A refurbished Green Line trolley is shown in 2015. MassDOT photo
A Green Line train with five passengers crashed into an out-of-service stationary train Sunday morning, sending one passenger and four operators to nearby hospitals.
The moving train struck the stationary train at East Somerville Station just before 12:30 a.m.
“The MBTA apologizes to Green Line customers who are impacted by the disruption in service, following a late night incident involving two trains,” MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said in a statement.
Pesaturo said shuttle buses were available between North Station and Medford/Tufts Station “while the NTSB responds and begins its investigation.”
The passenger transported to Mass. General Hospital reported a neck injury. The T said that “all four” Green Line operators were transported to a hospital and were conscious and alert.
One car on each of the two-car trains derailed, the T said. Responders included MBTA personnel, Transit Police, Somerville Police, Somerville Fire/EMS and the Department of Public Utilities. The Federal Transit Administration was notified of the incident.
The T says it’s in the process of installing technology this year, called the Green Line Train Protection System, that’s designed to detect when trains are too close to each other, or are going too fast.
But the system was first recommended by federal safety investigators after a deadly 2008 crash on the line’s Newton branch, and its installation had been put off by successive management teams. The previous contract attempt to buy such a system, kicked off in 2019, was cancelled last year by current T administrators after $18 million had been spent without the contractor delivering measurable results.
Sunday’s crash is at least the fourth Green Line crash where one train failed to stop and ran into another on the same track since the federal investigators’ 2009 recommendation that injured riders or T workers.
I was in the Green Line train that crashed last night.
byu/wingFingers inboston
Banker & Tradesman staff writer James Sanna contributed to this report.
