As many students and residents were coming home from spring vacations Sunday, major transportation issues caused significant delays on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Green line and on Amtrak trains traveling from New York City to Boston.
The B line from Kenmore Square Station to Boston College closed Sunday due to wire problems, said Joe Pesaturo, spokesperson for the MBTA, in an email.
“[The] cause is under investigation,” he said. “The wire problems emerged near BC and Kenmore Stations.”
Alternate bus services were provided for transportation between Kenmore and BC according to the MBTA website.
Some residents said the lines for the buses were long and it took them some time to get to their destination.
“Because of the congestion of all the shuttle buses, it makes it harder for me to get to the bus I need to get on to get home. It is a royal inconvenience,” said Avery Ballotta, a resident of Allston.
Ballotta said the St. Patrick’s Day parade and influx of people in the area made the bus situation worse.
“[The bus service is] super confusing, especially because it is St. Patrick’s Day,” he said. “The majority of the population is wasted today so this is incredibly inconvenient, confusing and crazy.”
Melodie Pharms, a receptionist from Boston, said the wait for the buses was extremely crowded and the MBTA was not running enough buses.
“I usually take the E Line, but I had to take the B line to see some friends, but now I can’t,” she said. “It is usually pretty quick catching the train, now it’s a really long wait in the cold. They try to run a lot of buses, but they don’t send them to capacity or they are all too full.”
If the subway service shut down in New York, Pharms said she thinks they would know how to handle the situation better.
“This never happens in New York,” she said. “There, the service is so much better. The operators know their route, unlike here.”
The B Line resumed operation by about 10 p.m., Pesaturo said in an email.
While locals struggled to get to their destinations in Boston, some students were inconvenienced while trying to return to the city.
Amtrak eventually restored service on the Northeast Corridor between New York and Boston after a freight train derailed in New Haven, Conn. early Sunday morning, causing departures to be delayed for several hours, according to an Amtrak service alert.
A number of students said the derailment changed their travel plans immensely.
“I saw on the board that my 9:40 a.m. train from Stamford was canceled,” said Coner Corbett, 21, a Brighton resident and student at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. “They told me that no trains were going into Boston and the last I heard was that I could have got on a train at 6 p.m. I had no idea what I was going to do.”
Corbett said Amtrak could have handled the situation better and provided better options for people to get to their destination.
“The buses they were providing were all taken and the buses in New York City were all taken,” she said. “They weren’t really telling people what was going on and they weren’t opening up more buses, so it was just a mess. I’m just glad that I had my car and could drive myself to Boston.”
Ian Conlin, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, said he was fortunate enough that he could get on a bus out of New York City.
“I learned that there weren’t going to be any more trains for the rest of the day, so we got to a MegaBus as soon as we could,” he said. “It was a little frustrating because I was traveling with a friend and our travels had been pretty smooth over spring break. But then we got this massive hiccup and everything was rerouted, but luckily they had enough buses to get us where we were going.”
Conlin said he was frustrated with the delay, but was glad they could still get to Boston.
“I expected that I was going to get back a while ago, but I suppose that derailments happen and we were lucky to find tickets,” he said. “It could have been much worse.”
Brian Latimer contributed to the reporting of this article.
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