A full-speed subway line has eluded MBTA riders for more than a year — until now.
On Wednesday, the agency unveiled a new and improved Blue Line, an entire MBTA subway line now free of slow zones caused by track defects, after a 14-day shutdown of much of the line. This marks the first time the T has eliminated all speed restrictions on an entire subway line since the agency began subway shutdowns for track improvements in November.
Blue Line riders cheered the reopening on Wednesday, but it wasn’t without its hiccups. Signal problems near Wood Island Station caused T officials to hold trains for several minutes, creating delays during the morning rush. By noon, most of the signal issues had been resolved, but trains were still moving slower than expected through the area.
“It’s back, but we’re in the same situation,” said Carolina Rodriguez, 39, who waited for the Blue Line at Airport Station on Wednesday morning, in Spanish. “You get used to it.”
Despite the signal snafus, the Blue Line reopening marks a major improvement for the T. After largely ignoring track defects causing mind-numbing slow zones for years, and failing to eliminate slow zones even after shutdowns for repairs, the T appears to be making real progress toward its long-awaited goal of restoring trains to top speeds throughout the system.
The track work the T accomplished during the 14-day shutdown, two more days than originally planned, is far more than the T said it accomplished during the agency’s month-long shutdown of the entire Orange Line during summer 2022.
In April, hundreds of workers replaced more than 22,000 feet of Blue Line rail, 10,000 rail ties, 9,000 feet of overhead catenary wire, and repaired several stairways, among other improvements. That’s nearly double the amount of feet of rail the T said it replaced during the Orange Line shutdown and nearly four times as many rail ties.
“For people to want to use the system, they have to trust that we can deliver,” said T General Manager Phillip Eng. “I hope they can see we are demonstrating that we can.”
The difference has not gone unnoticed.
Ashely Gaston uses the Red, Orange, and Blue lines to get from her home in Dorchester to her job in East Boston as a policy associate at a nonprofit. As she waited for the train at State Station on Wednesday morning, she said her experience over the past nine years as a T rider has been “mixed.”
“Sometimes it’s awful, you never expect the train will come on time,” Gaston, 25, said.
The progress on slow zones, though, shows “a lot of potential,” she said.
“Five weeks in MBTA time is like five years,” she said. “I’m glad they’re getting this done.”
Riders were grateful to be rid of the shuttle buses used during the shutdown, which lengthened commutes considerably. The situation was made worse by a concurrent shutdown of part of the T’s Newburyport/Rockport commuter rail line for signal work.
Steph Newman, 39, said she is “happy to have [the train] back,” as she hopped on a Bowdoin-bound car at Orient Heights Station. Shuttle buses snarled in car traffic caused her to get to work an hour late during the shutdown, she said.
“I’m glad things are improving for the T,” she said.
Blue Line trains can now travel at a top speed of 40 miles per hour, up from 10 miles per hour in some areas before the shutdown. Some of those 10 mile-per-hour limits had been in place for more than a year, the T’s dashboard shows.
Wednesday’s reopening of the Blue Line doesn’t mean that the line will remain slow zone-free forever. Eng said he hopes that as the agency’s track repair department hires more people, the T will be able to better stay on top of defects and fix them before they get bad enough to warrant a slow zone.
The T’s subway signal system, which tripped up on Wednesday, is almost in as bad of shape as the subway tracks. A T analysis last year found that 53 percent of signal infrastructure is in need of repair or replacement compared to 89 percent of subway tracks. During the 14-day Blue Line shutdown, the T did not perform any signal work, the agency said.
So far the T’s track improvement program announced in November to eliminate all speed restrictions on its subway system by the end of this year has been largely successful.
In December and January, the first two full months of the T’s new repair program, the agency moved at a record pace, bringing the number of speed restrictions down from 179 to 127, according to its dashboard.
But in February, the agency added 24 new speed restrictions and eliminated just 15, the agency’s data shows, far fewer than the number it eliminated in December and January, leaving the system with 135 speed restrictions. March brought the total number down to 113, and April saw another big decrease.
Now, there are 95 speed restrictions across the T’s subway system, the dashboard shows, with slow zones covering 13 miles of track, or 10 percent of the entire system. That’s down from 194 restrictions covering 31.5 miles, or 23 percent of the system, on Nov. 1.
Eng longs for the day when the T no longer needs a speed restriction dashboard.
“We shouldn’t be having that dashboard,” he said. “Our normal mode of operation should be: We tackle it, fix it.”
Next up: the Red Line. Shuttle buses will replace train service between Park Street and JFK/UMass stations for nine days starting Thursday, between Broadway and North Quincy stations on May 11-12, and between Broadway and Braintree stations May 18-19. During evenings from May 2 to May 9, shuttle buses will replace train service between JFK/UMass and Ashmont stations after 8:30 p.m.
Taylor Dolven can be reached at taylor.dolven@globe.com. Follow her @taydolven.