Weekend Red Line replaced by shuttle buses through March

By Elizabeth Sheeran

Red Line passengers will have to adjust to weekend shuttle bus detours while renovations are underway. ~Photo by Elizabeth Sheeran

The good news: the MBTA is finally replacing the deteriorating track bed in the Red Line tunnel between Harvard and Alewife Stations. The bad news: weekend Red Line riders now need two to three times longer to get through Somerville on public transit, and that’s without unexpected traffic snarls.

The Red Line tracks under Cambridge and Somerville sit atop concrete blocks on shock-absorbent rubber disks, which have been there since 1985, and the crumbling concrete and rusting track increases the risk of trains getting stuck, or worse.

Money to finally replace the track base is now available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But since the newly-poured concrete takes at least 24 hours to set, MBTA repair teams are commandeering the entire tunnel on Saturdays and Sundays at least through March, and weekend subway travel will be replaced by surface shuttle buses.

“I don’t mind buses… it all depends how often they’re running and how efficient they are,” said Mark Huelson, who regularly commutes to Harvard from his home near Davis Square.

The MBTA is running up to 35 free weekend shuttle buses between Alewife Station and Harvard Square, with stops at Porter Square station and Davis Square. At Davis, outbound shuttles toward Alewife leave from the bus lane next to the subway entrance on College Avenue. Shuttles bound for Harvard Square Station, to connect with ongoing subway service, leave from in front of the station exit on Holland Street.

MBTA officials estimate the entire round trip should take an hour, so buses should run about two minutes apart, and they say they’re doing other things to make the ride as smooth as possible. MBTA staff are at every station to help direct traffic. Stations are open so riders can wait inside. And the subway will run normally on Christmas and New Years’ weekends.

T officials acknowledge a trip that usually takes 10 minutes or less from Harvard to Alewife is now expected to take closer to a half an hour. But they point out that subway trains usually run 10 to 15 minutes apart on weekends, so the shuttle buses may take longer, but they leave more frequently.

That could be little consolation to the tens of thousands of riders who travel to and from Somerville through Davis and Porter Square stations each week, if bad weather or traffic jams make the commute even longer.  Many of them take the subway precisely because it’s a way to avoid all the issues that come with surface traffic.

“Being in Davis Square, the T is great, and now we’re going to be without it on weekends for almost half a year,” said Tim Sackton, one of the residents who attended a recent community meeting at Somerville High School to hear what the MBTA had to say about the project.

Meeting attendees complained that advance notice of the project was a case of too little, too late, including the meeting itself, which was relocated at the last minute and not within walking distance from the Red Line. “For a project of this size, the publicity should have been much better,” said Seth Goodman, a Somerville resident who lives near Porter Square Station. “We never heard a damn thing.”

Residents worried about extra pollution from all the added buses. They wondered why the shutdown had to be in winter, when other forms of transportation like biking, walking or even driving are more difficult. (Answer: it was the best way to allocate T resources). But mostly they wanted to know the T was doing everything possible to lessen the pain of the service disruption.

“It’s obviously going to be worse than the subway,” said Sackton, noting that regular buses along the Red Line route already get bogged down in traffic. “There are a lot of operational issues that I hope they are thinking creatively about.” He suggested the T run some shuttles directly from Harvard to Alewife, so that buses don’t arrive full and unable to take on more passengers at Davis or Porter. “It’s much more annoying to have a bus pull up and then go express because it is full,” he said.

No one at the meeting questioned the need for the major repair project. But no one was looking forward to it either.

Somerville Chamber of Commerce President Stephen Mackey said the shutdown was going to hurt Somerville businesses, particularly restaurants and other entertainment venues around Davis Square who normally do their best business on weekends.

“We understand that this is a most necessary project to ensure the safety of T riders,” said Mackey. “But it will interrupt business and for many business owners that interruption will be on the best day or days of their week.”

Transit officials agreed that was a legitimate concern. According to MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo, T ridership usually drops 10 to 15 percent when buses replace trains. He added, “This can vary, depending on how much advance notice there is, how competitive other travel options are, and how the shuttle operation is performing.”

It’s still too soon to tell if the added hassle of the weekend service diversion will start to be enough to deter people from heading to Davis Square for a Saturday night on the town or a jazz brunch on a Sunday morning, especially as the weeks wear on and autumn gives way to winter weather.

The scene around Davis Square station last Saturday evening was one of managed, mostly good-natured confusion. More than a few would-be subway riders criss-crossed the square once or twice, from Holland Street to College Avenue and back again, before finding their way to the correct shuttle to take them inbound to Harvard Square and beyond.

Caitlin Kelley said the diversion added 20 minutes to her Saturday commute to work at Northeastern University in Boston, which was enough to be a problem on a day when she wasn’t expecting it. “I was pretty angry when I was almost late for work,” said Kelley.

But she said she’ll plan ahead going forward, and she can put up with some inconvenience now, so that the T will be safer in the long run. “It could be worse. I understand that they have to fix the tracks so that trains don’t derail,” said Kelley.