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Orange Line bustitution north of the city starts this weekend
By adamg on Tue, 06/18/2024 - 1:50pm
The MBTA says there won't be any Orange Line trains between Oak Grove and North Station this weekend and no service between Wellington and North station June 24-30.
The main reason is to let MassDOT do its Maffa Way/Mystic Avenue Bridge Superstructure Replacements project, but the T says, hey, as long as it has to shut its tracks anyway, it will do some of the much needed track replacement work, which it says will mean the end of slow zones between Community College and Sullivan Square and some spiffing up of the stations.
It'll be shuttle buses galore during the shutdowns, although the T says commuters can also hop on commuter-rail trains, which also have comfier seats than the Orange Line, between Oak Grove, Malden Center and North Station, for free, during the two shutdowns.
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Comments
ugh
This last shutdown sucked. So we're going to do it again. eh?
I hope this eliminates the slow zone between Community College and Sullivan this time. I was expecting it to happen the last time but nope.. didn't help.
Maybe they will power wash the Orange Line platforms at North Station. After the last shutdown everything was covered with an inch of black dust (that doesn't come off clothes!!). It was gross the Friday after the shutdown and still looks nasty today.
Slow zones
In terms of fixing slow zones, I do notice that on the Red Line, trains are moving much better now from South Station outbound to Andrew, so things *are* getting done. But yeah, this is all taking a lot longer than any of us would like, and the shuttle busing is at best a huge pain in the you know what.
Now they really need to fix the escalators at Andrew on the outbound side. That's a huge WTF. One of them has been permanently dead for a long long time, and the other tends to die way too often.
Kind of shut down
I get that it's down for bridge work - but is there real value to running a train from Welling to Oak Grove? (Aside from a shorter bus trip)?
That is real value
"Aside from this really valuable thing, is there real value?"
Buses are expensive to run, and even more expensive to charter. Busing a segment that's about half as long means you need about half as many buses, and half the chance for delays on those buses.