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

as02155 said:
I also think that you're not engaging with the actual argument against the South Coast Rail: it's not worth the benefit - i.e. $1.05 billion for just 2,000 daily riders is pretty costly. And very little in the way of other benefit.
Click to expand...
Well how about the improved freight service now available, and the cars off the highways? When Amtrak's new trainsets become available, I would not be surprised if service between the NE Corridor and New Bedford or Fall River is considered.
 
BostonBoy said:
Well how about the improved freight service now available, and the cars off the highways? When Amtrak's new trainsets become available, I would not be surprised if service between the NE Corridor and New Bedford or Fall River is considered.
Click to expand...
I would be. There's not additional room through Quincy for that and even if there was I doubt doubling an existing rail service is the best use case when those trainsets could go towards expanding services like the Keystone, Pennsylvanian, Piedmont, Wolverine, or Borealis.
 
There is not a chance in hell that Amtrak is going to divert regular Northeast Regional service away from Boston at Attleboro to a tertiary market with all the ridership that ends up losing at 128+Back Bay+South Station on the NEC trunk. Hell, even when the Cape Codder was running its piddly weekender schedule during lighter summer ridership when they had the spare cars they couldn't stop messing with its service patterns year after year...to the train's eventual demise...because they found the notion of diverting anything away from the Boston revenue jackpot so repellent. It's one thing if MassDOT willingly wants to spend PRIIA money to start up a new intercity train from Point A to Point B; it's quite another to convince Amtrak to divert a self-dispatched NEC slot away from their profit center.
 
And that's Cape Cod, a longstanding vacation area that merited multiple daily seasonal trains from NYC until 1959. The only direct service I'm aware of from NYC to Newport/Fall River/New Bedford was the once-a-week Harpooner, operated summers from approximately 1929 to 1932, which ran as a section of Cape Cod trains.
 
BostonBoy said:
service
Click to expand...
Who would run this? surely not Amtrak. CCRTA isn't ponying up for it. SRTA??? I know that crayoning is fun - I enjoy it regularly - because it leads to thinking outside the box. However, crayoning and reality are often two very different things - a sober and critical analysis is necessary in our neoliberal world order.
 
The only feasible method of service I can imagine is MBTA running push-pull diesels between Attleboro and the two cities, timed to match scheduled Amtraks or Providence-Stoughton trains. But I have no idea if the Attleboro station has the room, or if the schedules are flexible enough to have a gap for a train to move in and out, or if this service is worth the operating costs of diesel, equipment, and labor.
 
jlichyen said:
The only feasible method of service I can imagine is MBTA running push-pull diesels between Attleboro and the two cities, timed to match scheduled Amtraks or Providence-Stoughton trains. But I have no idea if the Attleboro station has the room, or if the schedules are flexible enough to have a gap for a train to move in and out, or if this service is worth the operating costs of diesel, equipment, and labor.
Click to expand...
You'd probably have to do it in Providence where they have the extra platforms to stage a timed transfer. That's how the Cape Codder worked in its last season when it was relegated to a timed-transfer shuttle with a Regional (the severing of a thru NY-DC connection is what killed its ridership). Attleboro Station is too janky with only the northbound platform track connected to the Middleboro Secondary and the nearest crossovers being pretty far from the station. And who knows if RIDOT is even going to be willing to tag-team the subsidy for that. There isn't even much of a Providence-Fall River and Providence-New Bedford daily bus schedule the all-day demand is so soft.

