THE MBTA is preparing to take a large chunk of its busiest subway line out of service for 13 days starting April 2 to replace 1,800 feet of track and perform tunnel repairs.
The shutdown on the Blue Line will affect an estimated 25,000 riders on weekdays and require them to take shuttle buses to commute between downtown Boston and Maverick Station and Logan International Airport in East Boston.
MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak told the MBTA board of directors on Thursday that such shutdowns are inconvenient for riders but absolutely necessary if the transit authority is going to stay on track with its plan to perform $1.75 to $2 billion of capital work each year.
“We’re not going to meet those goals in two to three hour increments overnight,” he said. “We need to do big projects like this.”
Poftak has said in the past that trying to do the work overnight while the subway system is shut down is difficult and time consuming because it takes time to prep the site and prepare for the subway’s reopening, leaving only several hours in between to do the actual repair work. He said it is much more efficient to shut down an entire section of the subway and work around the clock on repairs. “That allows us to get a ton of work done,” Poftak said.
The T shut down the Blue Line for a similar length of time in May 2020, but that was in the midst of the COVID shutdown. Ridership on the line is much higher now.
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About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
About Bruce Mohl
Bruce Mohl is the editor of CommonWealth magazine. Bruce came to CommonWealth from the Boston Globe, where he spent nearly 30 years in a wide variety of positions covering business and politics. He covered the Massachusetts State House and served as the Globe’s State House bureau chief in the late 1980s. He also reported for the Globe’s Spotlight Team, winning a Loeb award in 1992 for coverage of conflicts of interest in the state’s pension system. He served as the Globe’s political editor in 1994 and went on to cover consumer issues for the newspaper. At CommonWealth, Bruce helped launch the magazine’s website and has written about a wide range of issues with a special focus on politics, tax policy, energy, and gambling. Bruce is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He lives in Dorchester.
To get passengers where they need to go during the shutdown, the T plans to run two shuttle bus routes. One will go express from Government Center to the Airport Station and passengers going further north will hop on the Blue Line there. The other shuttle will go to Maverick Station and then return to Government Center, stopping at Aquarium and State Street.
At the next MBTA board meeting in April, Poftak promised a report on all the construction diversions scheduled for the rest of this year.
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