Your View

This letter was submitted by Julia Bloom of Sylvia Street, Arlington:

I am a regular commuter on the MBTA and rely on it to get to work and leisure activities. One of the routes I use regularly is the 71, which is powered by overhead catenary wires that provide the buses with electricity.

I am deeply concerned with the T’s current plans to remove these catenary wires permanently and replace the current electric buses on the 71 and 73 routes with Battery Electric Buses (BEBs), which use diesel heaters. The T recently announced that it plans to scrap the catenary system on these routes when the restoration project on Mount Auburn Street begins next spring and, under its “Better Bus Project,” convert all of its buses to BEBs across the system starting in 2022 in order to standardize its fleet.

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