Advertisement
Boston's Morning Newsletter
A big chunk of the Orange Line is closed for 4 days. Here's how to get around it
Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
It’s Monday and the idea of a “sleep vacation” sounds pretty good right now. WBUR’s Andrea Shea has a new feature here on the emerging trend in honor of National Sleep Awareness Month.
Before you run back to bed, let’s get to the news:
Diversion du jour: A big central stretch of the Orange Line is closed today through Thursday. There will be no train service between North Station and Jackson Square, forcing riders to use a mix of shuttle buses and alternative trains to ride the length of the ride. The four-day, 10-station shutdown will allow MBTA workers to try to make progress on the line’s stubborn slow zones. Regular service is slated to resume on Friday morning.
- How to get around the closure: Free shuttles buses will stop at all Orange Line stops between Jackson Square and Back Bay, with an additional bonus stop at the Green Line’s Copley station (which will leave fare gates open). That’s because there won’t be any shuttles between Back Bay and North Station, making the Green Line your best downtown option. The commuter rail will also be free to ride between Forest Hills and South Station.
- The tip of the iceberg: Remember, this diversion is just one of the many scheduled through the rest of 2024, all focused on track repairs. But as MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Brian Kane recently explained on Radio Boston, there are other neglected parts of the system — switches, signals, tunnel infrastructure — that will soon require diversions. “The shutdowns that we are seeing, folks better get used to them, because we’re going to have a lot more of them going forward in the next decade,” Kane said.
- What’s next: Here’s a look at all the T diversions planned through April, including on the Red, Orange and Blue lines.
Boston’s bracket: There may not be any Massachusetts colleges in this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament, but the Bay State will still get in on March Madness. Boston’s TD Garden is hosting the East region’s Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games next week (March 28 and 30) — and last night’s bracket reveal showed us the teams we can potentially look forward to seeing on Causeway Street.
- Familiar faces: Defending champions UConn, the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed, headlines the group. We also could see two other teams that made last year’s Final Four: San Diego State and Florida Atlantic University (though FAU would likely have to beat UConn first). Yale is also a 13 seed in the East region (after a wild buzzer beater to beat Brown yesterday). But it’s a long shot for the Ivy League champions to win their first two games in order to make it to Boston.
- Zoom out: Here are three things to know about both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments this year.
A former MBTA police officer is set to be sentenced Wednesday, after being found guilty of raping two women near the Museum of Science in 2012. Shawn McCarthy, a 50-year-old former Wilmington resident, was convicted Friday of three counts of rape stemming from the incident, according to Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
Newton police are investigating the recent vandalism of posters featuring Israeli hostages as a hate crime. The posters — which are part of a yard display on Homer Street featuring more than 100 names and faces of hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 — were defaced with spray paint, according to police. Newton’s police chief said the department has “no tolerance for such bias and hateful acts.”
P.S.— Get ready for a week of free events at CitySpace. Tomorrow night, Tiziana Dearing will host a panel talk about accessibility and disability advocacy in the local arts community. And on Wednesday night, we’re hosting a town hall conversation with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, including live questions from the audience. The event will also be live-streamed and you can submit questions early here.
