BOSTON — Blanket 25-mph speed restrictions remain in place on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Green Line and Mattapan Trolley Line, but have been lifted on the Red, Orange, and Blue lines, following a Thursday night announcement of the systemwide slow order.
The Boston Globe reports the overall restriction was lifted by 10:30 a.m. today (Friday, March 10), but remain in place on those two lines — and about 30% of the other routes — because of “documentation inconsistencies and areas where documentation does not exist” for track inspections, interim MBTA General Manager Jeff Gonneville said at a press conference. The documentation in question should be provided by track geometry car testing.
The agency suddenly imposed the restriction Thursday night “out of an abundance of caution,” it said on Twitter [see “MBTA imposes systemwide speed restriction …,” Trains News Wire, March 10, 2023].
An MBTA spokesman told the Globe in an email that the 25-mph restriction will remain in place while the MBTA seeks the documentation for tracks inspected as far back as last fall. The normal top speed for the MBTA rapid transit system is 40 mph.
The documentation question was raised when the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities inspected part of the Red Line on March 6 and found violations requiring immediate action, Gonneville said. During exchanges between the utilities department and the MBTA, the transit agency was unable to provide documentation on the track condition, leading to the issuing of the speed restriction. “We took the necessary actions at that moment to ensure the safety of our system and the safety of our customers,” Gonneville said.
Boston.com reports that MBTA crews are in the field validating repairs that have been done on each section of track, and that the agency has teams of consulting engineers supporting those inspections. Gonneville would not offer an estimate how long the current restrictions would be in place, saying, “It depends on what is found through these investigations, and if there are repairs, what level of repairs those are going to require.”
