A report on the Red Line extension of the Harvard through Alewife Tunnels. The next time you hop on a train at Porter Square and I have study the speed limit and the curves inside the tunnels. Take the inbound train from Porter going towards Harvard Station. Is your safety at risk?

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YouTube Video
http://tinyurl.com/RLTunnelExtension

I've studied a report on the Red Line extension of the Harvard through Alewife Tunnels. I'll have that up on YouTube soon. The next time you hop on a train at Porter Square and I have study the speed limit and the curves inside the tunnels. Take the inbound train from Porter going towards Harvard Station. As the train starts to go 40 to 50 mph.

If you decide you don't really need to bring your laptop, $700 digital camera and Celtics season tickets to work with you, you probably at least want to put them in the trunk, MBTA Transit Police suggest.

Channel 25 reports cops were handing out fliers at Alewife this morning following a rash of break-ins at MBTA parking lots and bike cages:

The T reports delays out of Alewife due to a broken train. Al Stevens tweets:

Alewife full of people. No trains.

Larabair tweets:

stranded in non-ventilated Harvard for 30'. I would have been 20' early, now i'm late.

Andrew Kimpton tweets that trains getting to Park Street were discharging all their passengers, " forcing hundreds of passengers to wait on the platform." Jeff Dunns adds T workers at Park Street gently encouraged riders to get off the trains by swearing at them.

Of course, every cloud has a silver lining, right? Rebecca Ferrell tweets:

Completed BOTH sudokus AND the crossword in the Metro on my way in to work this morning -- thanks, massive red line delays!

MBTA Transit Police tweet thefts of bicycles and bike parts are up, especially at Davis and Alewife. Buy those heavy locks and record those serial numbers now, police say.

Dan Dunn knows from experience that just because a train has its doors open at Alewife doesn't mean it's going anywhere anytime soon. He was the only one to know that around 11:10 a.m. today.

Boblothrope reports workers were busy replacing platform signs at Alewife station this morning - for like the fourth time in 16 months:

... The crew included no less than *four* supervisors, who stood around on the mezzanine level chatting.

I didn't notice any functional difference between the old signs and the new ones. They weren't just sticking on new graphics -- they were replacing the entire metal panels. ...

Apparently, Alewife is a testbed for new signage ideas for the rest of the T system.

Kayleigh's Red Line commute from Alewife did not get off to a good start this morning:

... Fortunately, I somehow popped in through an door with an empty seat right beside it. Feeling lucky, I inspected the seat for gum, and was turning around to sit when suddenly a woman rushed in UNDERNEATH ME and sat in the seat! She gave me a shove with her arm and hate lasers shot out of eyes. I said something like "Whoa!" and backed away before she could whip out a knife. She continued to stare at me, like a feral animal ready to bite. The odd thing was the train car still had plenty of open seats – including two directly beside the one she'd just pushed me for. ...

Dan Dunn tweets it took him 50 minutes to get from Kendall to Alewife early this evening:

How I loathe the MBTA. And the "alert" system.

Sohanley was stuck in a train between Harvard and Porter for 25 minutes around the same time.