Boston MBTA Blue Line subway service replaced by shuttle between Airport and Bowdoin stations
If you ride the Blue Line, you may have noticed the sandwich boards outside stations directing passengers to shuttle buses instead.
Blue Line subway service closed Monday from Airport to Bowdoin stations and was replaced by shuttle service promised to “run all day, every day” until May 8. It’s all part of planned work on the service’s tunnel under Boston Harbor between Eastie’s Maverick Station and Aquarium Station.
In total, Airport, Maverick, Aquarium, State, Government Center and Bowdoin stations will have subway service replaced by shuttle bus.
“This 14-day acceleration of work replaces approximately one year of performing the work during nights and weekends,” the MBTA wrote in a statement. “It also significantly reduces the costs associated with contractor crews mobilizing and demobilizing each night and each weekend, and costs for shuttle buses and transit operational support.”
The service estimates that completing the work this way, which they said is a year ahead of schedule, should save taxpayers up to $3 million. The work is part of an $8 million, 5-year capital improvement program.
The tunnel is “susceptible to flooding during storm surges,” according to the MBTA. The work includes removing “inactive cables, ducts, and panels” to help alleviate corrosion issues, waterproofing cracks and other points of water intrusion, repairing “water-damaged concrete and corroded track elements” and relocating “fire hose connections and drainage pumps.”
In addition to the shuttle buses, which will not stop at Maverick during express shuttle service, the MBTA is running special ferry service between the Lewis Mall near Maverick station and Long Wharf North near Aquarium Station.
Riders can show a CharlieCard or CharlieTicket to board a ferry, which runs every 20 minutes from 6 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and every 40 minutes between 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m.
The MBTA also recommends that riders consider taking Silver Line service when traveling downtown from the airport.
