Why The Green Line Service Had Such A Messy Morning Tuesday

BOSTON, MA — After one heck of a morning for both commuters trying to get to work and MBTA officials who were left scrambling to transport hundreds of (dare we say it: grumpy?) commuters Tuesday, service to the Green Line was restored by noon, according to the MBTA.

Trolley service through the Green Line’s central subway was suspended for 2 ½ hours Tuesday morning after an overhead wire carrying 600 volts of electricity was damaged between Arlington and Copley Stations on the westbound side. That wire had been inspected just days earlier, according to officials.

Green Line service was suspended between Government Center and Kenmore – in both directions – while MBTA crews made repairs, according to MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo.

"The MBTA apologizes for the disruption in service," said Pesaturo in an email to Patch early afternoon.

Investigators determined that the problem stemmed from the failure of an insulator in the overhead catenary system, according to officials.

"This section had been thoroughly inspected less than a week ago. The MBTA Power Department will keep working to identify the root cause of the failure," Pesaturo said.

About three years ago, the MBTA began stepped up inspections on a weekly and daily basis of the overhead catenary system, and as a result, wire-related problems have decreased, he said. The last overhead wire problem to cause a disruption was November 2017, he said in an email to Patch.

At a minimum, every element of the entire 50-mile system of feeder cables, anchors, weights, insulators, pulleys and brackets is inspected once a week. There are crews assigned to nothing other than wire inspection, maintenance and repairs, officials said.

What the morning looked like:

The Green Line announced serious delays to Tuesday morning commuters packed into train stations waiting for the train. Around 8:30 a.m. the MBTA announced it was suspending service because of damage to a wire.

When the incident happened, two trains stopped inside tunnels in between platforms and some 300 people had to walk to the nearest platform through the tunnel, according to Pesaturo, who added no one was injured.

The next couple of hours consisted of people pouring out onto the street from T stations along the Green Line, crowding together, and hoping the shuttle bus door stopped directly in front of them.

It took a while for shuttle buses to show up at first, according to multiple tweets.

Then, about two and a half hours later, Green Line service came back to life with all lines except the B line, the MBTA said shortly after 11 a.m.

Folks have come to expect this sort of thing from the T. According to the most recent federal data, more MBTA trains broke down in 2016 than any other comparable transit system. The Federal Transit Administration reported 338 mechanical failures on the T in 2016, well ahead of second- and third-worst finishers New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad, which netted 236 and 132 breakdowns, respectively.

But there's still hope. The MBTA is working to make sure what happened today doesn't happen again, according to Pesaturo. The MBTA has plans next fiscal year to spend $1 billion on projects directly to improve service reliability and modernize the aging transit system.

For the Green Line alone, more than $365 million is expected to be spent on signal, track, tunnel, bridge and power systems - including overhead wires.

Did you hoof it? At least it was a good day for a long walk. Meanwhile, Storrow Drive and the Pike were slowed to a crawl for much of the morning commute. Not the best day for getting to work.

Let us know how your experience was. Email Jenna.Fisher@Patch.com and tell us what you ended up doing to get to work on time, or tell us how long it took you to get to work. Tag your tweets with #PatchBoston and we'll find you, too.

Service was completely suspended between Government Center and Kenmore due. The MBTA is investigating what caused the damage to the line.

Previously on Patch:

Green Line Cars To Get A Futuristic Redesign: MBTA

MBTA's Hopeful Vision Of The Future

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Additional reporting and photo up top by Jenna Fisher/Patch.