BOSTON — A 10-day shutdown of a portion of the Green Line and a seven-day suspension of service on part of the Red Line lead the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s August plans for maintenance work as it continues work to address a backlog of infrastructure repairs.
Also on tap in August are weekend work projects on the Orange Line and the Mattapan Line, while work continues on the commuter rail Haverhill Line, while the MBTA this week also provided advance notification of plans for a prolonged shutdown of part of the Red Line in September, Sept. 6-29 on the Braintree Branch.
August projects
The Green Line work is slated for the B Branch between Boston College and Babcock Street from Aug. 2-11, while the Red Line suspension will be between the JFK/UMass and Kendall/MIT stations between Aug. 19-25.
Green Line operations will be replaced by free and accessible shuttle buses during the project; more information will be available here.
On the Red Line, shuttles will be available except at Park Street and Downtown Crossing. Southbound riders should disembark at Otis Street/Summer Street and use the Winter Street concourse to reach those stations; northbound passengers should disembark at Federal Street/Franklin Stret and use the Winter Street concourse. Shuttle buses will also serve State (on the Orange and Blue lines) and Haymarket (on the Orange and Green lines) for connections to other subway lines. Complete information will be available here.
The Orange Line will see suspensions between Wellington and Back Bay on Aug. 3-4 and Aug. 17-18. Shuttle buses will make all stops between Wellington and North Station; riders should use the Green Line between North Station and Copley. The Haverhill commuter line will offer fair-free service between Oak Grove, Malden Center, and North Station.
The Mattapan Line will be shut down between Mattapan and Ashmont beginning Aug. 16 at approximately 8:45 p.m., and all of Aug. 17-18. Shuttle buses will replace the trolley service; the suspension is for track work on the line and switch work in the Mattapan car yard.
The commuter rail Haverhill Line continues to operate on a construction schedule for the remainder of the summer, with Haverhill Station closed during that period. Passengers are asked to board or disembark at Bradford, about a half-mile away.
Braintree Branch faces 24-day shutdown
In the biggest shutdown yet since launching its Track Improvement Program last November, the MBTA announced plans to suspend service on the Red Line’s Braintree Branch Sept. 6-29. The 24-day closure between the JFK/UMass station and Braintree will allow repairs to 18 miles of track, addressing 20 current speed restrictions to allow operating speeds to reach the maximum of 40 mph. The resulting infrastructure work, along with subsequent schedule and training changes, should improve travel times on the segment by 24 minutes or more.
MBTA CEO Phillip Eng called the work “unprecedented but long needed” in a press release, saying “While each of these critical but necessary closures impacts your travels in the short term, the public will gain long-term benefits. … I look forward to returning faster, safer, more reliable Braintree branch service to our riders on September 30.”
Planning for the service outage and alternate service plans continues, the agency said, with more information to come in the weeks ahead. Alternate service will include a mix of shuttle bus service, use of adjacent commuter rail options, and increased service on the Red Line’s Ashmont Branch.
Something popped out at me looking at the Red Line detail map. Every single station on this map has a blue wheelchair icon.
The Quincy/ Braintree line is of course new (that is to say, a half century now), along with the rebuilt JFK/ UMass and Savin Hill stations, two stations whose predecessors go back to MTA days. What is remarkable is that the Ashmont Branch stations, each of them built many decades ago, are now accessible.
Making the old MTA, now MBTA, subways wheelchair accessible is an impossible task, can’t be done. It’s being done.