MBTA INTERIM General Manager Jeffrey Gonneville said a failure to properly document whether or not track defects identified last month had been addressed prompted him to order a slowdown of trains across the entire system Thursday evening. The breakdown came to light earlier this week when a state safety inspector examining work on the Red […]
Tracking Transportation
Posted inTransportation
Healey’s competitiveness mantra collides with T reality
LIKE A WELL-OILED messaging machine, Maura Healey has had a one-word mantra to frame her early days as governor: competitiveness. It’s become her version of the stern advice given in the 1967 movie “The Graduate” to Benjamin Braddock, who was told the watchword for his future was “plastics.” We regret any inconvenience this may cause, […]
Posted inTransportation
MBTA imposes speed restrictions across entire subway system
THE MBTA announced late Thursday night that it was immediately imposing speed restrictions on all of its subway lines following a recent state safety inspection of the Red Line between Ashmont and Savin Hill. In a press release issued at 10 p.m., the T said all trains on the Red, Orange, Blue, and Green Lines […]
Posted inTransportation
Biden includes partial funding for new Cape bridges in budget
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE MASSACHUSETTS ELECTED officials who for years have been seeking federal funding to help replace the aging bridges across the Cape Cod Canal got a major ally Thursday: President Joe Biden. Biden’s fiscal year 2024 national budget proposal calls for directing $350 million toward replacement of the Bourne and Sagamore Bridges, and […]
Posted inTransportation
MBTA checks off one item on FTA safety list
MBTA OFFICIALS said they have successfully checked off one item on the Federal Transit Administration’s safety checklist by getting two ancient work trains on the Green Line back in operation. “This is a major milestone,” Katie Choe, the T’s chief of quality, compliance, and oversight, told a subcommittee of the MBTA board on Thursday. The […]
Posted inTransportation
MBTA leaning toward ‘new normal’ of lower ridership
MBTA OFFICIALS are beginning to assume that ridership will not rise much above current levels, an assumption sharply criticized by the head of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce who is a former T general manager himself. The MBTA for a long time has taken a Goldilocks approach to ridership for more than a year, […]
Posted inTransportation
State toll revenue getting back to pre-COVID levels
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE THE STATE HIGHWAY system is bringing in nearly as much money from tolls as it did before the COVID-19 pandemic hit three years ago. The Department of Transportation collected $215.9 million from motorists using tolled roads in the first two quarters of fiscal 2023, only $5 million less than the same […]
Posted inTransportation
Campbell joins lawsuit opposing JetBlue purchase of Spirit
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE ATTORNEY GENERAL Andrea Campbell is jumping into the effort to halt JetBlue’s proposed acquisition of Spirit Airlines, calling it an “anticompetitive deal” and predicting it will reduce consumer choices. Campbell’s office on Tuesday afternoon said it was joining the US Justice Department and the attorneys general of New York and the […]
Posted inTransportation
Chamber chief to T: You get what you pay for
A correction has been added to this story. JIM ROONEY, the president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, is encouraging the MBTA to pay top dollar for its next general manager and do everything it can to keep the interim GM at the agency. Rooney, a former T general manager himself, said landing the […]
Posted inTransportation
MBTA to remove some panels at Harvard Station
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE MBTA STAFF will remove ceiling panels at Harvard Station after a corroded panel fell about 10 feet and landed “very close to a customer,” interim General Manager Jeff Gonneville said Friday. Gonneville said staff and engineers determined that the aluminum panel weighing 20 to 25 pounds “failed because of corrosion,” likely inflicted […]