Fall River/New Bedford Commuter Rail (South Coast Rail)

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Made a quick plot of average daily ridership on Middleborough/SCR year on year from the MBTA ridership data (data through April 30th)

April 2025 shows an average of 3,000 new weekday trips over 2024, while weekends show an average of 1,200 new trips per day.

That would already beat ridership projections for weekdays, although a fair portion of that will have been incentivized by the free parking and free rides early after launch so we'll have to wait a few more months. It's also not possible to see from the data they publish how many new trips are from the new stations vs new trips at existing Middleborough line stations resulting from increased frequency at those stations. Also should note there was at least one weekend maintenance closure in 2024, but there were also a fair number of weekend cancellations in 2025.
 

Public Meeting | Fall River/New Bedford Line (In-Person) | Events | MBTA

Official website of the MBTA -- schedules, maps, and fare information for Greater Boston's public transportation system, including subway, commuter rail, bus routes, and boat lines.
www.mbta.com www.mbta.com
Join us for a public meeting on the Fall River/New Bedford Line on Thursday, May 22, at 5:30 PM in Fall River. MBTA and Keolis leadership will discuss concerns occurring since service began on March 24, including noise, weekend service cancellations, Keolis staffing, and other service challenges.

The meeting will be held at Morton Middle School in Fall River. Attendees can park in the lot off Hood St or use street parking. The school’s rear door is closest to the auditorium.
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Rumbling train noise at Fall River MBTA station is keeping neighbors awake all night​

Directly across the street from his house is the Weaver’s Cove Layover station, the MBTA facility where commuter rail trains are serviced and stored overnight. When he first moved in, the site was under construction, cleared land that offered a view of the Taunton River and sunsets. Now, every night and early morning, he and his family are woken up by the sight, the sound and the feeling of commuter trains idling.

He’s not alone. Since the MBTA began service on South Coast Rail in late March, the layover station’s neighbors have complained of disturbed sleep due to noise and constant vibrations coming from the site.

The MBTA and Keolis, the private company contracted to run the commuter rail system, have been made aware of the complaints and are scheduling a public meeting May 22 to address them. In the meantime, trains are still operating and people are still trying, not always successfully, to get some rest.
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I hate these NIMBY’s along SCR. You moved in when it was under construction? You had to have known there would be noise. You don’t see people in Haverhill, Worcester, or Franklin (just to name a few) complaining (most of the time), and they have had commuter rail service for decades. I hope these are just growing pains, though.
 
The Weaver's Cove NIMBY's are battle-tested, as the current layover site is adjacent to what was once the proposed site of a liquid natural gas ship unloading terminal. The LNG proposal thrashed around for most of the 2000's, before being formally abandoned in the face of unrelenting opposition in 2011. When the land went for sale, the area residents whipped the city to try to buy it and build pie-in-the-sky stuff like a concert ampitheatre, a convention center, athletic fields, and lab space. Obviously nobody was interested in building high-end real estate in that remote an industrial corner of the city, so the MBTA came in as first tenant of that whole moonscape (most of which is still vacant to this day).

As for the NIMBY's...well, their vitriol at the LNG terminal may have had some reasonable justification. But once you've learned to use a hammer effectively, everything else starts looking like a nail.
 
"When he first moved in, the site was under construction, cleared land that offered a view of the Taunton River and sunsets."

Complaining about land use that you knew was coming "site was under construction" is the height of NIMBY entitlement. The cleared site offered views -- that the NIMBY property buyer did no own and were not guaranteed.
 
bigeman312 said:
When things are done poorly, like South Coast Rail Phase 1, it hurts the public perception of investing in rail (understandably) and makes it less likely that we get proper infrastructure, like South Coast Rail Phase 2.
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Such an important point 💯
 
I'd bet money that while he knew about the layover yard, he didn't know that the locomotives were going to idle all night. Which is not at all unreasonable. (Why do they do that anyway? It just seems stupid and wasteful.)
 
ceo said:
I'd bet money that while he knew about the layover yard, he didn't know that the locomotives were going to idle all night. Which is not at all unreasonable. (Why do they do that anyway? It just seems stupid and wasteful.)
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Diesels idling are horrible for everybody. Electrification would solve most of the problem and many other problems, too.
 
ceo said:
I'd bet money that while he knew about the layover yard, he didn't know that the locomotives were going to idle all night. Which is not at all unreasonable. (Why do they do that anyway? It just seems stupid and wasteful.)
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MBTA diesels do this in virtually every yard (and get complaints at all of them - Readville, Rockport, Newburyport...). It is done to keep the fluids warm for faster startup in the morning, and to allow daily system and safety tests. Also, if there is no off-board power, to recharge batteries.
 
They could invest in some block heaters and bigger power drops (which they'd need for the heaters anyway).
 
