MBTA riders furious with "very inconvenient" power outage during cold morning commute
By Penny Kmitt, WBZ-TV
BOSTON - MBTA riders added a new chapter to a very long history of frustrating commutes Thursday when a power outage stopped the Green, Blue and Orange lines during the morning rush hour in Boston.
Georgia O'Connor had hoped to get on an Orange Line train at Haymarket.
"Totally given up, now I'm going to walk to work," she told WBZ-TV. That added 35 minutes to her commute in the cold.
"It's very inconvenient, I walk 15 minutes to the T stop anyway," said O'Connor.
Photos from inside Haymarket and North Station showed nothing on except emergency lights.
MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said the outage started just before 7 a.m. when one of seven main feeder cables at North Station failed. There's no word yet on what caused it, but Eng said it took about two hours to get everything back up and running.
As an apology for the inconvenience, he said subway rides will be free from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday.
"We could just have better communication. I look on an app every day that isn't even regulated by the city to see what delays are happening," said O'Connor.
Riders said these issues have become too common on the T.
"Every single day I get texts from my co-workers, 'I'm going to be late, something's down, something's not moving,'" said O'Connor. "I wish it was a little bit more efficient but it's OK, gotta work with it."