NEW BEDFORD — Steve Stock is looking forward to finishing a project that’s as old as he is.
He’s a project manager for South Coast Rail, which will soon make New Bedford and Fall River part of the MBTA’s commuter rail network — an undertaking that has been in the works since the late 1980s.
“Before I was born, they were talking about this project,” said Stock, 34, who stood on the platform of New Bedford’s unfinished Church Street Station on a recent sunny afternoon.
Behind him, an excavator cleared away dirt to make room for concrete barriers. The platform Stock stood on is complete, and so are the tracks running next to it. Crews will add canopies, paving, and landscaping to the station over the next few weeks.
After decades of delays, trains will start carrying passengers between the South Coast and Boston’s South Station by the end of 2023, transit officials say. It will be the first train service from New Bedford to Boston since 1958.
“When they did the groundbreaking in Freetown [in July 2019], people were like, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen this before,’” Stock said. “But now, it’s for real.”
This is the first major extension of the MBTA’s commuter rail network since the Greenbush Line started serving the South Shore in 2007. Chris Dempsey, a transit advocate who served as the state’s assistant secretary of transportation under Gov. Deval Patrick, can’t think of any other project as long-awaited as this one.
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“This is probably one of the longest-running sagas in Massachusetts transportation in the last century,” he said.
New Bedford will have two stops: Church Street Station, in the North End, and New Bedford Station, near the Whale’s Tooth parking lot off Acushnet Avenue. New stations will also open in Fall River, Freetown, Taunton, and Middleborough.
The stops will have bike shelters and electric vehicle charging stations. A pedestrian bridge will arch 70 feet above Route 18 to connect New Bedford Station with downtown.
“It’s going to be an iconic structure in the city, for sure,” said Jean Fox, director of public engagement for South Coast Rail.
MBTA officials are still deciding on fares and parking rates, but a trip from New Bedford to Boston is likely to cost around $12.75 to $13.25, based on existing routes of a similar length. A monthly pass is likely to cost around $400.
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The agency will run three trains between New Bedford and Boston at peak commuting times in the morning and afternoon, plus some in the middle of the day. Officials haven’t released a specific schedule yet, nor have they announced an exact date that the trains will debut. “Our goal is the end of this year,” said Fox, “and we’re pushing for this goal.”
The new route will bring passengers from New Bedford to Taunton, then head east to Middleborough before continuing on the existing Middleborough/Lakeville line. A trip along the entire route will take about 90 minutes. Another branch of South Coast Rail will connect Fall River and Freetown to points north.
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Crews have laid all 34 miles of new track and are now “de-stressing” the rails. That involves carefully heating the metal so it can withstand extreme temperatures without warping or breaking.
Construction is expected to wrap up in September. Then, crews will spend the fall performing safety checks and running test trains without passengers. That’s a critical process that the MBTA shouldn’t rush, Dempsey said. But, he added, the South Coast has waited a long time for this connection.
“The commonwealth owes it to the South Coast to try to meet an already delayed timeline,” he said.
Many construction projects have faced escalating costs and delays in the past few years because of inflation, but South Coast Rail was able to avoid those obstacles by ordering materials far in advance, Fox said. The project is also lucky to have dodged any major supply chain interruptions, she added.
Another pandemic-era challenge: changes in commuting patterns. A decline in ridership on DATTCO commuter buses between Boston and New Bedford led the busing company to cancel the route in March, raising questions about ridership on South Coast Rail.
Peter Pan Bus Lines took over the route and now runs one bus to Boston at 7 a.m. and another back to New Bedford at 5:30 p.m. each weekday. The company plans to continue operating the route as long as enough customers continue to ride it, said Peter Pan CEO Peter A. Picknelly. About 25 to 30 people board the bus on each trip, he said.
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“Our bus is better than half full, so we’re keeping our heads above water,” he said.
The bus takes 90 minutes to get to South Station, the same amount of time the train will take. It costs $16 each way, more than the MBTA is likely to charge.
But the Peter Pan bus also has an additional stop at Logan Airport, while train riders will have to get off the commuter rail at South Station and take an MBTA Silver Line bus to reach the airport. A “fair amount” of the Peter Pan line’s business has come from airport-bound passengers, Picknelly said.
“It will be really interesting to see how the bus and train compete once the train is up and running,” said Dempsey, the transit advocate.
The MBTA estimated in 2017 that 740 people would board the train in New Bedford each day — already a relatively low number for an expansion like this, Dempsey said. The case for South Coast Rail was more about fairness and parity for southeastern Massachusetts, he added. New Bedford, Taunton, and Fall River are the state’s only major cities within 50 miles of Boston that don’t already have MBTA commuter rail stops.
The agency has not released a post-pandemic estimate, but ridership across the commuter rail network is at 80% of pre-pandemic levels. If South Coast Rail follows that trend, Dempsey thinks it will be difficult to justify the cost of the project.
Meanwhile, the MBTA has remained publicly upbeat about the route’s future ridership.
“While these pre-pandemic ridership estimates may seem optimistic today given telecommuting and other workplace adjustments … commuter trains offer a number of benefits versus cars and buses that make them an attractive alternative,” an MBTA spokesperson said in a statement in March, when DATTCO bus service was canceled. The statement listed advantages like predictable schedules and more stops along the Middleboro/Lakeville route that buses don’t stop at, including Bridgewater State University and the Brockton VA Hospital.
Fox said that commuter rail participation is increasing, even though people may be traveling on different days or at different times than they used to.
The route expected to open later this year is only Phase 1 of the South Coast Rail project. In the 2030s, the MBTA plans to open a more direct electric train route that will travel north from Taunton through Raynham, connecting with the existing Stoughton line.
The electric locomotives, which can accelerate and decelerate faster than diesel ones, would shave 11 minutes off the trip to South Station and would be cheaper to operate. The future route would include two more stops in central Boston: Ruggles and Back Bay, with likely travel times from New Bedford of around 69 and 73 minutes, based on current schedules.
Phase 1 cost the state $1 billion. It’s still too early to accurately estimate the cost for the full build, Fox said, but the MBTA pegged it at more than $3 billion in 2018.
Electrification is an important long-term goal for the MBTA, Dempsey said, but he thinks the agency should wait to see how ridership on Phase 1 goes before having a conversation about electrifying South Coast Rail. In the meantime, he thinks it’s more important for the MBTA to focus on electrifying its existing routes than to build new ones.
Once Phase 1 is finally finished, Fox expects it to have a “transformational” effect on the city, connecting people in New Bedford with economic opportunities elsewhere in the state.
“We absolutely expect to spur economic development, which is something the city wants, needs, and deserves,” she said.
Dempsey agrees, but he thinks the change will take years to happen. He also pointed out that not everyone will be up for the 90-minute train ride as a regular commute.
“That’s why I’m skeptical of some of the claims of this being a dramatic economic transformation,” he said.
Email reporter Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org.
