It was a little more than a decade ago that trains began rumbling through Janet P. Murray’s backyard in Weymouth.
Murray opposed the train and fought for years to stop a state project to restore the Greenbush commuter rail line, going door-to-door to stuff flyers into mailboxes, pushing her 2-year-old in a carriage. Only when it became clear that Greenbush restoration was unstoppable did Murray begrudgingly switch sides and worked with town officials to fight for concessions from the MBTA.
Ten years later, part of Murray still wishes the Greenbush line had never been built, she said. And while she will never become completely used to it, she has learned to live with the sound of trains streaking by her house 12 times a day. “It’s not as much of an intrusion as it was when it first came through,” she said.
A decade after rail service returned to the coastal communities of the South Shore, the Greenbush line has not lived up to early promises on ridership and highway traffic relief. But even critics begrudgingly admit Greenbush made the South Shore a better place, whether or not the $513 million price tag was worth it. Hundreds of new residents have settled here, attracted by the quick commute to work, and a whole generation of children have come into adolescence expecting to take the train to Boston
“It’s just part of the landscape of the community at this point,” said Paul Healey, a Hingham selectman and longtime supporter of the project.
The long history and contentious battle behind the Greenbush line – a 17.7-mile branch from Braintree to Scituate – is likely lost on many of the roughly 2,500 commuters who ride the train to work each morning.
Originally known as the South Shore Rail Road, the line started in the 1840s as a branch of the Old Colony Rail Road and ran for more than a century before succumbing, as many train lines in the U.S. did, to the American love affair with the automobile. It closed in 1959, the same year the Southeast Expressway opened between Braintree and Boston, leaving the South Shore without any rail service.
By the 1970s, however, officials had already begun talking about the possibility of rebuilding the three neglected branches of the Old Colony Rail Road as commuter lines. In the late 1980s, Gov. Michael Dukakis, an enthusiastic advocate for mass transit, sought a $195 million bond bill aimed at securing matching federal grants for Old Colony rail restoration.
But opposition from neighborhood groups and lawmakers dogged talks of rail restoration from the beginning. Flags with crossed-out locomotives appeared outside Scituate homes and opponents packed town hall meetings to warn of deafening train engines, dangerous street crossings and plummeting home values in formerly idyllic neighborhoods. At one meeting in Weymouth in 1987, then state Rep. Robert Cerasoli warned selectmen of “tremendous train traffic,” on par with Grand Central Station. Three years later, future Gov. Bill Weld would campaign against Dukakis in part on his opposition to Greenbush, saying he would block it unless towns along the line decided they wanted it. In the end, most did.
In a series of referendums, the idea of rebuilding the Greenbush line won the support of voters in every town from Braintree to Scituate – with the exception of Hingham, where plans at the time called for the train to slice through the town’s historic downtown. Hingham officials sued the MBTA in 1996, accusing the agency of separating the Greenbush project from the rest of the federally funded Old Colony project in order to circumvent federal environmental and historic preservation rules.
“A lot of it was driven by politics instead of sound transportation planning at the time,” said Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund, who opposed the project for years while serving as a state senator.
Hingham didn’t drop its opposition until 2000, when the T agreed to build a tunnel under historic Hingham Square and pay the town $1.35 million for historic preservation projects on along the tracks. Other towns began working out mitigation agreements with the T as well, securing millions of dollars for road improvements, environmental remediation and other projects. Federal and state agencies began signing off on the project as the price tag swelled to around $513 million.
Construction began in late 2013.
Unrealized ridership
But even as bulldozers cleared rail beds and crews relocated gas lines, opponents of the project continued to question the projections touted by state officials, who said Greenbush would ease traffic congestion on the Southeast Expressway by drawing more than 4,200 roundtrip riders a day. Critics, on the other hand, feared that Greenbush would be used mostly by workers who had previously commuted on the Hingham and Quincy ferries rather than drivers accustomed to taking their cars into work.
“Greenbush was very expensive and went through some environmentally and historically sensitive areas, and we had invested in boats and there was a lot more capacity there,” said Martha Bewick, who helped bring ferry service to Hingham in the 1970s and later fought to stop Greenbush.
In the end, those fears were born out in studies of Greenbush ridership. In 2010, a study by the Central Transportation Planning Staff for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority found that the number of people riding the ferry dropped 25 percent after Greenbush opened, and that ridership on the Kingston/Plymouth line and express buses had fallen as well. The study found the rail lines had at most a “minor” effect on highway traffic, if any at all.
Seven years later, it’s hard to tell whether the Greenbush Line has lived up to its billing because the MBTA no longer releases timely ridership numbers. According to the most recent available data, from 2014, an average of 2,970 people ride the Greenbush line into Boston each day, making it the least-used MBTA commuter line with the exception of a little-used line inside the Boston city limits.
