Red Line

James Harvey tweeted around 5:30 p.m.:

Just had the Red Line doors open in the middle of the Longfellow Bridge.

Eric Steinhardt, apparently on the same train, reports the doors stayed open only very briefly, not even long enough for him to jump out.

Kristen Goodfriend notices an unusual item for sale at the little store inside the Porter Square T stop. Comes in five-day packs.

Red Line service was briefly halted Saturday night when a man dropped onto the tracks at Park Street - just as a train was pulling into the station.

The train driver was able to stop the train before hitting him; he then got up and climbed up onto the center platform, with the help of a T worker. According to an MBTA Transit Police report:

As I spoke with [the man], he seemed to be alert but confused. {he} stated, "I don't really know what happened. I think I tripped and the next thing I knew I was in the pit with a train coming towards me. {he} stateed, "I had come from the HempFest but had only smoked a little bit of weed."

He was taken to Tufts Medical Center with what appeared to be only a small cut in the back of his head.

The MBTA has installed a signal system at Ashmont that will keep Mattapan trolleys from leaving if a Red Line train is about to pull into the station.

T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the system comes in response to complaints from Red Line riders who would get out of their train just in time to see a trolley pulling away.

LoJack reports MBTA Transit Police used the human version of its tracking system to find an East Boston teen with a predilection for wandering away from home and school to ride the rails underneath Boston.

The company says yesterday's safe return marks the first successful use of its SafetyNet Service since it was introduced in Boston in January:

Approximately 20 minutes after arriving at North Station [where he left his father], officers with the MBTA Transit Police began picking up a signal emitting from the missing boy's SafetyNet Bracelet. The signal was coming from Downtown Crossing and was strongest underground. Officers went underground into the subway, boarded a train and were able to locate the boy, who was heading southbound.

The teen is well known to local police, who had always managed to find him safe, although sometimes after extensive searches that included requesting help from the public.

AlertNewEngland reports the TD Bank in Central Square was held up around 4:30 p.m. And since T-riding bank robbers seems to prefer the Red Line, the T held up Red Line service to let police search for him.

• Red Line proves unreliable - as getaway route for alleged bank robber
• Harvard Square bank robbery suspect attempts getaway via Red Line

Roving UHub photographer Jake Wark become walking UHub photographer Jake Wark this morning, thanks to a dead Red Line (happy Sept. 1!), which is how he came upon these T workers just before the Longfellow working fast to fix whatever it was that broke.

The sign in front of them became accurate again around 8:45 a.m.

Columbus Avenue slobs.

It's as if we've been hit by a hurricane of slobbery. Citizens Connect this morning is just filled with reports of mounds of filth and vermin, including:

The MBTA forwarded this photo of a tree down on the Red Line just south of Fields Corner and this photo of a tree down just north of JFK/UMass:

Shaun Engstrom reports this morning:

BREAKING NEWS: Coraline stop motion ad between Harvard & Central Sq replaced w/ Blue Man Group. It's been 2 years, praise the MBTA gods.

Boston Biker reports on the planned facilities at Braintree, Ashmont, Davis Square, Oak Grove and Malden Center - and that they will use a different and better rack design than the existing cages, based on input from actual bicyclists.

Just a normal morning on the Red Line: One inbound train died, so the train behind it was summoned to push it - after first dumping passengers at Savin Hill. PinayNoire exclaims:

MBTA captain's log 8192011: Still stranded in Savin Hill with inhabitants of planet Dorchester. Must. Get. Air.

Power was shut off to the Red Line this afternoon as Boston firefighters investigated burning trash on the tracks near Broadway station.

Meanwhile, for all the problems on the T, riders are unlikely to be delayed due to cows, unlike out in Amherst:

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo forwarded the photo and this account:

MBTA Transit Police report arresting a man they say was about to sell some drugs at the JFK/UMass Red Line stop yesterday evening.

Robert Paul, 36, of Roxbury, was allegedly packing meth, pot, heroin, oxycodone and diazepam when two officers interrupted him and a potential buyer near a Columbia Road exit gate around 7:30 p.m. He also had a portable digital scale, a glass pipe and 13 spare plastic bags, along with a folding knife and $237 in cash, police say.

Because the station sits next to the Boston Collegiate Charter School, he will be charged with a variety of offenses in a school zone. He is also wanted on a parole violation in Concord, NH, where he was convicted of armed robbery, police say.

