BOSTON — The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s recent maintenance shutdown of a portion of the Red Line has cleared the route of slow orders for the first time in at least 20 years, the MBTA says.
The work between the Harvard and Broadway stations Nov. 17-23, and between Harvard and JFK/UMass on Nov. 24, allowed the MBTA to remove two speed restrictions covering more than 2,000 feet of track. That leaves just two restrictions — both on the Green Line — on the entire MBTA rail transit system.
“The track in these areas of the Red Line is very challenging for crews to be able to access, but our workforce was given the unencumbered time on the track that they needed to finally do the work to completely remove these slow zones,” MBTA CEO Phillip Eng said in a press release. “ “There’s more work to do on the Green Line next month to make the entire subway system slow-zone-free, but we’re now well-positioned to efficiently maintain our system for years to come with the goal of providing the safe, reliable service our riders can be proud of.”
The latest work involved replacing 2,230 feet of rail, 177 ties, and 3,350 plates; approximately 970 feet of full-depth track replacement and resurfacing and tamping of 13,800 feet of track. During the outage, crews also performance signal modernization work, power modernization including replacement of third rail at South Station’ and a number of station repairs and upgrades.
