Contractors responsible for fixing narrow rails on the MBTA’s newest stretch of tracks requested a second extension for their project that could push its endpoint into the new year, the agency’s top boss said Wednesday.
The MBTA Board in January plans to start formally considering potential fare changes, including low-cost fares that could benefit tens of thousands of riders.
Jingle bells, jingle bells, please no catastrophes. Oh what fun it’d be to find enough funding for the T!
Talks are already underway between Gov. Maura Healey, state lawmakers and unnamed “stakeholders” about what kinds of taxes and fees are necessary to address a massive list of infrastructure needs at the MBTA, Healey said Thursday.
Ridership on the MBTA’s commuter rail system continues to rebound strongly, providing an interesting data point in the debate over whether Boston in the post-COVID era will face an office space glut that will make the city feel like a ghost town of empty buildings.
Gov. Maura Healey said Monday that she believes the MBTA can be “safe, reliable, running on time, [and] running at speeds that actually get people there quickly” by the end of next year, and said Monday that revenue for the transportation system is “going to be the subject of a lot of discussion.”
Newton city councilors are facing pressure to scale back plans to rezone the community’s 13 commercial nodes for more multifamily development to comply with the state’s MBTA Communities law, but one of the mooted suggestions could come at a cost: plans to revamp its commuter rail stations.
The MBTA will need almost $15 billion more to modernize and fix its trains, tracks, facilities and equipment, the transit agency announced Thursday afternoon.
The MBTA is planning to unleash a year-long campaign of maintenance shutdowns to eliminate the slow zones and other track headaches that have bedeviled subway riders for over a year.
Staffing woes last year made the MBTA put the brakes on an ambitious plan to revamp its bus network into a more reliable and frequent companion to the subway system. But what appears to be the runaway success of the T’s hiring efforts has put the idea back on the table.
Problems with the MBTA’s new 4.4-mile Green Line Extension are so severe that the agency will need to widen more than two-thirds of the nearly brand-new tracks, officials announced Thursday, a stunning development that reveals construction and oversight failures.
After being released in an apparent mistake two weeks ago, the MBTA’s transparency-touting podcast pulled out of the station again Wednesday morning, with the general manager saying “we certainly can do better.”
New MBTA personnel policies baked into the latest labor deal with its biggest union appear to be yielding early results, though the agency still has a long way to go to hit workforce targets essential to improving service.
The MBTA resumed running trains on the Green Line Extension at full speed on Tuesday following a string of overnight maintenance efforts that involved physically pushing the tracks apart to let trains move faster than a walking pace.
Passenger service on a commuter rail expansion to southern Massachusetts is not expected to begin until next summer, about half a year later than prior forecasts, MBTA officials said Thursday.
MBTA officials shed little new light Thursday on the “unusual” rail problems that have slowed the nearly brand-new Green Line Extension almost to a halt, while a growing tide of public frustration is taking aim at Gov. Maura Healey and her hand-picked deputies.
Bus lanes the city of Boston installed on Huntington Avenue last fall are saving riders on two busy MBTA bus lines 125 hours a week and making the two lines significantly more reliable, the T said.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has named a senior advisor to a nonprofit focused on climate change and an “equitable energy transition” in Massachusetts to be her representative on the MBTA’s board of directors.
With the agency struggling to improve subway service and facing heightened scrutiny from federal regulators, MBTA General Manager Phil Eng on Friday reshaped the T’s management hierarchy.
Several MBTA commuter rail lines are getting more rush-hour service as data mounts that commute problems are a leading cause of Boston-area workers reluctance to return to the office full-time.
