Red Line closed, Kendall-Park St, 6/14-15 and 21-22

[ron_newman]

The Red Line will not be running this Saturday and Sunday (June 14-15) or next Saturday and Sunday (June 21-22) between Kendall Square and Park Street Station. This is so the T can repair railroad ties on the Longfellow Bridge.

They're going to run shuttle buses, but I have no idea how the buses will get around or through tomorrow's huge Gay Pride parade in downtown Boston. Also, the Cambridge River Festival, tomorrow from noon to 6 pm, will close Memorial Drive.

Tomorrow would be an excellent day to use a bicycle instead of either a car or the T.

Comments

[xuth.livejournal.com]

Not that I believe that it's actually premeditated, but I find it interesting that the MBTA seems to have a penchant for wanting to shut down the red line on pride day.

[ron_newman]

Last year they planned to shut down this part of the Red Line on Pride weekend, but changed their plans at the last minute. This year, I don't think they can afford to wait. The trains are crawling right now over the western half of the Longfellow.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I take it this means they waited until the things actually became unusable before they decided to fix them, rather than, say fixing things proactively.

Imagine if airlines worked this way. :-)

[ron_newman]

The T wanted to do this concurrently with general repairs to the Longfellow, but I think the track problem became worse and the general repair project got delayed.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Just based on the amount of noise the train has made going over that section of track *for almost as long as I've been riding the train* I am inclined to assume that they really did wait until the absolute last possible moment to do this, and of course this leaves them little leeway to do repairs on a schedule that makes sense to the rest of us.

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

they don't already?

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's a good day to not go into the city of Boston.

If you have to, though, it'd probably be better to grab the 87 or 88 from Davis and ride it to Lechmere.

[ron_newman]

Or the commuter train between Porter Square and North Station.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

I think the bus runs slightly more regularly. :-)

[shaxxon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I'll be taking the 1 bus from Central...

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

God dammit, disrupting the Red Line on Pride weekend AGAIN? No, I DO believe it's deliberate. This really fucking steams me.

Last year (or the year before that) someone here in this community found the number to call and complain, and somehow that got the MBTA to move the construction date. Is that person here? If not, I'll call, but I don't know exactly who to call.

[ron_newman]

problem is, the Red Line tracks on the Longfellow are in horrible shape and need to be replaced yesterday. The Red Line right now is crawling over the western half of the Longfellow until they fix this.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Gee, then last weekend might have been a good time to fix it.

I have to be at Back Bay station at 10:30 AM to go meet with the group I'm marching with. Screw it, I'll take a bus to Sullivan Square and bypass the Red Line entirely.

[ron_newman]

That sounds like an excellent alternate plan. Or if the Lechmere bus comes first, that works too.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I don't think the report on those tracks came out until this week -- I remember seeing it in the paper quite recently.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

It's got more to do with the timing of Pride than anything else. Mid-June is the beginning of high construction season.

Also, it'd be a little odd if the T was somehow against gay pride, as the general manager is an out gay man. :-)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I just got explode-y because it's happening again. I'll take an alternate route. Better check if there's Orange Line constructo-drama scheduled for tomorrow.

[beowabbit]

I'll take an alternate route.

T[axicabs]: The Alternate Route™.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness for Ron Newman's announcement. A cab is exactly what I would have done if I'd been surprise-kicked off the T at Kendall and found myself in the bottleneck upstairs, but it wouldn't have been cheap.

Ron Newman for Mayor (or at least for Town Herald).

[jovianconsensus.livejournal.com]

Also, it'd be a little odd if the T was somehow against gay pride, as the general manager is an out gay man. :-)

Maybe he just doesn't like parades.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps he takes no pride?

[concrete.livejournal.com]

M thought it was deliberately scheduled now so it can be finished by the July 4th activities.

[damsel-ophelia.livejournal.com]

That's the thing - if they take the next two weekends to do work and aren't done that gives them the third weekend as a buffer before the 4th if they need it. I see the reasoning.

[damsel-ophelia.livejournal.com]

Calling the chief of the red line's office did it in '06 - when they got flooded with huge amounts of emails and calls. Apparently, they "didn't know any large festival was scheduled" - which means they didn't know because they didn't bother to check or they just didn't care. This time, I'm not sure that will work, especially where this outage is planned for both this weekend and next.

I admit, it's really hard not to feel dumped on - since I'm fairly sure that the T isn't going to try to mess with transit due to the events falling the weekends before Pride...the AIDS walk, Childrens Hospital walk were last weekend plus a ton of folks in town for college graduations - the weekend of 6/1 was the Walk for Hunger plus other college graduations - the weekend before that was Memorial Day...but Pride doesn't seem to be an issue...

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

Some kind of large event happens almost every weekend in Boston during the summer. People are going to be inconvenienced no matter when they do repairs.

[derekp.livejournal.com]

Please don't. I noticed about 3-4 weeks ago that trains were making god awful noises going over that bridge. And now they are absolutely crawling over it. The repair is needed. You can take the shuttle bus, or you can (GASP!) walk the two miles from Kendall to Government Center.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

thanks for the warning, it's better than finding out when I board the train..

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Out of curiousity, where did you find this out?
I looked in what I thought would be an obvious place for details;
http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/news_events/ but it is... uninformative. :/

[cityofbeige.livejournal.com]

I found it under "Service Alerts/Updates"

http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/transit_updates/

[ilai]

I've seen signs announcing this at Alewife station by the turnstiles, but I don't recall actually seeing it at Davis (or the usual riders that they blanket the trains with).

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

I saw exactly one sign at each Red Line station. They were very easy to miss, and some entrances to some stations had no signs.

They need to do a big publicity blitz for this kind of shutdown. Like posting fliers every few feet along the platform, at each group of ticket machines, and along each bank of turnstiles. And not just at Red Line stations -- across the whole system.

It would also help if there weren't the standard announcements for arriving Ashmont and Braintree trains. Having no arrival announcements at all would be much better than this misinformation, which causes some people to wait unnecessarily for a second train.

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

also, there are signs at most Red Line stops.

(I can personally confirm JFK, Savin Hill, DTX, South Station and Broadway)

[i-custard.livejournal.com]

It was also in the Metro this morning, but as I got on at Davis and read that I thought it would have been nicer to have signs.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Crap. I have to take two cats to the vet tomorrow...

[j-u-d-i.livejournal.com]

Do you know if this will be happening this weekend? (7/18) MBTA.com isn't saying, but I know they were running shuttles last weekend.

[ron_newman]

An article in today's Globe seems to say "no". But it could recur later in the summer.