Red Line passengers faced delays Thursday morning when trains malfunctioned at Andrew station in South Boston and at Alewife station in Cambridge, causing no shortage of frustration.
Janice Pidge, 73, said she waited 25 minutes for a train to arrive at JFK/UMass station after hearing that two other trains had broken down. She offered a succinct summary of her journey.
“Unbelievable,” she said.
”The whole system — every day there’s a delay,” said Pidge, who lives in Belmont. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on the Green Line or the Red Line, they always say it’s a disabled train.”
The train at Andrew station broke down around 6:20 a.m, the MBTA posted on X, formerly Twitter. About an hour later, a train malfunctioned at Alewife. Shortly after 8 a.m., the MBTA reported that the delay at Alewife had cleared.
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Red Line Update: This delay has cleared. https://t.co/JiMawFrZ1Z
— MBTA (@MBTA) March 21, 2024
The MBTA did not say what caused the breakdowns and could not immediately be reached for comment.
Andrew Langin, 31, who boarded the Red Line at Quincy Adams station, said there were delays of five to eight minutes between every stop until Downtown Crossing.
”It was rough,” Langin said of his commute. “Usually my commute is 35 to 40 minutes. Today it was an hour and change.”
Langin said he was supposed to be in the office at 8:30 a.m., but it was already after 9 a.m. Langin said he wasn’t frustrated about the delays but when the trains stopped at each station, the doors were left open, exposing passengers to the “wind and cold.”
”I’m used to it,” he said. “I’m numb to it.”
Jeff Meese, 66, a real estate agent in Cambridge, said he waited for 20 minutes for a train at Porter around 6:30 a.m. He was running late for a 7 a.m. meeting.
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”Safety is everything for me and it is what it is, but why?” Meese said with a laugh as he tried to figure out how the entire Red Line was affected by a breakdown at Andrew station.
Neha Patkar, 22, of Charlestown, has had a week’s worth of train delays. With her usual Orange Line train out of service, she has tried a different train each day to get to her job at Tufts Medical Center. (A portion of the Orange Line is closed until Friday morning due to track improvement work.)
”I’ve been taking a very roundabout route everyday,” Patkar said Downtown Crossing on her way to Braintree. “I took the Green Line Tuesday and it was a mess.”
Thursday was not the right day to pick the Red Line, she said. But it’s no different than usual.
”Every day there are trains that are stopped for 20 minutes,” Patkar said. “The number of people this week that have been funneled into the same exact train has been crazy.”
Ava Berger can be reached at ava.berger@globe.com. Follow her @Ava_Berger_. John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.