Photo: MBTA Transit Police/Cambridge Fire
CAMBRIDGE, Mass (WBZ NewsRadio) — (UPDATED 2/6/2022 1:45 p.m.)
The Alewife Red Line station remains closed Monday after a weekend car crash in the station's parking garage.
A car crashed into the top floor of the garage Saturday afternoon, which caused a concrete barrier and debris to fall and crash into the station below. The incident sent the driver and another person in the station to the hospital. Transit Police said they believe the driver's actions were deliberate.
Interim Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority General Manager Jeff Gonneville said during a press conference on Monday that re-opening the garage is one of their top priorities, with an optimistic estimate of that happening sometime in the middle of the week. The station, however, is a more complicated issue— as engineers and crews work to ensure the structure is safe for passengers to travel through.
Further, Gonneville states that the station mezzanine is one of the main areas damaged at Alewife. Because of that the station will remain closed at least until the end of the week, as crews say they do not have a timeline on when repairs will be finished. Crews have already removed the 10,000-pound concrete barrier from the roof and are now working to clear other debris and examine the roof's structural integrity.
The MBTA said in a statement Red Line service at Alewife will likely be closed for the rest of the week. In the meantime, shuttle busses will run from Alewife to Davis, where commuters can switch to Red Line trains. Anyone with cars still parked inside the station's garage can retrieve them at any time.
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WBZ's Chris Fama spoke with several commuters frustrated by the shuttle buses, but one commuter said in this incident there wasn't much the MBTA could do.
"It's a fairly large inconvenience," he said. "[But] I mean you could have like a state of the art brand new station and the same thing could happen."
The MBTA said it will provide more updates about the timeline for reopening the station and garage when they are available.
WBZ's Chris Fama (@CFamaWBZ) reports.
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