Boston Police report a nearly month-long operation with their MBTA counterparts has resulted in 24 arrests of alleged drug dealers and their minions in and around the Andrew stop on the Red Line:

Since July 6, 2011, this effort proactively targeted a criminal element who frequently utilized the station to arrive, enter and leave the Andrew Square area to conduct unlawful drug transactions.

In addition to the arrests, police say they seized significant amounts of heroin, crack, marijuana, prescription pills and money.

On Sunday, MBTA officers arrested what they said was a gun-packing fare jumper. Although he was not charged with any drug offenses at Andrew, his bail on a drug charge out of Chelsea was revoked.

In addition to announcing more delays in the Green Line extension, the state Department of Transportation wants to make sure the dormant proposal to extend the Blue Line to Charles/MGH stays dead.

In a filing with state environmental officials, MassDOT says spending another $49 million to study finishing what is now a $748 million project it has no intentions to build is pretty damn stupid, so it wants to be released from any obligations to do more studies.

As a matter of policy, MassDOT believes that it is irresponsible to spend precious public funds to design and permit transportation projects for which there are no identified construction funds, particularly given the need to continually refresh planning and permitting materials for major projects. To pursue final design of the Red Line/Blue Line Connector project at this point would be to squander resources that could otherwise be spent on projects for which construction funds are already committed.

Therefore, MassDOT is initiating a process to amend the [State Implementation Plan] to permanently and completely remove the obligation to perform final design of the Red Line/Blue Line Connector.

MBTA Transit Police report a man stopped for jumping through a broken fare gate at Andrew station yesterday afternoon tried to bolt from officers questioning him, possibly because of the gun with the safety turned off that he was packing.

According to a police report, officers spotted Hamilton Rodriguez of Chelsea jumping over a cone at a broken fare gate around 1:20 p.m., which would have gotten him a citation.

Instead, as officers were talking to him, he tried to run away:

Nhu Nguyen and Derek Matulina were once friends who fell out over money Nguyen felt Matulina owed him for a drug transaction, Suffolk County prosecutors said today. When the two crossed paths at the Savin Hill T stop on May 7, they began to fight and Nguyen pulled out a gun and fatally shot Matulina, according to the District Attorney's office.

Trailer for Escape from the Red Line. All its missing is a theme song by Maureen McGovern.

Via Wicked Local Cambridge.

Carly Marie was on the dead Red Line train between Harvard and Porter this morning and took this photo before stepping down to the tracks for a tunnel walk. She adds:

Made it through two episodes of @ThisAmerLife and today's @nytimes crossword, plus some Angry Birds and Tetris during today's MBTA fiasco.

Elizabeth Bond was also on the train:

Bond reports:

I was in the last car of the train so I had to wait for the 13 cars ahead of me to evacuate and didn't make it out until 12:30. When they decided to evacuate us they had to cut the power off so they could cut the third rail off. For the last hour, hour and a half, there was no AC but the firemen were passing out water bottles.

Wicked Local Cambridge interviewed some of the trapped passengers:

"There's some camaraderie," said Flynn, 34, who was headed to work in Harvard Square. The tunnel between Porter and Harvard squares is one of the deepest in the system and passengers marveled at the earthen walls and stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

Whole series of planking photos, including my favorite - planking the giant steel T outside Alewife. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to tell if somebody is planking or dead drunk.

Shuttle buses instead of trains thanks to this, at Savin Hill.

Red Line service was stopped in both directions; traffic a mess as well.

AlertNewEngland reports the worker appears to be conscious. The worker was extricated not long after rescue crews arrived. Channel 7 reports he suffered only minor arm injuries.

The MBTA reports police officers interrupted a possible drug sale at Andrew station on the Red Line yesterday morning.

According to a police report, MBTA and Boston officers in the station noticed Stephen Brennion, 31, a man known to them, sitting on the outbound platform with another guy shortly before noon yesterday:

Officer Kluziak observed Brennion remove a round case containing pills. The unidentified male noticed Officer Kluziak and said, "he's a cop." Brennion put the top back on the container and went to put it back in his pocket.

Too late: Busted. Police say they found six clonazepam pills, five clonidine pills in the case and a bunch of phenobarbital pills in his backpack, along with a five-inch-long "Bowie-style dagger" and a silver security-guard badge. Brennion was charged with possession of Class E drugs and a dangerous weapon.

Innocent, etc.

Only suffered a broken elbow, Channel 5 reports.