Finally some good news for commuters who rely on the T.
Service has been fully restored on the MBTA Orange and Green Lines.
The three-day outage was due to the discovery last Thursday that at least one support column under the Government Center garage was “severely deteriorated”, allegedly due to years of water damage.
This support column passed through the T tunnels near Haymarket station in the area where Green and Orange line trains run.
Since the lines were closed Thursday evening, engineers from MBTA and third-party engineers and safety experts have inspected the infrastructure.
In terms of repair work, the T said the developer had installed the necessary supports to hold the structure together.
Structural engineers assessed this repair work and then tested the trains in the affected tunnels.
On Sunday, shortly before 7 p.m., the MBTA made the decision to reopen the orange and green lines in this area.
While commuters were happy to have service back, they are fed up with the unreliable service on the T.
“Hopefully they can pull themselves together, I mean, I’m just concerned about where it’s going,” Gloria Brooks said. “It just doesn’t look good, but it seems like a lot of bad decisions are made at the highest level with the T.”
“You get used to it, they make changes, the trains break down, you just have to go with the flow,” added pilot T Zelda Singleton. “You’re either going to be early or you’re going to be late, and you’re hoping your boss understands.
The T said structural engineers will continue to closely monitor the tunnel and infrastructure now that service has resumed.
Although the parties worked together over the weekend to resolve the issue, they did not present a clear and united front on how to blame another disruption in the area following a partial collapse of the garage in March which also led to Metro Days. closures.
On Thursday, the MBTA abruptly halted subway service on the downtown segments of the Green and Orange Lines, blame HYM for the “unacceptable” disruption and calling it a “result” of the company’s garage project. HYM said in response that the problem was caused by “years of water damage” that was “unrelated to the demolition work”.
MBTA continued to insist on Monday that while HYM blames the deterioration on water damage and not directly on demolition work, the infrastructure responsible for the subway mess remains the company’s responsibility.
Decades ago, the T awarded a servitude to the Boston Redevelopment Authority and its successors allowing the installation of columns and foundations to support the garage. The columns in no way support the subway tunnels themselves,” MBTA spokeswoman Lisa Battiston said.
“HYM engineers inspected the columns as part of their initial design and plans, as the columns are their responsibility,” Battiston said. “Anyway, HYM engineers were also present during the inspections in March following the garage collapse and had the opportunity at that time to also inspect these columns. Again, they are responsible for the maintenance and repair of all columns and foundation footings that pass through MBTA tunnels to support the Government Center Private Garage.”
Governor Charlie Baker also laid the blame for the government center’s problems at the feet of the HYM during his remarks on Monday.
“This deed belongs to the building from the 1960s. HYM had two years to inspect and make decisions” on how they were going to proceed, he said.
Baker added that he thinks the T did “a yeoman’s job” working with HYM over the weekend to ensure service could be restored.
A spokesperson for HYM did not immediately respond to questions on Monday.
On Friday evening, hours after offering an account of events conflicting with the Ts, the company said in a statement that it was “not in the business of pointing fingers.”
“We seek to address a problem that affects people who live, work and travel in this city,” said HYM and John Moriarty and Associates. “Yesterday, as previously reported, the HYM engineering team under the supervision of the MBTA, confirmed a problematic underground column in the MBTA tunnel. Upon detection, our teams immediately informed other members of the management of MBTA has problems with the state of this column. These tunnels cannot be accessed without permission from the MBTA.”
“We are grateful to have discovered this issue when we did and have worked closely with MBTA staff to rectify this issue, allow Congress Street to reopen and MBTA service to resume,” the company continued. .
MBTA chief executive Steve Poftak said last week the transportation agency would push for HYM to cover all costs associated with the disruption. Battiston told the News Service the T was “determining the financial impact and will hold HYM fully accountable.”
State House News Service contributed to this report.
