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.
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.
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.
Gov. Maura Healey called a dramatic slowdown of the Green Line Extension “incredibly frustrating,” but declined to provide any details about how the nearly brand-new tracks fell into such poor condition so quickly.
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.
Residents in cities north of Boston only have to wait a few more days, the last in a decades-long span of promises and anticipation, before they can hop on a Green Line trolley into the state’s capital city.
One final delay of a couple of weeks looms, and then the long-awaited second and final Green Line Extension branch will open to riders on Dec. 12, MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak announced Thursday.
The first new life sciences building in Somerville’s Brickbottom neighborhood is poised to get underway after receiving received $192.5 million in financing.
Removal of Boston’s elevated Central Artery transformed downtown Boston, raising property values and development demand. Developers hope the same thing can happen when Somerville’s elevated McGrath Highway comes down.
Tufts University’s new Joyce Cummings Center houses 148,000 square feet of interdisciplinary learning space.
Under the MBTA’s new board, important transit plans are falling aside and public commitments are falling off-track. And vital zoning reforms and carbon emissions plans depend on the plans being abandoned.
Several dozen activists rallied outside the MBTA’s Lechmere Station, calling for state and local officials to act quickly to prioritize development of affordable housing and erect guardrails around investment in the area.
The MBTA inaugurated its first new transit line in 20 years on Monday morning when the Green Line Extension’s first phase opened in Somerville’s Union Square.
When MBTA riders begin Monday to hop onto Green Line trolleys at a pair of brand-new stations, they will also experience another first: a different way of tapping to pay their fare.
Like so many parts of the MBTA, the new Green Line Extension is late – 31 years after being first agreed to, to be precise.
Mark your calendars now: March 21 is set to go down as the most significant Opening Day in 35 years.
The start of service is on the horizon for the most significant expansion of the MBTA’s core system in decades, but riders will need to continue their wait to learn when they’ll be able to ride the Green Line all the way into Medford.
The MBTA will postpone the opening of a Green Line Extension stop in Somerville by three months, and the already-delayed May 2022 goal for the remainder of the megaproject may also run into issues, officials announced Thursday.
Land near the under-construction Ball Square Station could become a target for mixed-use real estate projects featuring transit access as a focal point, but talks about the development will not take place until well after it opens.
Once stuck in planning purgatory and now under construction amid a global pandemic, the Green Line Extension is more than halfway built.
