MA: MBTA reducing Green Line summer trips — but riders may not feel the difference
By Will Katcher
Source masslive.com (TNS)
The MBTA plans to slightly reduce scheduled trips on the Green Line this summer as it installs a long-awaited safety system and to better reflect the actual time it takes trains to travel their routes, the agency said.
The changes, set to go into effect Sunday, were mainly made on paper and will match the frequency of trips riders see in reality on the Green Line, MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said Thursday at a meeting of the agency’s Board of Directors.
The schedule changes were limited to the B and C branches of the Green Line, which run from Government Center respectively to Boston College and Cleveland Circle.
The line, the MBTA’s slowest, can face delays as it travels alongside cars at street level in some locations.
Officials at the MBTA, Greater Boston’s public transit agency, continuously review data on train travel times and how closely train operators can adhere to the schedule, Eng said.
The summer changes “give our operators the ability to adhere to a schedule and not feel like they need to speed up to maintain a schedule that on paper was not achievable,” he said. “It’s really not a shift in what [the public] is seeing today.”
The schedule changes also allow the T to “accelerate” installation of the Green Line Train Protection System, an equipment upgrade to prevent train-on-train collisions and speeding, Eng said.
The T will temporarily remove Green Line cars from service this summer so maintenance workers can install the safety system, a process that “will take some time,” T spokesperson Lisa Battiston told MassLive. Trains will be returned to service when the work is completed.
The T said “trip time adjustments” were made on weekdays to accommodate the “decrease in vehicle availability” while the safety equipment is installed across the Green Line fleet.
The T also announced schedule changes of a different nature on the Orange Line. With added service at peak hours and improvements to tracks, the T said Orange Line trains would run more frequently all day on weekdays.
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