There'll be more opportunities for non- default Regional service patterns after the Gateway Tunnel opens un-bottlenecking Penn Station. There'll be a lot more throughput to throw at New England schedules with NY-terminating trains that can be thru-routed. But I'd caution that other than tiny-scale stuff like a purely seasonal weekender Cape Codder revival when lower summer ridership allows for spare cars to be assigned to special runs, a lot of that extra throughput is probably going to be thrown at the Springfield Line, which is also an Amtrak-owned profit center and the only place they have excess capacity to utilize when the 2-track Shoreline and movable bridges impose their practical limits on the New Haven-Boston trunk. We'll probably see some Inland Route short-turn slots converted to real thru Northeast Regionals and possibly see a major Springfield schedule expansion like the Keystones being extended north of NY. But it's not going to be a Crayola-palooza of Crazy Pitches stuff like Washington-New Bedford. It's going to conform tightly to Amtrak's profit centers because slots are still too precious (especially through congested Metro-North territory) to divert to low-margin destinations.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
There is not a chance in hell that Amtrak is going to divert regular Northeast Regional service away from Boston at Attleboro to a tertiary market with all the ridership that ends up losing at 128+Back Bay+South Station on the NEC trunk. Hell, even when the Cape Codder was running its piddly weekender schedule during lighter summer ridership when they had the spare cars they couldn't stop messing with its service patterns year after year...to the train's eventual demise...because they found the notion of diverting anything away from the Boston revenue jackpot so repellent. It's one thing if MassDOT willingly wants to spend PRIIA money to start up a new intercity train from Point A to Point B; it's quite another to convince Amtrak to divert a self-dispatched NEC slot away from their profit center.
Click to expand...
The Cape Cod train was a Metroliner set that was extended beyond New Haven on Friday, and was back in the pool in time for regular Metroliner service between New York and Washington on Monday. It really did not create any shortage of equipment as scheduled. The Metroliner service was made up of Amfleets specially outfitted for the premium service. The Saturday shuttle was a connection in PVD that was much less busy than the through trains. The schedule was played with as the funding petered out. Anything is possible if some powerful Pol wants to find the money for it. I believe it was funded by a tourism grant by the Mass Legislature. When a service is reliant on government funding, anything is possible. I just have a feeling that the Sagamore and Bourne bridge re-builds are going to cry out for mitigation. That's how commuter service to Providence grew years ago. The re build of the SE Expressway spurred late night commuter service to Providence. All that being said. All trains between Boston and New York have to negotiate Metro North, which has more bottlenecks than and HP Hood Bottling plant.
 
Last edited:
BostonBoy said:
The Cape Cod train was a Metroliner set that was extended beyond New Haven on Friday, and was back in the pool in time for regular Metroliner service between New York and Washington on Monday. It really did not create any shortage of equipment as scheduled. The Metroliner service was made up of Amfleets specially outfitted for the premium service. The Saturday shuttle was a connection in PVD that was much less busy than the through trains. The schedule was played with as the funding petered out. Anything is possible if some powerful Pol wants to find the money for it. I believe it was funded by a tourism grant by the Mass Legislature. When a service is reliant on government funding, anything is possible. I just have a feeling that the Sagamore and Bourne bridge re-builds are going to cry out for mitigation. That's how commuter service to Providence grew years ago. The re build of the SE Expressway spurred late night commuter service to Providence. All that being said. All trains between Boston and New York have to negotiate Metro North, which has more bottlenecks than and HP Hood Bottling plant.
Click to expand...
Again...what is Amtrak's own motivation for diverting service away from its NEC profit center, regardless of what MassDOT wants to pay for? I know the equipment shortage is easing. I know NYP capacity is going to increase post-Gateway. But what's Amtrak's business motivation, after they saturate the post-Gateway service slate and post- new equipment order surge slots, to not collect national ticket revenue at Route 128, Back Bay (10th busiest station in the U.S.), and South Station (5th busiest station in the U.S.) with bog-standard Northeast Regional run-thrus instead of these diverted crayoned state-sponsored specials to very small niche markets. Amtrak is under more administrative pressure than ever to rationalize its profit-and-loss finances on the national-run network, and the NEC is the national network's golden goose for that. If you can't hazard a guess as to why they would in pure selfish business sense give up a thru Regional slot's revenue to go to Fall River or New Bedford, then please admit this is just a personal fantasy.

