknowledges the MBTA screwed up in communicating the Orange line shut down last year and is patting himself on the back for getting the word out sooner for this Red Line shutdown.
- Eng claims that overnight and weekend repair on the redline is not fast enough to stop the lines from deteriorating faster. The longer the work takes, the worse the rails get. Uh oh.
- Having a rep from the city of Boston seated on the board actually helps: Mayor Wu (currently in the seat until she appoints someone) got Philip Eng to commit that all slow zones in the Red Line shutdown area will be removed. We'll see if that actually happens.
- There's a "Director of Strategic Planning" at the MBTA and she can give a somewhat coherent powerpoint presentation!
Between school buses and shuttle buses
Travelling down Dorchester ave. to River street should only take an hour. Make that an hour and a half when bus brawls break out when school gets out.
bus lanes
Remove day parking for those two weeks.
A perfect pilot
With all the new construction, Dorchester will need a dedicated bus lane. This would be a great experiment for that.
Head of the Charles
Do you think they took in the fact that Thousands of people will be here for this world class event?
Do a lot of people from Ashmont head up to the regatta?
They'll still be running the Polo-shirt branch of the Red Line through Cambridge, so should be OK, no?
Polo Shirt Location Disinformation From Gaffin
The first time I went to the Head Of The Charles some of us Dot Rats wore Polo Shirts buttoned to the top, collar inverted, Adidas shelltoes (Green stripes only), and Girbauds pegged at the ankle.
We took the Red Line from the real world end of the line to Crimsonia.
Girbauds?
I'm tempted to mention the NSFW nickname of those jeans, but I'll just allude to it.
"Marithe et Francois Girbaud"
For years I had no idea what or who the Girbauds were. I only kept seeing their name on t-shirts. Didn't know why people wanted to wear t-shirts with some pretentious French couple's name on them. Still don't.
There's never a good time
Look at any 2 week window over the course of the year. Boston is a big place. Some event or holiday is always happening that would cause a transit shutdown to be a big PITA.
While it hasn't been perfect
Chicago is replacing a couple of miles of track, too. Also, they seem to have enough operators they don't have to hire private contractors for the job.
Unlike the Orange Line, this is a full-depth rebuild, not powerwashing some steps and replacing a few yards of track.
Will the T be doing this kind of 50-year investment? Or patching things like the Orange Line?
Two other questions:
1) Will service levels be maintained on the rest of the line? I see three options:
a) run all trains to Braintree
b) run Ashmont trains to the separate platforms at Columbia and turn them back there
c) just run Braintree trains and half-service on the rest of the line (which would be a clustereff and a half)
There's a d) too which is "use the extra resources to improve headways on the rest of the line" but this is the T we're talking about.
2) The rest of the line is worse. This might be political ("equity") or practical ("only one city, relatively easy bus bridge on Dot Ave") but the rest of the line is a such a mess that they really need a plan communicated for that, too.
Unfortunately no one in Healey-land seems to want to admit what a failure the previous admin was.
Why?
What good would it do to sit around blaming Baker? It's not as if voters could go back in time and elect someone else. It might make Baker haters feel better but it won't fix anything. (I blame Baker, Patrick, and basically everyone since Dukakis.)
Eng seems to be doing a pretty good job so far, considering what he walked into.
Because
1) The current administration needs to be clear on the extent of the problems in the current state of the system so we can be clear how much work needs to be done to set it right, and crucially how much additional money and resources the MBTA will need to get there.
2) There needs to be some forensic investigation of the specific "mistakes" Baker and previous governors made so we know not to repeat them in the future.
3) I suspect some of the shenanigans in T management are criminal in nature and those responsible should be held to account. Why did it take an FTA investigation to uncover the chronic staffing shortages when at the same time the Baker admin was telling us they couldn't figure out how to spend more money even if they got it?
As it is, team Healey isn't telling us what their plan is to get the system back up to line speed on the entire line and when headways will be back to normal. Why? Is it because they don't know or that we won't like the answer? I suspect it's more of the second part.
It isn't the list of crimes for me.
The deferred investment can be attributed to several administrations. What is special for Charlie is that he screwed up the MBTA budget to save the BigDig. While I understand the necessity at the time, it was very hypocritical for him to start his admin blaming democrats for the problems. But really what we needed is another round of finance magic that he was unwilling to do. Remember that Patrick did try to raise the gas tax.
Saddling the MBTA with the Big Dig debt was bad
But what you're describing isn't a crime. I suspect actual laws were broken in order to cover up the problems at the T so Baker wouldn't have to ask for more money during his reign.
This Big Dig debt you mention
Wasn't that basically the restoration of the Old Colony lines, the Silver Line tunnels, the Newburyport and Worcester commuter rail extensions, and later the GLX?
I guess they could have not done those, but the folks at the Conservation Law Foundation wouldn't have been happy.
"not a crime"
great compliment.
Cheap money
No problem, give me 10 million (a year, guarenteed for 5 years) and I'll assemble a team that will get to the bottom of it, easy-peasy. You want reason, those are easy, I'll throw around more blame than a toddler next to a broken lamp.
Whatever
I don't disagree, but given the legislature hasn't cared up to this point, you think another comprehensive report is going to change things?
There's no doubt illegal shenanigans going on but that's a job for the AG. Given Healey should have caught much of that crap over the past 8 years herself, it seems unlikely she's going to make a stink about Campbell not being more proactive.
The problems of the past are well known: overall underinvestment, continual deferred maintenance, and almost no oversight for capital projects. It's highly unlikely any comprehensive study is going to prevent these things from happening again.
The best thing Healey can do is publicly support Eng. Tell everyone she meets with Eng weekly and when he makes a request it might as well be coming from Healey's mouth.
"Whatever" is the Problem
"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"
Who knows what the tipping point will be when voters and elected officials finally figure out that our public transportation system is a criminal catastrophe that needs to be totally overhauled.
Maybe this sort of investigation will be the time, maybe it won't. But officials just saying "whatever" and hoping it all goes away isn't going to do it.
The fact that the party hacks that run Beacon hill like speaker-for-life Ron Mariano only needs 10,000 Quincy votes every 2 years to stay in power doesn't help, of course.
The other stairway at Savin Hill
According to Eng, they will be doing some other repairs, not just trackwork, during the shutdown.
The T needs to fix the stairways at Savin Hill, not just the one that's currently covered up by plywood. The other stairway to the platform is an accident waiting to happen. It's been falling apart for years. There's loose metal on most of the steps. It should also be closed, but then there would be no way to the platform except the elevator.
A lone orange cone at the bottom of the stairs is the current T solution.
So it won't stop the slog to
So it won't stop the slog to JFK from North Quincy. I see many more people getting on the commuter rail in Quincy Center.
I have no doubt that there
I have no doubt that there will be a shutdown of the Braintree branch to follow.
And after that
Park to Alewife.
Are you really suggesting
that they close both branches at the same time for two weeks?
believe me, I'm incredibly frustrated and tired of the slow zones, but having no service past JFK for an extended period is a pretty bad idea.