Although optimistic, the MBTA will maintain speed restrictions on the Green Line for the time being

The MBTA said early Saturday that global speed restrictions imposed along the MBTA’s Green Line will remain in place, despite the optimism shown at a press conference less than 24 hours earlier.

“While operating the Green Line test train in areas where defects were previously discovered, crews determined the speed signals that needed to be flown to implement the ban restrictions,” the MBTA said in a statement. As a result, global speed restrictions will remain in effect until this manual process is complete.

Even when the global speed restrictions, now limited to the Green Line only, are lifted, the MBTA says the ban restrictions will still apply.

According to the MBTA, block speed constraints are an extension of a path “that may include multiple flaws that need to be investigated or mitigated as each flaw is validated and corrected,” MBTA interim general manager Jeff Gonville said at a press conference Friday afternoon.

“We are taking a conservative approach as we continue to work through this issue,” Gonville said.

The MBTA provided a series of pie charts that showed the velocity constraints of the remaining mass that would remain in place.

The Blue Line, with service from downtown Boston to Wonderland Station in River, has the largest proportion of the route that should have a reduced speed, at 80%.

MBTA’s Monthly Speed ​​Limits Report, released at the end of February Before the global speed limitation measures were put in place by the transit agency, set the amount of the speed-limited Blue Line route at 1.6%. The January report put the speed-restricted track on the line at 0%.

An MBTA spokesperson said Friday that the restrictions were added “as part of the ongoing process to validate and validate inspection data collected during previous engineering track surveys.”

“Commuters should continue to plan for longer distances and additional travel time throughout the system,” Gonville said.

“Some of these speed restrictions will require corrective action and will take longer than others to resolve and lift,” Gonville said. “We’re actively working on that now and working through those plans.”

Once end-to-end speed restrictions on the Green Line are lifted, about 16 percent of that line will be subject to slow zones, according to MBTA data provided Friday. The slow zones cover 22 percent of the Matapan line.

T said Friday that 24 percent of the red line and 22 percent of the orange line remain under slow zones, for a total rate of 31.9 percent that hasn’t budged over the course of the workweek.

The MBTA provided no details on where the newly imposed slowdown is.

The MBTA said it intends to unveil a more dynamic dashboard that provides riders with more real-time information about speed restrictions. Gonville said the dashboard will be unveiled at the MBTA board meeting next week.

The extensive mandatory slow zones, announced and ordered last Thursday night after MBTA officials determined they did not have sufficient documentation to prove they had fixed previously identified trail defects, continue to saddle riders with slow, less reliable and more crowded rides.

The Public Utilities Administration, which serves as the government agency responsible for monitoring the safety of the MBTA, inspected a section of the Red Line track on Monday, March 6 and noted concerns about the quality of the tracks. On Tuesday, March 7, DPU Rail Transportation Safety Director Robert Hanson sent MBTA officials six letters ordering corrective action. On Thursday, March 9, the MBTA implemented a system-wide slowdown, then replaced the global speed limit with a vague mix set on the red, blue, and orange lines the next morning.

In a statement to WCVB, the Massachusetts Governor’s Office said Governor Maura Healy has been in contact with MBTA management about the speed restrictions and has instructed them to conduct track inspections as quickly and safely as possible while keeping the public informed.

“We are in the final stages of our search for a general manager for the MBTA and will have more to share soon,” Carissa Hand, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in a written statement.

Information from the State House News Service was used in this report.