Tipster Anthony Reed rides the Red Line just about every day - sometimes more than once - and wants to know why the subway station by his Dorchester home seems to have a split personality. On the side leading to the JFK/UMass station that faces the University of Massachusetts atBoston campus, the MBTA parking lot and bus waiting areas appear clean, safe, and well-lighted. But the other side of the station, which brings riders to a densely populated part of Dorchester by Columbia Road and Dorchester Avenue, feels dark, isolated, and more than a little spooky, he says.
"For at least three weeks now, the resident-side exit (as opposed to the student/tourist-side exit) of JFK/UMass has been a pit of darkness," Reed wrote this month to GlobeWatch.
"Not a single light on in the parking lot or Sydney Street exit. It's not the greatest area anyway, but I doubt having darkened passages makes anyone feel any better coming out of there. Are there any plans to improve that area?" he asks, or "are all improvement monies going to the hotel shuttle stand and the Kennedy Library shuttle bus stops?"
A visit by a Globe reporter last week found the Sydney Street entrance to be rather unwelcoming. Even on a sunny afternoon, the approach to the station was shrouded in shadows. To access the station, T riders must walk up one of two long pathways that take them under the hulking green metal overpass of Interstate 93 north and south. Along the way, a number of overhead walkway safety lights appeared to be burned out. Lights in a small, fenced-in parking lot that Reed mentions were also dark.
Reed says his efforts to get some answers from the T have been largely unsuccessful. "A call today to the MBTA was met mostly with a shrug (three weeks now and no one from the MBTA has noticed?) that they'll have a maintenance guy look at it, but I'm not holding my breath," he says.
Some improvements were made to that side of the station in summer 2006, said Rivera, including painting, clean-up of the surrounding area, and lighting replacement. But they were not on the scale of the $15 million overhaul the entire station underwent from 1987 to 1989. Rivera said T workers will look at the lights and make sure they are adequately illuminating the walkways under the highway and will ask the city to spruce up a fenced-in section by one walkway where piles of sand and concrete barriers are being stored.
WHO'S IN CHARGE
Daniel A. Grabauskas, general manager
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
10 Park Plaza, Suite 3910
Boston, MA 02216
617-222-5215
GlobeWatch Working for progress around the city
