MBTA Subway Power Outage Strands Thousands During Busy Morning Commute

BOSTON — Subway riders were offered a free ride Thursday afternoon as part of what MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng called a "gesture to acknowledge (to riders) that we do care about their travels" after a power outage stranded thousands of passengers and caused hours of delays during the height of the morning commute.

Eng said that a 7-mile-long feeder cable — which was outside of the MBTA's infrastructure — failed and caused circuit breakers to trip, affecting Green, Orange and Blue line service Thursday morning. Lights went out in stations and trains were halted because of automated signal failures with service gradually restored throughout the morning using manual signals before power was fully restored two hours later.

Eng said subway gates will be open for free service from 3 to 7 p.m. on Thursday and allowed that while the cable was not part of the MBTA's aging and long-deteriorating infrastructure, the latest in a series of incidents, delays and service shutdowns is another obstacle in the MBTA's challenge of regaining trust among riders that it is a reliable source of transportation.

"The public confidence is something where we're going to have to continue to demonstrate every day how we are going to deliver service," Eng said during a midday news conference. "I understand that regardless of the cause (of Thursday's power outage), it affects our riders. What we're doing is to continue to rebuild our infrastructure that's in our control."

Eng praised the response to the outage he said had trains moving within about 20 minutes of the cable failure and the system fully operational in about two hours, and noted other improvements the MBTA has been making — notably the completion of Red Line trackwork to eliminate slow zones between Alewife and Harvard stations.

"We are systematically rebuilding all the infrastructure that we can with the resources that we have as efficiently and as expeditiously as we can," he said. "It's been years of disinvestment."

Eng said the MBTA did not know the cause of the feeder cable failure as of early Thursday afternoon. MBTA officials said during the news conference that National Grid was responsible for the cable — but a National Grid spokesperson told Patch on Thursday afternoon that is not the case.

"National Grid does not operate the feeder cable the MBTA referenced in today's press conference, and our network does not serve the impacted substation," the spokesperson said. "Overall, our system in the greater Boston area has been operating without incident this morning. As the MBTA continues its investigation, we will work to provide information, as needed."

Eng responded to riders' frustration over the lack of communication as they stood on darkened platforms and sat in stationary trains during the outage, saying "from day one we've been working hard to improve communication."

"Every incident we have we will go back and review where we could have done better and where we could have brought in more timely information," he said. "I am focused on real-time information because I do know if you have that you can make informed decisions. You can decide on which routes to take. And it's much better to know in advance how long an incident will be in duration to make you a more informed rider.

"We can always keep working on it. Even as we improve our system I know communication is paramount because that's how you win trust back too."