MBTA Kicks Off $25M 'Station Brightening' Campaign

BOSTON (CBS) -- It's spring cleaning, MBTA style. They're sprucing up some of the stations, getting ready for the new season. And some riders say that can't come too soon.

Monday was day one of the cleanup effort the T is calling "station brightening." It's a fresh coat of paint on the dreary and badly stained walls of the Hynes Convention Center station, and they're pruning branches at the S. Weymouth Commuter Rail station so they don't hang down over the passenger platform.

"We are kicking off a station brightening campaign," says MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak. He says riders will notice. "Our customers can expect cleaner, brighter, fresher stations," he says.

It's all part of a $25-million effort. "It's a substantial sum of money. We're really emphasizing some of the larger stations, Downtown Crossing, Dudley, JFK UMass, that a lot of our customer use," Poftak says.

Those customers are ready for cleaner stations. "I think they need to wash the floors, take some graffiti off the walls," says one rider. "They can be smelly, especially if you're near the elevator," says another.

Just a casual look shows how dingy some stations are. Smudged walls, banged up signs and cloudy plastic substituting for windows. "Park St., North Station, I've never had a good experience. It's never clean. There's always something weird smelling and everything is a little off," says another rider.

But the head of the T says, give them a chance. "We're going to be doing power washing to get those stations nice and clean, we're going to be doing some painting. We're also going to be doing some retiling so some of those surfaces will be cleaner, will be nicer," Poftak says.

The "station brightening" work is scheduled to last about 6 months.