BOSTON — It will be months before service gets back to normal on the Red Line after a train derailment occurred on June 11th at the JFK/UMass station.
PREVIOUS: Early morning train derailment impacts Red Line service all day
MBTA officials gave an update on the Red Line Friday afternoon in Dorchester, saying there is no quick fix to the subway line’s issues, which will likely continue into the fall.
MBTA officials said they are doing everything possible to recover and make the Red Line back to normal. Officials say the priority is improving service and doing it as quickly and safely as possible.
During rush hour, there are currently 10 Red Line trains per hour. Full service is normally 13 to 14 trains per hour during those peak ride times. With the MBTA working to return the red line to normalcy, riders will be forced to deal with the 10 trains per hour until Labor Day.
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After the early June derailment, trains were running at a rate of one train every 10 minutes, causing a headache for riders from the JFK/UMass stop to Alewife at the end of the line.
"We are going to emphasize safety every time," said Steve Poftack, General Manager of the MBTA. "We want to make sure we are operating safely. Right now we are using MBTA officials in the field. We have 50 additional people working and doing things manually that we prefer to do electronically."
"There was an amount of our signal that was tremendously damaged after the incident," said the MBTA’s Deputy GM Jeff Gonneville. "Three bungalows were damaged because of this incident."
Officials say, they are getting some new equipment for those damaged bungalows - something you can’t just purchase from your local store.
"All of these things need to be repaired and integrated with new equipment and new technology that our contractors are actively working to replace," Gonneville said.
As for how and why the derailment happened, investigators are still trying to figure it out.
Related: New analysis puts $10.1B price tag on MBTA repairs, upgrades
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