Photo: WBZ NewsRadio / James Rojas
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Boston Mayor Michelle Wu took the MBTA's shuttle route to work today amid the Orange Line month-long shut down, taking notes for improvement along the way.
Monday morning marked the first weekday of the shuttles in place for the Orange Line. Mayor Wu embarked on the journey, riding the 34 bus to Forest Hills Station, then taking an Orange Line shuttle to the Green Line, ending her trip at Government Center Station where she walked to City Hall. She took notes along her journey noting the positive things and ways in which the MBTA could improve she noticed along the way.
Last week, Boston's Chinatown had a meeting to discuss how the Orange Line shutdown will affect the community. At the meeting, the lack of multilingual MBTA signage regarding the shutdown and shuttle service were brought to attention.
Read More: "Not Too Bad": Orange Line Riders React To First Work Day Of Shutdown
"The MBTA needs to do extensive outreach to our Chinatown and immigrant communities, and make sure that language access is at the forefront of this outreach with materials and announcements in multiple languages," Boston City Council President Ed Flynn said in a statement.
"The strengths were the availability of shuttle buses just as promised. There were staff on the ground at most stations directing people and giving information so that was great." Mayor Wu said. "There are still some places where we need better signage and signage in multiple languages that we can work on and make sure that we're addressing in the days to come."
Mayor Wu saw the lack of languages included on MBTA postings in her own journey as well as a lack of directions to find shuttles.
"For example when you get off the bus at Forest Hills there's no direct signage in the busway of how to get to the shuttle bus's which are on the other side and down the stairs from where the buses unload. There are also certain stops along the way where we should see multilingual signage," she said.
The shuttle journey took her about an hour, beginning at about 8:35 A.M. and arriving at Government Center Station around 9:35 A.M.
"It went pretty smoothly, it was a little bit longer than [the] usual commute but no real bottlenecks or traffic along the way," Mayor Wu said.
WBZ's James Rojas (JamesRojasNews) has more:
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