The opening of the Medford branch of the Green Line extension has also been hit by repeated delays. It was scheduled to begin carrying passengers in December, then in May and then this summer. Test trains began operating on the new branch on May 14, the MBTA said. The MBTA did not specify the late November date it expects the service to be available. The Medford branch includes five stations: College Avenue, Ball Square, Magoun Square, Gilman Square and East Somerville. After the July 2021 Green Line collision, the T faced several problems: An escalator malfunctioned at the Back Bay station causing a bloody pileup and injuring nine people, a commuter rail killed a woman in her car after a crossing signal malfunctioned in Wilmington , two more Green Line trains crashed and derailed injuring four people, and a man was swept to his death by a Red Line train at Broadway Station after his hand got caught in a subway door. The death brought intense scrutiny from federal transportation safety regulators, who launched a nearly unprecedented inspection of the subway system in mid-April. The Federal Transit Administration is expected to release its final report on the T this month. In June, the FTA said it found the MBTA didn’t have enough dispatchers to safely operate its subway, so the agency cut service on the Orange, Blue and Red lines by more than 20 percent. Federal inspectors also said the T needed to fix and upgrade large areas of its subway lines. This report used material from previous Globe stories. Laura Crimaldi can be reached at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @lauracrimaldi. Taylor Dolven can be reached at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @taydolven.
