Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Governor Maura Healey and MBTA General Manager Phil Eng held a press conference on Monday to celebrate the completion of the Track Improvement Program.
The MBTA kept numerous slow zones in effect on and off for the past few decades in order to allow for track work to be done. Now, all of those slow zones have finally been lifted.
“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Governor Healey said. “For the first time in 20 years slow zones are removed from the T.”
The governor discussed how much time riders will be saving now that all lines are running at normal speeds.
“You’re saving four minutes on the Blue Line, nine minutes on the Green Line, 21 minutes on the Orange Line, and a full hour on the Red Line,” the governor said. “Collectively, riders are saving about 2.4 million minutes every weekday.”
Beyond speed improvements, the governor also mentioned that the state economy is now saving a lot of money that was being put into track improvement.
“We were losing nearly a million dollars every day in GDP because of slow zones,” Governor Healey said.
Eng shared in Healey’s excitement for the slow zones being lifted, talking directly to those still unsure about the MBTA’s reliability.
“The message is they will see every day the system getting more and more reliable,” Phil said. “We are starting to demonstrate that we can be leaders again here in Massachusetts.”
He also talked about plans to improve the MBTA beyond this.
“Red Line has some of the oldest train cars probably in the US,” Eng said. “We are focused on delivering the Red Line-Orange Line signal upgrades by early 2026 before the World Cup.”
WBZ NewsRadio’s Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.