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ceo said:
They could invest in some block heaters and bigger power drops (which they'd need for the heaters anyway).
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I suspect the power drops are the issue, and may be non-trivial to accomplish. (Running new high voltage lines anyplace they currently do not go in MA is an approvals nightmare.) Access to more power in the yards may also be driving the BEMU fantasy plan for the Newburyport and Rockport lines, for example.
 
JeffDowntown said:
MBTA diesels do this in virtually every yard (and get complaints at all of them - Readville, Rockport, Newburyport...). It is done to keep the fluids warm for faster startup in the morning, and to allow daily system and safety tests. Also, if there is no off-board power, to recharge batteries.
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The ground power at the layovers includes a separate cable feed for fast-starting the locomotive in the morning. That's why T locomotives always face away from Boston; the plug-ins for that are all at the ends of the layover yards facing furthest away from Boston (it's not, per popular legend, a restriction on diesel emissions in the North and South Station headhouses...there's no restriction on diesel locos facing the Boston direction, and indeed the Lake Shore Ltd. runs loco-forward on every inbound trip).

So there shouldn't be any engine idling at the layover yards with both the HEP hookups for the coaches and the fast-start hookups for the locomotives being standard components of the ground power. That's sort of the whole point of those yards: storage without constant idling.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The ground power at the layovers includes a separate cable feed for fast-starting the locomotive in the morning. That's why T locomotives always face away from Boston; the plug-ins for that are all at the ends of the layover yards facing furthest away from Boston (it's not, per popular legend, a restriction on diesel emissions in the North and South Station headhouses...there's no restriction on diesel locos facing the Boston direction, and indeed the Lake Shore Ltd. runs loco-forward on every inbound trip).

So there shouldn't be any engine idling at the layover yards with both the HEP hookups for the coaches and the fast-start hookups for the locomotives being standard components of the ground power. That's sort of the whole point of those yards: storage without constant idling.
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Shouldn't doesn't mean they don't. Lots of local complaints about excessive (hours) of idling at Newburyport, Rockport and Readville.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Shouldn't doesn't mean they don't. Lots of local complaints about excessive (hours) of idling at Newburyport, Rockport and Readville.
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Exactly. They shouldn't be idling at all except for maybe 1/2 hour before a set goes into service to start the engine.

Rockport layover has a weak power draw, so they sometimes don't get to plug in all sets when the yard is full of long sets. The T tried to wad up a power upgrade with some other improvements to the station and layover, but rabid Rockport NIMBY's turfed that. Oh well...get used to the noise, guys, you had your choice. Bradford layover, another one that gets a lot of complaints, is late-1980's vintage and has intermittent power problems since components are past their replacement age. That's why the T is trying like hell to get out of there for new digs near the state line. Not sure why Readville and Newburyport would be having problems, though. Both layovers are 1998-construction with components up to state-of-repair. I don't think the T is following procedure all that rigidly.
 
HelloBostonHi said:
View attachment 63000
Made a quick plot of average daily ridership on Middleborough/SCR year on year from the MBTA ridership data (data through April 30th)

April 2025 shows an average of 3,000 new weekday trips over 2024, while weekends show an average of 1,200 new trips per day.

That would already beat ridership projections for weekdays, although a fair portion of that will have been incentivized by the free parking and free rides early after launch so we'll have to wait a few more months. It's also not possible to see from the data they publish how many new trips are from the new stations vs new trips at existing Middleborough line stations resulting from increased frequency at those stations. Also should note there was at least one weekend maintenance closure in 2024, but there were also a fair number of weekend cancellations in 2025.
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does the 3k bump equal what they original forecasts were though? the net bump is one thing but i don't think CR middleboro was back to 100% ridership yet.
 
bigeman312 said:
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) began planning the restoration of South Coast service in the 1980s. Feasibility studies were released in 1990 and 1995.

This person opted not to do an ounce of research before purchasing their home and wants to blame the realtor for their ignorance. You need to verify important information rather than blindly believing (easily disprovable) lies.
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They’re an idiot. I live on a commuter rail line that runs more frequently than this. When it happens, it’s loud, but you get used to it.
 
I rode all of SCR except the Freetown-Fall River segment today. Of the seven trains I rode, every single one was >5 minutes late. The line is so fragile with the amount of single track - any delay is pretty much guaranteed to cascade. The 3:25 inbound from New Bedford that I was on waited near East Taunton, Bridgewater, Braintree, and JFK.

The (temporary) single-track pinch under Route 24 just south of East Taunton station is perhaps the worst of it. There are typically supposed to be 4 train movements through it in 10-15 minutes, and that just doesn't work. Once the bridge project wraps up, hopefully that will help. The latter three delays on my train could probably have been avoided.

Still, there are other places that badly need a second track - particularly just north of Middleborough, and north of East Taunton. (There is double track at East Taunton, but no crossover north of the station, so through trains can't pass while a shuttle train is at the station. There's also a chunk of slow trackage through the yard north of Middleborough.

Unfortunately, I also lost my camera - I suspect it was pocketed by another passenger when I left it behind when changing seats.
 
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