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The track repairs to speed up trains — ripping up and replacing degraded old ties and rails — are made possible by shutdowns of parts of the system each month, as the T puts frustrated riders on even slower shuttle buses, with the longest shutdown so far coming in September.
“You can see, little by little, section by section, this is why we’re able to run the level of service we did,” T general manager Phillip Eng told the agency’s board members last week.
The T now has 7 percent of its subway tracks in slow zones, according to its dashboard, down from 20 percent when the agency announced its ambitious track improvement plan last year. The T has removed all speed restrictions from the Blue Line and eliminated its oldest slow zone, a defective area of Green Line track on the C line in Brookline near Ayr Road that had delayed riders there for more than 900 days.
As the T makes repairs, train speeds are mostly increasing. Boston’s subways may not be mistaken for Tokyo-like speed and efficiency anytime soon, but measurable progress can be seen.
The average speed on the Orange Line has improved from 14.2 miles per hour last July to 15.7 miles per hour so far this July, according to T data analyzed by TransitMatters. On the Red Line, the average speed has reached 15.1 miles per hour this July, with more improvement expected this week after a long shutdown, up from 13.9 miles per hour a year ago. And on the Blue Line, the average speed has improved from 16.7 miles per hour to 18.2 miles per hour, according to the TransitMatters data. Average speed on the Green Line has remained the same at 10.5 miles per hour. TransitMatters tracks train travel speed including stops at stations, meaning problems with the signal and power systems and other delays can affect the data.
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The top speed for T subway trains is capped at 40 miles per hour, though trains are limited to 25 miles per hour over some curvy stretches.
The improved tracks, increased hiring of subway operators, and more new Red and Orange Line cars have allowed the T to operate more trips, inching back toward pre-pandemic wait times for trains. On the Orange Line, the T operated 284 trips per weekday this June, up from about 200 last June, according to the agency.
For the last year-and-a-half, Stephen Toropov, who lives in Jamaica Plain, has used the Orange Line from Green Street to get to his job in Arlington. He said that at its slowest, the T would take roughly 30 minutes to get to Sullivan Square from Green Street.
Now that many of the slow zones are gone, “It’s definitely cutting off at least two to five minutes,” he said.
Afomya Zerihun, 15, who lives near Sullivan Square, often takes the Orange Line into downtown. She said she thinks that the train is more efficient but that the modest speed improvements haven’t stopped her parents from wondering what’s taking so long.
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”It gets the job done,” she said. “But I will try getting back home on time, and my parents will be calling me asking where I am and I’m like, ‘The trains are slow.’ ”
Connie O’Callahan has been riding the Orange Line for over 30 years. Taking it previously to a job at Logan Airport, he now uses it to get to his custodian job at the Warren-Prescott School from his home near Oak Grove.
”It’s gotten a little quicker,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it was.”
As the T appears poised to meet its goal of eliminating all speed restrictions by the end of the year, Eng, who took over as general manager in April 2023, is setting his sights on even faster trains.
The T will be shutting down the Red Line between JFK/UMass and Braintree stations for 24 days in September, eight longer than originally planned. The additional work makes that shutdown the longest since the T began its track improvement program.
Eng said the T will be able to reconstruct the tracks so that trains can go 50 miles per hour along some of the stretch, 10 miles per hour faster than the current max.
“We saw that this corridor is ripe for us to not only build it back and restore where we were,” Eng told board members. “But we want to go back better.”
Correspondent Izzy Bryars contributed to this report.
Taylor Dolven can be reached at taylor.dolven@globe.com. Follow her @taydolven.
