MBTA said to be considering 30-day shutdown of Orange Line to perform
The MBTA is strongly considering shutting down the Orange Line for 30 days beginning later this month, according to people familiar with the plan.
The shutdown, which would stretch into September, would allow the T to perform long overdue maintenance, according to the sources. It would also mean inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of people who rely on the Orange Line.
The MBTA’s board of directors scheduled a last-minute meeting for Wednesday morning to review a contract with A Yankee Line, Inc., a company that often provides shuttle service buses when the MBTA shuts down parts of its subway lines.
The MBTA is awaiting a final safety investigation report from the Federal Transit Administration, which began its inspection of the T’s subway system in mid-April after a long series of safety incidents, including the dragging death of a Red Line passenger.
In June, the FTA said it found that the MBTA needed to fix and upgrade large swaths of its subway tracks.
The FTA found that around 10 percent of the MBTA’s subway tracks are under speed restrictions due to defects, including a years-long slow zone on the Orange Line tracks between the Tufts Medical Center and Back Bay Stations. Track maintenance crews use a 2- or 2½-hour window to complete fixes overnight, not nearly enough time, the FTA said.
The MBTA has already made progress on repairing a stretch of defective Orange Line tracks that has caused the years-long slow zone.
The average weekday trips on the Orange Line as of October 2021 were 104,000, according to an MBTA presentation from earlier this year. By comparison, average weekday trips on the Blue Line were 41,000, the Green Line were 94,000, and the Red Line were 125,000.
In response to an FTA directive that the T didn’t have enough dispatchers to safely operate its subway, the agency cut service on the Orange, Blue, and Red Lines by more than 20% in June.
Among the recent safety incidents on the T: An Orange Line train caught fire causing passengers to flee after a metal panel fell off of the car and came into contact with the electric third rail.
This is a breaking news story that will be updated.
Taylor Dolven can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @taydolven.
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