The last passengers emerged blinking from the tunnel about 12:30 p.m., 3 ½ hours after the first train broke down.
“We all just took it in stride,’’ said passenger Tanisha Janbaptiste, 22, who came up Porter Square Station’s escalator laughing with friends she made during the ordeal. “We said we should get ‘T’ tattoos to show we were all in this together.’’
This latest Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority breakdown rang with frustrating familiarity: Two months ago, a Red Line train screeched to a halt just short of the Davis Square stop in Somerville and remained frozen in place for 2 ½ hours.
An initial review of yesterday’s episode found an air leak in the train’s brake system, MBTA general manager Richard A. Davey said, but the agency was still investigating last night whether that caused the failure.
The T has systemwide maintenance needs of about $4 billion, including a backlog of track, vehicle, station, and power demands that require $700 million in investment annually just to keep from getting worse, said Brian Kane, budget and policy analyst for the MBTA Advisory Board, which represents cities and towns served by the T. But the T has rarely spent a sufficient amount on maintenance, even while investing in politically popular expansion projects, Kane said.
Davey said it was too early to determine whether yesterday’s problems could be chalked up to the T’s aging fleet and infrastructure and its financial constraints. But Kane said it was likely, given that even the newest Red Line cars date to 1994 and are five years overdue for a midlife overhaul.
“Three trains in two months - that’s pretty bad,’’ Kane said. “We’ve been saying that these breakdowns were going to start happening more and more frequently, because we’ve ignored the needs of the fleet.’’
