A ceiling panel had become so sodden that it fell suddenly, nearly hitting a passenger on the Harvard Station platform in March. Two months later, a strap holding a utility box in place had become so rusted that it gave way, dropping and injuring a commuter standing below.
In the months leading up to the incidents, MBTA records show internal service requests were made for ceiling leaks as well as for rusted straps holding a utility box to a column, according to records obtained by the Globe. Before that, the agency’s annual inspections had for years given the station passing grades.
Advertisement
T spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said the box flagged by the service request was inspected and was not the same one that fell, and that new General Manager Phillip Eng is directing the T’s Engineering and Maintenance division to review its protocols and procedures for inspections and conducting appropriate follow-ups.
Eng himself says the agency’s station inspections must improve and is creating a new “head of stations” position to oversee them.
“How do we ensure that every station has that level of inspection that it needs to be?” Eng said while talking to reporters following a MBTA board of directors meeting earlier this month. “The thing about inspections is, it could be visual, it could be up close, but it also sometimes needs to be hands on, and it needs to be on a regular frequency. So those are things that I want to see how we develop that here.”
The MBTA conducts annual inspections of every station and has outside consultants survey subway stations every other year, said Pesaturo. The T is currently hiring more consultants so that they can review subway stations every year, Pesaturo said. Station personnel visually inspect stations every day, he said, and flag any maintenance needs.
Advertisement
The current iteration of Harvard Station was opened in the mid-1980s.
MBTA workers appear to have inspected the station in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, according to records obtained by the Globe. An outside consulting firm prepared a more-than-thousand-page report about the station’s condition in 2021, which also gave the station a passing grade.
More recently, ceiling leaks and rusted straps on one of the station’s columns were flagged for potential repairs, a log of service requests shows.
On January 24, two service requests noted ceiling leaks. “Lower platform ceiling leak next to drip pan,” said one request, asking for a drip pan to be extended. “Spall concrete Harvard Station, crack ceiling, concrete and water dripping to inbound platform ramp,” said another service request that day. (Spalling means cracked or damaged). Pesaturo said workers extended the drip pan and are working to seal cracks at stations.
On March 30, weeks after the soaked ceiling panel collapsed, the MBTA received a report from a customer about an electrical box, according to Pesaturo.
“Inbound platform bottom of steps round station pillar has elec wires and elec box secured to pillar by metal bands,” said a service request on March 30, marked as “rejected.” “These bands at top and bottom of elec box look loose and possibly rusting and corroded and may come loose.
Please insp and make repairs this could be a safety issue.”
Pesaturo said the box that the T inspected on March 30 in response to that service request — determining “that there was no hazard” — was not the same box that fell just 32 days later.
Advertisement
After the incident, the MBTA removed all of the boxes from Harvard Station and two other nearby stations, Pesaturo said. The boxes had not been used in 10 years.
To be sure, it’s possible the problems that led to the recent collapses came on quickly, or were not discernable through inspection, but the incidents raise questions about the T’s ability to mitigate risks to passengers. It’s also possible that there is information about decaying infrastructure over passengers’ heads outside of the records requested by the Globe.
Annual reviews of Harvard Station have evolved very little over the last few years, those records show.
An MBTA inspection in June 2019 noted that in some areas the ceiling was missing tiles, and “concrete is damaged throughout,” but also remarked that the ceilings were in “good condition” with “minimal wear” in other areas. Ceiling panels were flagged as having “holes/failing plaster” in some areas. Columns were noted as either having “minor spalling” or being “generally in good condition.”
The following years, the inspection reports marked most things — doors, platforms, signs — as “good,” “satisfactory,” or “fair.”
“Harvard station and busway are in overall good condition with a few minor deficiencies,” said the T’s last annual inspection of the station, which Pesaturo said the agency conducted in May 2022, 10 months before the ceiling panel collapsed and one year before the corroded straps fell on unsuspecting passenger Joycelyn Johnson, who plans to sue the MBTA. The inspection noted that some ceiling tiles were missing, among other issues.
Advertisement
A much more thorough report from outside consulting firm Jacobs Solutions in 2021 echoed the T’s findings. The firm gave the station a rating of three on a scale of one to five, according to a report provided to the Globe.
“In general, a condition rating of 3, adequate, indicates that the Station, while moderately deteriorated or defective and in need of some repair, has not exceeded its useful life,” the report said.
Some parts of the station received ratings worse than three, including the ceilings in a corridor that appears to be off-limits to passengers. The firm noted peeling paint and severe water damage, and gave the corridor ceiling a score of one, or “poor,” meaning “critically damaged or in need of immediate repair; well past useful life.“
Under “immediate action items” to preserve the station’s substructure, the firm cautioned the T: “Consider implementation of an investigation of all structural wall/ceiling conditions to identify limits and level of deterioration of these tunnel elements.”
Pesaturo said the T inspected the station the following year.
After the ceiling panel narrowly missed a passenger when it fell to the platform floor on March 1, the MBTA appears to have hired the same firm, Jacobs Solutions, to take another look at the station ceiling. Service requests created from that audit obtained by the Globe order the T to remove more ceiling panels with “signs of active water leakage” and remove, repair, or replace loose signs spotted in other areas of the station.
Advertisement
The service requests from the Jacobs audit reviewed by the Globe do not mention the rusted straps that would give out just two months later, on May 1, when a box fell.
“My understanding was that inspection was focused on the ceiling tiles,” said Eng. “So that is why perhaps this one component was not looked at in that manner.”
The T has hired Jacobs to perform “hands-on inspections of the overhead structure at Harvard,” which are ongoing and expected to wrap up this summer, according to Pesaturo.
Jacobs did not respond to requests for comment.
Laura Crimaldi of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Taylor Dolven can be reached at taylor.dolven@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @taydolven.