MBTA officials have pushed the target opening date for South Coast Rail back to May 2025, delaying the long-awaited restoration of train service to Fall River, New Bedford and Taunton by another year.
MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng, the agency’s top official, delivered the news personally at a pair of public meetings in Fall River and New Bedford Thursday night, which his staff had rushed to publicize with only a day’s notice.
Eng, who was hired last year, attributed the project’s latest delay to a previous lack of understanding among MBTA officials about how long safety testing takes on a new rail line. Eng parted ways with South Coast Rail’s top project manager, Jennifer Tabakin, earlier this year.
Eng said the project’s new leader, Karen Anton, needed several months to re-evaluate where South Coast Rail stands and publicize a more realistic completion date. In her own remarks, Anton said she’s led several rail projects through the federal safety testing regimen known as the New Starts Process, which she projected South Coast Rail will begin in February 2025.
“And when I checked, I didn’t see that anybody had really spent a lot of time talking to anybody about the New Starts Process,” Anton said, “which is pretty incredible because it’s a pretty important process.”
The news of another delay for South Coast Rail felt like a sore subject for many in attendance Thursday. Ken Fiola, an economic development consultant and business leader in Fall River, said he’s been watching deadlines for the rail project slip since the 1990s.
The MBTA more recently promised to complete South Coast Rail by summer 2023. The agency pushed that deadline back to summer 2024, before walking it back again at Thursday’s meeting by almost an entire year.
“If nothing else, I think the MBTA owes this region — and this city, and the residents of this area — an apology,” Fiola said during a public comment period. “An apology for misleading the entire region with false promises and deadlines.”
“And I understand that may not have occurred under your watch,” Fiola continued, addressing Eng, “but I really have to question the transparency of the process to date and the information that has been disseminated today.”
Eng did not apologize, but promised that “we are going to do everything we can to beat that May date.”
Despite the significant delay, Eng said in an interview that the project remains on budget at about $1 billion.
The train line itself follows a circuitous route to Boston’s South Station that MBTA officials estimate will take about 90 minutes, regardless of whether a passenger boards in Fall River or New Bedford. The line follows a reconstructed freight railroad before linking into the pre-existing Middleboro/Lakeville Commuter Rail branch, which then converges onto a congested trunk line with other Boston-bound trains that will significantly limit the frequency of service to the South Coast.
The challenging logistics of that journey have prevented MBTA officials from offering a definitive answer as to whether South Coast Rail will run on the weekends.
“We believe that we’ll be able to run some service,” Eng said about weekends. “What we need to do is to be able to work through those different logistics, and what we don’t want to do is lead the public astray.”
When South Coast Rail opens, it will restore passenger train service to Fall River, New Bedford and Taunton for the first time since the 1950s, giving people a long-awaited alternative to driving on Massachusetts’ congested highways.
Eng’s team announced for the first time on Thursday how much fares on the new line will cost. A one-way ticket from New Bedford or Fall River to Boston is priced at $12.25. People with lower incomes can apply to qualify for a reduced $6 fare.
