Tell us: Now that the Orange Line shutdown is over, should the MBTA do it again?
We want to know your thoughts on the possibility of future extended closures.
It’s been a long month for regular T riders, but the Orange Line shutdown is finally over, and now that the trains are back up and running, we want to know how well you think the MBTA handled this unprecedented 30-day closure.
When the MBTA first announced the shutdown, many regular commuters told Boston.com they were bracing themselves for double commute times and unreliable shuttle buses. Some even worried that the promised 30 days would turn into an indefinite shutdown.
“It’s needed, but I’m not at all confident it would be limited to 30 days, or would do enough to fix service issues. Things have been left unresolved and unfixed for way too long. I’ll be very surprised if it’s only 30,” Kristen Z. from Malden told Boston.com days after the initial announcement.
Despite reports of gridlocked roads and crowded buses, MBTA officials feel that the closure was largely a success. The goal of the disrupted service was to conduct extensive repairs on track and signal infrastructure along the line. In the last month the T has completed “five years of improvements to track and signal infrastructure while also addressing safety actions on a much faster timeline,” said Gov. Charlie Baker at a press conference on Sunday.
It will take another week for passengers to notice the changes in the speed of the Orange Line trains, according to the Boston Globe, but the MBTA is already at work on other updates to the T. Over the summer, the Federal Transit Administration ordered the agency to address a number of safety issues after a series of incidents, including the death of a passenger.
The MBTA hasn’t announced any other service disruptions on the scale of the Orange Line shutdown, but two temporary closures are coming to the Red Line. On Oct. 1 and 2, shuttle buses will replace trains between JFK/UMass and Broadway stations; from Oct. 3 to 6, shuttle buses will replace trains from 8:45 p.m. to the end of service between JFK/UMass and Ashmont stations.
Given the number of upgrades the T needs, would you be willing to go through more month-long shutdowns to expedite repairs? The idea may have seemed disastrous when it was first proposed, but now that we’ve experienced it, we want to know if opinions have changed.
Did the MBTA handle the shutdown well enough to justify another attempt or do you think it was too disruptive? Tell us how you experienced the Orange Line closure and if you’d support future shutdowns by filling out the survey below or e-mailing us at [email protected] and we may feature your response in a future article or on Boston.com social media channels.
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