The Wrong Kind of Legacy: Old Red Line Trains Find It’s Getting Harder to Get Through Harvard
Legacy students with rich parents have a notoriously easy path through Harvard. But underground, the MBTA’s legacy Red Line trains are struggling after putting in decades’ worth of hard work.
Over the past few days, riders and have noticed an unusually high number of delays from disabled trains stuck on the Red Line:
- The T issued two alerts for disabled trains on the Red Line this morning: one at Park Street around 6:20 am, then again at at Harvard around 7:20 am.
- Later in the morning, there were more delays from a “power problem” between Porter Square and Alewife.
- Yesterday, there were two more disabled trains that got stuck at Harvard, one around 9 am and another around 4 pm.
- On Sunday the 14th, another train broke down around noon at South Station, then there was a “switch problem” on the Braintree Branch.
- On Friday the 12th, there was another disabled train at Harvard around 6:45 pm, then another at South Station around 8 pm.
We reached out to the MBTA to see if the Red Line is just experiencing unusually bad luck, or if something else is going on.
A spokesperson for the T told StreetsblogMASS that they suspect it’s part of a pattern.
“It appears some older legacy fleet Red Line trains are experiencing propulsion power problems – the ability to move forward – as they travel southbound near Harvard,” an MBTA spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS.
The T is sending track inspectors out onto the tracks today to try to diagnose the problem and make a plan to fix it.
Riders should expect more delays today while those inspections limit Red Line traffic to a single track.
Streetsblog has migrated to a new comment system. New commenters can register directly in the comments section of any article. Returning commenters: your previous comments and display name have been preserved, but you'll need to reclaim your account by clicking "Forgot your password?" on the sign-in form, entering your email, and following the verification link to set a new password — this is required because passwords could not be carried over during the migration. For questions, contact tips@streetsblog.org.
