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BELMONT, Mass. — A woman and her two children, ages 7 and 10, narrowly escaped serious injury when a train smashed into their minivan after a GPS device led the driver onto MBTA train tracks Tuesday night. The woman was driving southbound on Brighton Street shortly before 9 p.m. when the GPS device directed her to make a right turn which placed her vehicle directly onto railroad tracks. Apparently the woman was unable to drive off the tracks, forcing her to flee the vehicle with her children. Shortly thereafter, an MBTA Fitchburg bound commuter rail train carrying 70 passengers slammed...

A former T bus supervisor drove T vehicles for five years with a suspended driver’s license — a clear violation of the authority’s rules — the Herald has learned. Kevin Graney, 60, was allowed to retire in March from his $86,000-a-year job, one month after the MBTA suspended the 20-year veteran because he lacked a valid driver’s license, the T said. Former co-workers told the
Herald that among Graney’s job 
responsibilities was disciplining and term­inating bus drivers when they lost their licenses for more than 100 days.

BOSTON — A 44-year-old woman has become the latest person to walk off the platform of an MBTA station. The incident happened at Andrew Station on the Red line. According to T officials, the woman did not make contact with the third rail when she landed in the pit. There was no train in the area.

MBTA Transit Police have arrested a man and two women for allegedly beating and kicking a mentally disabled man on the Downtown Crossing Station Orange Line platform early Monday, officials said Tuesday. Authorities said Carlito Rezende, of Dorchester, a 40-year-old man with schizoaffective disorder who has a restricted ability to communicate with people, injected himself into a conversation he overheard, telling a group of people not to use the word “hate.”

A 29-year veteran transit cop is facing disciplinary action for dozing on the job while posted at a substation serving the Mattapan high speed line and Blue Hill Avenue buses, according to MBTA police. Transit Police staff discovered a picture of the sleeping officer posted on Twitter last night around 9:40 p.m. and immediately dispatched a supervisor to the station located on River Street in Mattapan, said Deputy Transit Police Chief Joseph O’Connor. “When the supervisor got there minutes later he found the officer alert and attending to his duties,” O’Connor said. “The officer, who regularly staffed the front desk...

For nearly a decade, traffic has been zipping through Boston’s Big Dig tunnels, the nation’s costliest highway project that has also left a gaping financial hole in the state’s transportation budget that isn’t likely to be filled anytime soon. "Big Dig debt" has lately become one of the most frequently used—if not fully understood—terms in Massachusetts government. It was at the forefront of a tumultuous public debate over the MBTA’s finances that ultimately produced an average 23 percent fare hike and modest service cuts, but no permanent solutions for the chronically underfunded transit system. Next year, it could spark a...

Squatting on steps to protest MBTA vote Occupy Boston is back — but without the tents this time — in a threatened 10-day sit-in on the State House steps to protest looming MBTA fare hikes. An offshoot of the group that camped in Dewey Square for 71 days last year until cops broomed them said there will be no canvas this time, just people squatting out in the weather, in the shadow of the Golden Dome. But the cold granite steps already have a name: “Camp Charlie.” “It’s really a 10-day -occupation,” Occupy Boston spokesperson Gunner Smith said about the...

BOSTON — As Transportation Secretary Richard Davey sees it, commuters faced with sharp increases in the cost of rail, bus and subway rides, as well as the elimination of bus routes, ferry service, weekend commuter rail and weekend E Line subway access, have settled on a theme. “The chorus I’m hearing is, 'I would rather pay more but not cut the service,’” Davey said Thursday at the State House. That message was echoed by lawmakers who said their constituents and colleagues had largely indicated that riders would rather be slapped with the first fare hike in five years than with...

The MBTA dispatcher who added some unauthorized holiday cheer to Park Street Station by programming the message boards to display the lyrics to “Deck the Halls” will likely receive the T’s most modest form of discipline when he returns to work this afternoon. “While I appreciate what they were trying to do, we’ll just remind the employee that in the future we’ll expect that he’ll resist the temptation to use the signs in that way,” state Secretary of Transportation Richard A. Davey said in an interview this morning. The unnamed employee has become a hero on Twitter since the Globe...

It looked like the gentlest MIT prank of all time: The lyrics to “Deck the Halls,” dancing across the digital message board at Park Street Station, to the delight of Red Line riders on Christmas night. It was not an outside hack, though, but an inside job. An MBTA dispatcher working the holiday shift injected a bit of unauthorized whimsy into the normally staid LED signs at Park Street. He programmed them to scroll the lyrics to the carol four times in five minutes Sunday night, before, mirage-like, they resumed their ordinary display of date, time, and the T logo....

