MBTA to Close Blue Line from Airport to Government Center Stations Next Month

At a community meeting MBTA’s Adam Kamoune announced some bad news for commuters.

At the meeting Kamoune said the MBTA will be closing down the Blue Line for nearly two weeks between Airport and Government Center from Saturday, April 2 to Thursday, April 14 for harbor tunnel repair work.

“The bad news is we do have to divert the Blue Line from April 2 through April 14,” said Kamoune. “The MBTA at this time is replacing 1800 feet of track but the good news is this work is going to make the tunnel a lot more resilient and less prone to some of the concerns that we’re hearing from folks from the environmental community. This work will also make our service just a little more reliable in the future.”

Kamoune said part of the work includes a lot of tunnel inspection, tunnel lighting repair, fiber optic cable installation, removing abandoned cable that exists in the tunnel.

“We are also performing signal repairs, which is a major source of issues on the Blue Line when there are so-called “blind delays”, said Kamoune. “We’re also investigating some of the drainage issues that we have in the tunnel–especially because it goes under the harbor.”

Kamoune said Eastie commuters will have to use shuttle buses from Airport to Bowdoin but the buses will stop at Maverick, Aquarium, State Street and Government Center. .

“So during this time, we’ll be bussing folks from Airport station to Bowdoin,” said Kamoune. “So you’ll have regular train service from Airport to Wonderland in Revere. The one caveat I’ll add is that we’re proposing a new busing route. So normally what we do is pick folks up on Maverick Street, we go down Chelsea Street, and then loop around to get to Airport station. We heard from the neighborhood that there were a lot of concerns about congestion on the streets, especially in the morning.”

Kamoune said the MBTA is proposing a new route for the shuttle bus that takes a right and goes down Porter Street and then uses the Massport gate on Porter and Cottage Streets. This gate, when open, gives access along Masport property all the way to Airport station without using neighborhood streets.

“This would actually save the bus a significant amount of time and allow the MBTA to use less buses, which means a lot less emissions from running these buses from Airport to Boston,” he said.

Kamoune said express shuttles will be servicing Airport, Aquarium, State (drop off only) and Government Center. Local shuttles will service Airport, Maverick, Aquarium, State (drop off only) and Government Center.