MBTA

Businesses Consider How to Prepare for Orange Line Shutdown

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce is compiling resources on its website including options for employers considering providing charter buses for their employees

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Signs posted at the Forest Hills subway station alert passengers of the upcoming suspension of service on the Orange Line.

"I think it’s going to create chaos," said passenger Jackie Burns. "It’s going to be very difficult, especially when the weather is so hot. People are going to be angry, frustrated."

The signs include a diagram showing the alternate routes suggested by the MBTA. Riders can take the commuter rail or shuttle buses between Oak Grove and North Station and between Back Bay and Forest Hills. People traveling Downtown are encouraged to use Green Line service, but shuttles will replace Green Line trains between Government Center and Union Square from Monday, August 22 through Sunday, September 18.

"It will affect my commute a lot because I take the whole Orange Line," said Khadijah Joseph. "If there was a direct shuttle bus that would take us to Forest Hills that would be awesome."

Joseph said her commute from Malden to West Roxbury normally takes from an hour to an hour and a half.

"[I’m] still trying to figure it out. I might have to take Ubers. It’s going to be expensive."

"They said we could take the Green Line but then I would have to go to Back Bay, take the 39 and then get off Copley Square and then walk to Longwood Ave. and that’s too far. And I would have to get up much earlier than I usually do during the days I take the Orange Line,” said passenger Finn Duddy-Burke.

"If they want their employees to get to work on time and be there and not be absent then maybe they can provide some kind of different way of getting there," said passenger Jackie Burns.

"What we started hearing from many of our employers who bring hundreds, if not thousands of people into the downtown core, in particular, asking us for information, what did we have because they felt like they weren't getting it through normal channels. So, we reached out to the T and worked with city government to try to find out what we can and decided it best to put it all in one place," said Jim Rooney, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber is compiling resources on its website including options for employers considering providing charter buses for their employees.

"Over the last decade or more, the private sector has taken things into their own hands with respect to providing privately funded shuttle services. That happens in the Seaport. It happens in the Longwood medical area. So, I suspect that there is some measure of planning going on by private companies and these economic activity centers like the medical areas where companies are getting together saying, you know, how can we combine resources to make sure that our employees get to where they need to go."

Before leading the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Rooney served many years with the MBTA. He said the timing of this large-scale repair project is far from ideal.

"Usually at this time of year after Labor Day, you would be seeing people coming off vacation so the business community would be a little busier; students arriving, school buses back on the street."

And this comes as the city was working to revitalize Downtown Boston.

"There's a lot of empty storefronts in commercial spaces, offices in transition. So while we were thinking about how do we, how do we return to something that is a new normal by bringing people back? Now we have to deal with this which is totally counter to that. Now, instead of trying to welcome people back and saying okay, maybe after Labor Day is the time to move to another day in the office or some other tactic, we’re back to encouraging people to take the Orange Line to perhaps work from home if they have that, that ability."

He hopes 30 days of repair can mark a new chapter for the transportation agency.

"Right now there's a big confidence issue. And if this is what it takes to rebuild that confidence, then so be it. But the challenge for the MBTA and the state government in this case, is to deliver on that promise."

In his latest update, Boston’s Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge said the city is helping MBTA finalize shuttle routes and stops. They are also working to line up funding for free or discounted passes for Blue Bikes.

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