SO WHAT HAPPENED?

Maxine Tassinari-Teixeira

A couple of weeks ago, thousands of MBTA Blue Line riders were unbelievably inconvenienced. But there  has not been an explanation or, more importantly, an apology, for the inconvenience from anyone.

All riders were told was there was a problem somewhere between Airport and Aquarium; that Airport would be the last stop; and that buses were waiting to take everyone to Government Center. While the part about there being a problem was true, the part about the buses going to Government Center for the most part was a lie.

At Airport Station, there were thousands of people milling around. It took close to 20 minutes to even get down the stairs and close to where the buses were supposed to be waiting. Of course the buses weren’t there. Some folks got on the airport shuttles and went to get the Silver Line. The Silver Line doesn’t go through airport station, but that day it did. One Silver Line driver obviously had no idea where he was going and rode around the airport three times before he found the Williams Tunnel. Normally when the Silver Line leaves the tunnel on the Boston side, it goes down Congress Street to Silver Line Way and enters a special tunnel just for it. This particular bus didn’t do that. It dumped its passengers in the parking lot of the Federal Courthouse. This parking lot is no where near where a Silver Line Bus should be.

Other folks who got on buses allegedly going to Government Center got dumped at Haymarket and a whole lot of buses emptied their passengers at South Station. When questioned how to get to Bowdoin or Government Center from South Station, the T employees at South Station had no idea! People were late for work but they didn’t know why; there was nothing on the radio, TV or in the newspapers. There never seems to be anything when the Blue Line goes down.

A call to the Globe the next day questioning the lack of coverage about the previous day’s fiasco on the Blue Line, received the response: “Maybe we didn’t know about it.” Well why not? If the local papers were less inclined to tell their readers every time the presidential candidates so much as sneeze, and more inclined to cover local news, then perhaps people might be inclined to buy and read them.

There are approximately 10 – 15 “incidents” a day on the T yet no one hears about them except the passengers who happen to be trapped at the time. Why isn’t the news media paying attention?

So what happened?

According to very good sources, a subcontractor was making some repairs the night before. Repairs can only be made between 1:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. Evidently something was done very wrong. When the trains started going over the repair in the morning, it started to burn and forcing the MBTA to close the line.

We hear so much about disaster planning and evacuation planning etc. If the way the MBTA handled that mess that day is the best it can do, we are all in trouble.
 

Maxine Tassinari-Teixeira is an occasional columnist for eastboston.com