The cash-strapped MBTA is in such dire financial straits it can’t pay $350,000 in legal bills, leaving about two dozen people waiting at the station for their payments. “After exhausting the Law Department’s budget for payments related to injury and damage claims, an outstanding balance of approximately $350,000 remains,” T spokesman Joe Pesaturo told the Herald. Pesaturo said about two dozen people are owed money for personal injury claims. The T finds itself in this budget mess because the agency is self-insured up to $7 million — leaving them to pick up the tab for small settlements. John Flaherty of...

Sacked MBTA punks back on the job (includes drug use, child rape, assault, and assault vs co-workers) "The MBTA has been forced to rehire seven drivers and other key employees after they were fired for offenses ranging from dozing at the wheel due to drug use, child rape, and assaulting and making bizarre threats of violence against co-workers - after bureaucratic arbitrators overturned their dismissals on technicalities. News of arbitrators’ leniency toward public servants entrusted with passenger safety has alarmed T crash victims, rider advocates and the pols who oversee the region’s sprawling transit system. ... Papapietro said he doesn’t...

An Iraq war vet who moonlighted as an interstate serial graffiti vandal was sentenced to six months in jail yesterday for painting nine T trains with massive murals on a three-day tagging spree in May. T police said Chicago-native Jose Alvarez, 25, is a member of the international graffiti crew MUL — or Made U Look. He pleaded guilty to nine counts of vandalizing MBTA property for spray-painting his tag “WOES” on four Red Line trains at the Codman storage yard in Dorchester and five Orange Line trains at Forest Hills on May 5-7. The guerrilla art project cost the...

WARWICK — Even before the first train rolls into the nearly completed station that will link T.F. Green Airport to Boston commuter rail service, the state Department of Transportation is adding route options to the opening schedule. According to department officials, morning routes from Providence to Warwick and evening return routes from Warwick to Providence have been added to the schedule that is expected to operate when the new train station opens in October. Until now the tentative schedule for the first runs had only included morning trains heading north from Warwick to Providence and Boston, and evening trains that...

SNIPPET: "A team of researchers convened by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began a series of tests today at 20 MBTA stations to determine how airborne contaminants would spread in a terrorist attack on Boston's subway system." SNIPPET: "The findings will help guide the design of future detection systems and help strengthen evacuation, ventilation, and other emergency response plans on mass transit across the country. "We hope to use the data from the two to come up with a model to predict the behavior (of chemicals) in other subway systems," Lustig said."

The stumbling T rider who was almost crushed to death by an Orange Line trolley after a Celtics game said today she feels lucky so many people came to her rescue. The 26-year-old woman admits she drank four 22-ounce beers before trying to catch a train home, but added she does not have a drinking problem, she told thebostonchannel.com today. “I am incredibly thankful that there are that many people who would do something,” Sophia Hartdegen was quoted as saying. “I am incredibly thankful the driver was alert.” The Cambridge woman told the site she’s “traumatized by her near death...

Two T “lifesavers” were hailed as heroes today for pulling a drunken woman off the tracks as horrified Celtics [team stats] fans looked on as an Orange Line trolley came down the line. Orange Line operator Charice Lewis, 27, of Mattapan and Jacqueline Osorio, 29, of Dorchester were lauded by transportation secretary Jeffrey B. Mullan for their “swift, decisive action” in helping a drunken 26-year-old woman from Cambridge escape certain death around 10:24 p.m. Friday after Celtics spectators filled North Station in droves. “Had either one of these ladies hesitated for one second in carrying out their duties, this incident...

... In a video released today by the MBTA, Brown's Chevy Malibu can be seen crossing the median line before slamming head-on into an MBTA bus in Holbrook. ... Approximately 350 buses of the MBTA fleet of 1,100 are equipped with eight cameras each, providing views inside the bus, in front, and on either side. ... Sprague said the footage showed the bus driver was not at fault, and that Brown probably fell asleep. He said that Brown appears to be slumped down before impact. She was cited with failure to stay within marked lanes. Brown could not be reached...

Any T (Boston: Mass Bay Transit Authority) driver caught using a cell phone on duty will be fired on the spot, MBTA officials announced this morning unveiling what could be the toughest such policy in the country. “We believe this is the strongest policy of its kind for any major transportation agency in the nation and I think it will help make us one of the safest,” said MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas this morning. Any subway or bus driver caught using a cell phone on the job will be fired and any driver caught even in possession of a...

How come when Aiden Quinn brags on a Web site about being “FTM” - female to male - that’s celebrating diversity? But if you bring up his sex change it’s hate speech. Even if you mention Quinn’s gender-bending in the context of his apparently criminal behavior, it’s still a verboten topic. Why do you, the taxpayer, have any right to know about the person born Georgia Quinn, whose moronic behavior Friday night allegedly caused a $10 million accident that injured 50 Green Line riders and exposed the cash-strapped MBTA to millions in lawsuits? So what if Quinn had three speeding...