“It hasn’t had the ridership growth that everyone thought it would, but it seems to me that more and more people are going to be moving toward regional commuter rail for transportation,” said Paul Regan, executive director of the independent MBTA Advisory Board, which represents communities served by the T. “Driving isn’t going to get any easier or faster.”
Addressing future needs
Even with low average ridership, regular Greenbush commuters say rush hour trains are still regularly packed, forcing riders who pay as much as $10 for a one-way ticket to stand or sit on the floor. Crowding on the train has gotten worse this month with the temporary suspension of ferry service in Hingham and closure of Wollaston station in Quincy.
“There’s still that ongoing long-term problem of what’s going to happen when the train is at capacity, and it’s extremely close to that point right now,” said State Sen. Patrick O’Connor, a Weymouth Republican who has pushed Keolis, the private company that operates the commuter line, to run more double-decker coaches on the Greenbush line.
O’Connor and others also expect ridership on the Greenbush line to grow in the coming years as developers continue building so-called “transit-oriented” apartment and condominium buildings near its stations, particularly in Weymouth Landing, where four such projects are under way. The MBTA has also sold part of its parking lot in Scituate’s Greenbush neighborhood to a developer who plans to build 72 housing units and 18,000 square feet of retail and commercial space.
Joe Pesaturo, an MBTA spokesman, said the agency is working on an 18-month review of all commuter rail lines, including Greenbush, to identify ways it can increase ridership and better meet transportation needs. The review is due to be completed by late 2019 before the T begins looking at new contracts for commuter rail operations. Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack has said the state does not plan to renew its contract with the current operator, Keolis, when it expires in 2022.
But Paul Regan at the MBTA Advisory Board said any effort to increase service on the Greenbush line would be hampered by problems elsewhere in the commuter rail system, particularly at South Station, the end of the line for all Old Colony trains. Officials have acknowledged that South Station is at capacity and have started planning for its expansion.
“The logistics of getting a train in and out of South Station are very difficult,” Regan said. “There’s only so many places you can pull in.”
On a recent weekday afternoon, a mostly empty Greenbush train sat the platform waiting to make its hour-long trip into Boston when David Snyder stepped aboard to take his seat. Snyder, 20, recently moved in with his uncle in Scituate and takes the train several times a week to get to classes at Emerson College in Boston.
For him, the Greenbush line isn’t just a convenience.
“I wouldn’t be able to go to Emerson at all if it weren’t for the train,” he said. “I couldn’t afford it.”
1845 – Steam locomotives fueled by coal begin rolling on the Old Colony Railroad from Plymouth to Boston.
1959 – New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad closes its Old Colony lines – including what is now Greenbush – saying the trains lost too much money. Construction of the Southeast Expressway is completed the same year, improving driving times between Boston and the South Shore.
1971 – The MBTA's Red Line is extended into Quincy, subduing talk of reviving Old Colony train service.
1984 – Legislators, with the blessing of Gov. Michael Dukakis, direct the MBTA to study the feasibility of rebuilding an Old Colony line.
1985 – Every town from Braintree to Scituate backs the restoration of the line, including 86 percent of Scituate voters.
1991 – Gov. William Weld endorses the rail line, but vows not to push it unless towns want it. Weymouth, Braintree, Cohasset, Scituate, Marshfield vote yes in referenda on the plan, with only Hingham – with 56 percent opposition – voting no. The Greenbush line is separated from other Old Colony branches, now known as the Plymouth/Kingston and Middleborough/Lakeville lines.
1995 – Transportation Secretary James Kerasiotis says there will be no tunnel through Hingham Square. Scituate town meeting voters oppose the line 1,163-798, while a Cohasset referendum passes by 3 votes. In November, Gov. Weld tells South Shore Chamber of Commerce that Greenbush is a go.
1996 – Hingham sues the MBTA, alleging that the agency separated the proposed Greenbush restoration from the rest of the federally-funded Old Colony restoration to evade federal environmental rules and historic preservation codes.
1997 – Gov. Paul Cellucci reaffirms Weld’s pledge that the rail will be built.
1999 – Federal judge rules against Hingham, saying the T is within its rights in separating the Greenbush line from the rest of the Old Colony project.
2000 – The MBTA agrees to build a train tunnel under downtown Hingham and pay the town $1.35 million if it drops its lawsuit. In September, 700 attend an anti-Greenbush rally in Scituate.
2001 – Cohasset, Braintree and Weymouth sign mitigation deals with the T.
2002 – Scituate joins neighboring town with its own mitigation pact worth $10.4 million.
2003 – Gov. Romney and the MBTA order a six-month halt in Greenbush work in order to get permits, resolve legal issues and comprehensively review transportation projects. In September, Braintree and Weymouth sign a mitigation addendum related to the Weymouth Landing area.
2005 – The Army Corps signs off on project, removing the last major permitting hurdle.
2007 – Federal authorities and towns agree to make the Greenbush “whistle-free” – though they allow a one-day exception for the passenger trains’ first day of operation, Halloween.
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