MBTA Lines Plagued with Track Defects

Written by David C. Lester, Editor-in-Chief
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MBTA Trackwork via Twitter

BOSTON – MBTA has its work cut out for it.

The Boston Herald reported that MBTA is facing a heavy repair load if it aims to remove the numerous speed restrictions throughout its system. The agency recently completed inspection of its entire system and found 283 track exceptions, all of which must be repaired. Here are some statistics reported by MBTA last week:

  • Total system defects – 283
  • Green Line defects – 100
  • Red Line defects – 74
  • Blue Line defects – 69
  • Orange Line defects – 24
  • Mattapan Line – 16
  • 23% (31.3 miles of track) of system has speed restrictions
  • 220 slow zones in place

The T announced on Twitter that “From here, we’ll continue to plan out and schedule any corrective actions needed to lift speed restrictions, with priority given to the most impacted areas. Much of these repair efforts are already underway on the Red and Blue Lines and will go on until we address all subway lines.”

A concern, too, is that investigation by a consulting (and independent) engineer Charles O’Reilly of Carlson Transport Consulting revealed that the T could not provide papers or other documentation of the agency’s own inspections, which the Herald reported causes people to wonder what the safety level is on the whole system.

MBTA officials said that repair work over the next month would include 10,750 feet of rail, 3,440 ties, and 17,350 feet of tamping.

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