Hospital groups to sue for subway link

Partners HealthCare and its affiliate, Massachusetts General Hospital, said yesterday that they intend to sue state officials for not including a connection between the MBTA's Blue and Red lines as part of the state's effort to offset increased air pollution from the Big Dig.

Partners, among the Commonwealth's largest employers, said in a press release that not including the connector in the state's list of transit commitments is a violation of the federal Clean Air Act and past state promises.

''Partners and MGH regret the need to take this action," Partners' president and CEO, James J. Mongan, said in the release, ''but after years of inactivity and unfulfilled promises, the needs of our patients, employees, and the public demand that we do so."

Partners plans to file the lawsuit within 60 days in US District Court, alleging that the state has failed to take ''the most preliminary steps" to build the $264 million connector near the Red Line's Charles/MGH station.

Partners says that the connector is needed to serve more than 19,000 MGH employees, plus patients, visitors, and others because of very limited parking near the hospital. Already, as many as 7,600 T passes are sold every month to MGH employees and Partners employees who work in the area.

While they promised to connect the Red and Blue lines by 2011, state officials have said that such a link is now unnecessary because of the new Silver Line bus service from South Station to Logan International Airport. They also contend that no lawsuit can be filed on the issue before Dec. 31, 2011, the construction deadline in the agreement.

However, in a notice required for plaintiffs by federal law, Partners and MGH say they have made financial and other commitments based on the past promise to build the connection, including contributing to the design and planning of the Charles/MGH station, spending $20 million to construct the MGH Revere HealthCare Center near the Revere Beach Blue Line stop, and making improvements to the MGH Fruit Street campus that relied upon the connector being built.

The 0.4-mile connector, extending the Blue Line from Bowdoin Station to the Red Line at Charles/MGH Station, would link East Boston, Revere, Winthrop, and Lynn with the MBTA's most central subway line.

The Conservation Law Foundation filed a separate lawsuit in March against Governor Mitt Romney and other state officials, asking a federal judge to force the state to stick to its full list of promised transit projects. Yesterday the foundation applauded Partners' action, which it said would bolster its lawsuit.

The foundation, which helped force the cleanup of Boston Harbor, received the transit commitments in 1990 from the state when the organization threatened to file a lawsuit to stop the $14.6 billion Big Dig highway project.

Mac Daniel can be reached at mdaniel@globe.com.