Gov. Maura Healey announced Tuesday on GBH’s Boston Public Radio that an ongoing impasse over closing down a portion of Summer Street near South Station to safely control the masses of people expected to take the Commuter Rail to World Cup games is over.
“We got a call before the show saying the Summer Street thing had been resolved — is that true?” host Jim Braude asked Healey.
“Yeah,” Healey replied. “Yeah. Yeah.”
The MBTA had wanted to close the section of Summer Street running between South Station and Fort Point Channel for 10 hours on each of the seven days where local World Cup matches will be played. Crowds traveling through the station for those matches are anticipated to reach about 20,000 people.
While the city of Boston backed other crowd control measures, officials opposed that plan due to the potential disruption to traffic and local commuters. But the state threatened to use its eminent-domain power to execute it anyway — a posture the city termed “inappropriate.”
In a press release sent after Healey’s remarks, the MBTA and city announced that Summer Street will be fully closed to vehicular traffic between Dorchester Ave. and Atlantic Ave. for eight hours on four World Cup match days: June 13, June 19, June 29 and July 9.
On three other match days — June 16, June 23 and June 26 — there will be slightly more flexibility, with Summer Street open to vehicular traffic only on the westbound side. According to the release, “[t]he direction of travel will be coordinated based on the demands of the respective day and time,” and “[p]ublic safety and security officials will coordinate with incident command and make decisions as needed in the interest of public safety.”
In the press release — which featured comments from both Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and MBTA General Manager Phil Eng — the new deal was touted as “support[ing] both local and regional commuters, neighborhood access and the thousands of passengers headed to the seven World Cup matches at Boston this summer.”
Each match day will bring a measure of disruption in the area. The press release also stated that Summer Street will be fully closed to motor-vehicle traffic between Dorchester Avenue and Atlantic Avenue as the T sets up temporary security screening and queueing space for all seven matches. Officials urged residents to avoid the area if possible and to take public transit there if absolutely necessary.
The city and T will also review the closure plan after each match and make any tweaks deemed necessary to improve it. Now that the plan has been finalized, the MBTA is withdrawing its threat to use eminent domain and the city is planning to issue the occupancy permit necessary to implement the plan.
