While We Were Away: A Roundup of News From the Holiday Break

Happy new year! We took some time off for a long winter break, but news kept on happening. Some of these are stories we may cover in greater depth after we dig through a few hundred unread messages in our inbox, but for now, here’s a quick briefing on the big stories from the past two weeks:

• A Boston man, William Haney, aged 42, is being arraigned today on charges of murder and animal cruelty after allegedly driving his car onto the Commonwealth Avenue pedestrian mall and killing Back Bay resident John Axelrod, a wealthy 79-year-old arts philanthropist, while he was walking his dog in the park on Saturday morning.
• Another driver struck and killed David Johnson, 83, while he was walking on Washington Street in Walpole on the weekend after Christmas. There have been two killings in the past few days in New Bedford: on New Year’s Day, a hit-and-run driver killed Nicolasa Ventura Colaj, aged 33, as she was leaving a church service on Acushnet Avenue, and on Jan. 3, another driver killed New Bedford resident Robert Randall, aged 67, while he was walking near the intersection of Route 6 and Pleasant Street.

MBTA news

• The MBTA finished its installation of fare gates on the South Station platforms, such that regional rail riders (including Amtrak passengers) will need to tap or scan their tickets to exit and enter the platform boarding areas. A similar arrangement has been in effect at North Station since 2022, and the T plans to bring them to the Back Bay and Ruggles station platforms later this year.
• Sometime in December, the MBTA received its 152nd and final new Orange Line train car from the CRRC assembly plant in Springfield, according to the MBTA fleet inventory at roster.transithistory.org. That’s four years past the due date in the T’s original contract with CRRC. The T is still waiting for CRRC to deliver 252 new Red Line cars, which had been due in 2023. Only around one-fifth of that order has been delivered so far.

• The cities of Boston and Everett met their end-of-year deadline to sign “community impact agreements” for a proposed soccer stadium near the boundary between the two cities on the northern bank of the Mystic River. Under the terms of Everett’s deal, the Kraft Group, developers of the proposed stadium, would pay $17.5 million towards the cost of a new station entrance at the Assembly Orange Line station in Somerville, to provide a more direct walking path between the Orange Line and the planned new bike and pedestrian crossing of the Mystic River. Boston’s deal with the Kraft Group includes “at least $5 million in safety and access improvements to roadways, sidewalks, bike paths, intersections and transit facilities” around Sullivan Square, Alford Street, and Charlestown.

New bike and pedestrian infrastructure

• The Massachusetts DCR reportedly opened up the rehabbed Linden Street Bridge on the Mass. Central Rail Trail in Waltham. The end of a year-long restoration project there finally opens up a mile-long segment of the trail in Waltham’s east side between Beaver Street and Middlesex Circle.
• MassDOT installed new flexible-post bollards along the bike lanes of the Boston University Bridge, but reckless drivers had already destroyed many of them within a few days: