The $80 million Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Red Line construction project, which since November has halted Saturday and Sunday service on the Red Line north of the Harvard Square station is on schedule for its March 4 completion date.
"They're confident they're going to get it done on time," Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Advisory Board Executive Director Paul Regan told the Daily.
The timely completion of the project, which shut down weekend subway service at the Davis Square station, is possible due to efficient labor and a lack of weather complications, Regan said.
According to Regan, water leaks due to inclement weather would have put them behind schedule, because workers would have had to deal with those issues rather than focusing on construction.
The Tufts weekend shuttle service between Mayer Campus Center and Harvard Square, which was announced in October in response to the Red Line closure, will continue at least until the Red Line weekend service resumes.
Since the shuttle has an active ridership and there have been few problems with its operation, it may continue running even after the Red Line weekend service resumes, according to Vice President for Operations Dick Reynolds.
The money for the shuttle is currently coming out of the Operations budget, and the cost must be re−evaluated before a decision is made, Reynolds said.
According to Regan, the weekend repair plan was the best way the MBTA could have gone about the construction process.
"The Red Line is the busiest line," he said. "You really can't shut it down during rush hour because we are talking hundreds of thousands of people who would have to find alternatives."
MBTA crews have worked diligently over the weekends, Regan said.
"On Sunday between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., they finish up, they clean out, they run a couple of trains over to make sure everything is running fine and they just go back to normal service," he said.
The MBTA widely publicized information about the T shutdown and alternative MBTA buses, Regan said, resulting in no serious complaints from its passengers.
"It's an inconvenience, but it's a necessary one. I think they tried to make it as least inconvenient as possible," he said.
Administrators introduced the Harvard shuttle to minimize the impact of the service changes on the Tufts community. Reynolds said he proposed the idea to offer additional substitute transportation through Joseph's Transportation after the announcement about the Red Line construction was made last fall.
"We were in contact with administrations about it saying that students would definitely like it," Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senator and former co−chair of TCU Services Committee Lia Weintraub said.
According to Reynolds, the shuttle services have been extremely popular, with the Tufts community making 14,858 trips either from Tufts to Harvard or Harvard to Tufts between the weekends of Nov. 5 and Feb. 18.
"I mostly heard very positive things about it, that the school was actually responding to a student desire," Weintraub, a sophomore, said.
While there is no way to gauge how these numbers would compare to the number of travelers if the T were open, the results seem to be very positive.
"We have certainly had very, very active ridership," Reynolds said.
The first weekend the Harvard bus was offered, it became clear that one shuttle would not be enough to meet the campus's needs, so a second one was added to decrease waiting time on both ends, Reynolds said.
"Ever since the first weekend I have not had any feedback of any problems," he said.
Students are using the shuttle for various purposes that would make the shuttle desirable even when the T construction is over, Weintraub added.
"I think it kind of has a distinct purpose, as well as transporting people to the Red Line, it also allows people to get to Harvard Square pretty easily or to get their groceries in Porter [Square] without having to walk there," she said.
Reynolds said the continuation of the shuttle is under consideration but emphasized that he wasn't making any promises.
"I'm delighted that the student body seems to be enjoying the ability to have it," he said.
