Long-awaited South Coast rail begins service Monday
Photo I Courtesy of Michael P. Norton/SHNS
New Bedford's commuter rail station pictured on Jan. 23, about two months before the stop on the South Coast Rail expansion opens to riders.
Gov. Maura Healey plans to board a train in Fall River Monday morning, marking a seemingly improbable dream ride for southeastern Massachusetts residents who had expected commuter rail service to be restored to the area decades ago.
Alongside MBTA General Manager Phil Eng, Healey plans to travel to the rail station in East Taunton, where she will catch up with Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt, who are journeying inbound from New Bedford. It's the last leg in the long quest for South Coast Rail, which former Gov. Bill Weld had once promised would begin service in 1997.
The region has lacked rail service for the past 65 years, and the new line joins a string of others into Boston.
Sen. Mark Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat and former president of the Fall River Chamber of Commerce, has served in the Legislature since the 1990s. As Montigny reflected on the "political capital spent" over the years on commuter rail, he told the News Service Friday that "it's the strangest emotional feeling" to prepare for opening day.
In 1994, a year after he joined the Senate, he secured nearly $3.5 million in a bond bill for a study exploring the environmental impact of extending commuter rail service to New Bedford and Fall River, plus $1 million for a feasibility study to bring commuter rail to New Bedford via Taunton, his office said.
Montigny, now the Senate dean, counts a litany of other legislative victories tied to South Coast Rail. For example, there was the law directing the MBTA in 1997 to start the design and permitting process for tracks stretching from New Bedford and Fall River to Myricks Junction in Berkeley; the 2000 law instructing the MBTA to use the Stoughton commuter rail route to extend service to New Bedford and Fall River, buoyed by $225 million in bonding capacity for the southern part of the route; and the 2008 law where he secured an additional $30 million in bonding capacity. And $2.3 billion in South Coast Rail improvements, championed by Montigny and the regional delegation, made it into the 2014 transportation bond law, his office said.
Within days of taking office, former Gov. Mitt Romney told Montigny that he did not support South Coast Rail, the senator said. By around 2010, Montigny said he had hit a period of "complete pessimism" as the project dragged on under multiple governors.
"I started to become pessimistic to the point where, if you called me around then, I would have said, I don't have faith, as my mother would say, that it's coming in our lifetime," Montigny said.
He said he became "cautiously optimistic" under former Gov. Charlie Baker, whose administration agreed to a two-phase approach for South Coast Rail in 2017.
"Remember, he was secretary of A&F, so I worked with him on some of the original stuff," Montigny, a former Ways and Means Committee chair, said of Baker's tenure under Weld and former Gov. Paul Cellucci. "So he thought it was kind of funny, here I am somehow still here…How did this take my entire adult life?"
South Coast Rail's bumpy journey, featuring several groundbreaking ceremonies but no actual rail service until now, has come with ballooning costs. The MBTA has also had to delay the project due to a lack of funds.
In 2002, when the MBTA was projecting a 2007 opening date, total costs were estimated at $600 million, according to The Herald News. The price neared $1 billion in 2005, before climbing beyond $2 billion in 2014.
Amid all the setbacks and false starts over the years, Montigny has aired his frustrations to governors and transportation chiefs. In a letter to Weld in 1993, Montigny said, "I am writing to register my distress at the MBTA's failure to make a priority of the Commuter Rail Extension to the New Bedford Area."
"Governor, I am sure you remember the Fall River Chamber of Commerce luncheon in 1990, when we discussed this issue in depth. We were seated at the head table when you expressed your support of an extension to Southeastern Massachusetts to me personally, and repeated it to universal applause," Montigny wrote as he lamented the lack of progress since a feasibility study in 1990.
Weld had famously challenged Montigny to sue him if commuter rail was not in place by 1997.
"While we appreciate the need to control state budgets, the commuter rail extension project is too fundamental to our recovery as an economically viable region to be omitted like any other MBTA project," Montigny continued in the letter, which his office shared with the News Service. "Southeastern Massachusetts is depending on this more, perhaps, than any other prospect."
Montigny joked Friday that cannot hold Weld to a lawsuit, though he learned over time to stop giving his constituents "false hope."
"I'm not saying it was easy for Baker, but really it only needed a governor to say, 'We're doing this,'" Montigny said. "And Baker absolutely initiated it, and Gov. Healey picked it up."
He added he would "give equal thanks" to Baker and Healey.
Monday marks the launch of the $1.1 billion first phase of South Coast Rail, with six new train stations opening along the Fall River/New Bedford Line. Rides are free through the end of March, and there will be fare-free service on weekends through April, Healey's office said.
The project extends service on the Middleborough/Lakeville Line to Taunton, New Bedford, and Fall River. The line will be renamed the Fall River/New Bedford Line when service begins, according to the T.
East Taunton is the first stop to the south after Middleborough/Lakeville before the extension splits, with stops in Freetown and Fall River Depot on one fork and Church Street and New Bedford on the other, according to the T.
On weekdays, trains will run every 70 minute, with 32 direct trips to or from South Station including 15 trips between South Station and Fall River and 17 trips between South Station and New Bedford. On weekends, there will be 26 total trips with trains running every two hours.
Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues, a Westport Democrat, mentioned the arrival of South Coast Rail during a business forum last month, and tied it to the state's housing crunch.
"My neck of the world on the South Coast, after 40 years, South Coast Rail is finally a reality, you know, in a couple weeks," Rodrigues said on Feb. 27. "But again that's going to drive up the cost of housing in what was once, probably still is, the most affordable part of the state."
After a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new train station in Freetown in December 2022, Rodrigues called the milestone "almost surreal," as he lauded the Baker administration's progress on the commuter rail expansion.
"While there have been six governors that have promised me and promised us that we'd have commuter rail to Fall River and New Bedford, it was Gov. Baker and Lt. Gov. [Karyn] Polito that actually delivered on those promises," Rodrigues said at the time.
But it will be Healey at the celebratory press conference in East Taunton on Monday morning. Montigny said he will be catching the train in New Bedford with Driscoll and Tibbits-Nutt.
"The MBTA is proud to launch South Coast Rail service; a truly monumental moment for these communities that we will now serve directly and for so many that have long advocated for this service," Eng said in a statement Thursday. "Whether you're traveling from Fall River or New Bedford to downtown Boston or heading toward southeastern Mass. to enjoy their many community offerings, we welcome new and even more passengers to experience the benefits of this new transit expansion. Leave the driving to us, Take the T!"
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