I say this as someone who wants MassDOT to front some subsidy money for a Cape Codder summer revival. It's still going to be very hard for Amtrak to rationalize allowing that when the legally allowed MassDOT PRIIA subsidy is so not-likely to equal the lost revenue of not running a Regional slot thru to 128+BBY+BOS. Our other state-sponsored proposals like Inland/East-West, Boston-Albany, Boston-Montreal, and so on aren't thru NEC slots and don't divert thru NEC slots from some of the highest-grossing stations in the entire country. Amtrak protects its profit centers jealously. Any proposal to take national-network slots and go off-roading to niche destinations has to rationalize it vs. Amtrak's basic-assed business sense.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Again...what is Amtrak's own motivation for diverting service away from its NEC profit center, regardless of what MassDOT wants to pay for? I know the equipment shortage is easing. I know NYP capacity is going to increase post-Gateway. But what's Amtrak's business motivation, after they saturate the post-Gateway service slate and post- new equipment order surge slots, to not collect national ticket revenue at Route 128, Back Bay (10th busiest station in the U.S.), and South Station (5th busiest station in the U.S.) with bog-standard Northeast Regional run-thrus instead of these diverted crayoned state-sponsored specials to very small niche markets. Amtrak is under more administrative pressure than ever to rationalize its profit-and-loss finances on the national-run network, and the NEC is the national network's golden goose for that. If you can't hazard a guess as to why they would in pure selfish business sense give up a thru Regional slot's revenue to go to Fall River or New Bedford, then please admit this is just a personal fantasy.

I say this as someone who wants MassDOT to front some subsidy money for a Cape Codder summer revival. It's still going to be very hard for Amtrak to rationalize allowing that when the legally allowed MassDOT PRIIA subsidy is so not-likely to equal the lost revenue of not running a Regional slot thru to 128+BBY+BOS. Our other state-sponsored proposals like Inland/East-West, Boston-Albany, Boston-Montreal, and so on aren't thru NEC slots and don't divert thru NEC slots from some of the highest-grossing stations in the entire country. Amtrak protects its profit centers jealously. Any proposal to take national-network slots and go off-roading to niche destinations has to rationalize it vs. Amtrak's basic-assed business sense.
Click to expand...
As I said before, politics. Weekend service was always less than weekday service on the corridor so I don't think it would stress the equipment pool as severely as you suggest. Summer service brought a whole different rider base. And, politics is as important on Amtrak as profit.Years ago we used to stop at Rye instead of New Rochelle, in New York. I cannot recall the particulars but I knew it was political, not market driven. But I was never into that part of Railroading. I was just working hem.
 
BostonBoy said:
As I said before, politics. Weekend service was always less than weekday service on the corridor so I don't think it would stress the equipment pool as severely as you suggest. Summer service brought a whole different rider base. And, politics is as important on Amtrak as profit.Years ago we used to stop at Rye instead of New Rochelle, in New York. I cannot recall the particulars but I knew it was political, not market driven. But I was never into that part of Railroading. I was just working hem.
Click to expand...
I'm not talking about the equipment pool. I already said that. I'm talking about revenue. Where does Amtrak become convinced to give up its Boston revenue on any slot? Northeast Regionals are national trains. State sponsorship only goes as far as extensions off of the main trunk. Amtrak is not going to be convinced--on any slot--to give up the 5th and 10th highest-ridership stops nationally because a state wants to divert a national train. This has nothing to do with whether a little zit on the map like Rye ran out of political juice to stay on the schedule in spite of low ridership. The revenue haul from BOS+BBY+128 is existential for them; it allows the NEC to float the slate for all the money-losing trains on the national network in the face of relentless political pressure to turn a profit. Fall River, New Bedford, or Cape Cod and any local political pressure therein don't even register against that wholly existential instinct for maximizing the NEC's revenue. Those types of politics crap bigger than our local ones...by a real lot. Like I said, I'd be solidly in support of another Cape Codder revival if MassDOT could convince Amtrak to bite, but I'm not blind to how hard it's going to be to convince them to give over even one current or future Regional slot to a not-Boston endpoint because of the revenue loss that won't begin to be offset by newfound Cape ridership.

You are not providing any existential justification for a South Coast diversion of national trains. Until you start doing so, you're just tilting at windmills with a God Mode proposal not one iota rooted in the real world.
 
I've previously posted about this generally, but to me this isn't necessarily a implementation that demands adding a train, but possibly an ticketing improvement. Right now, a prospective Amtrak Passenger in DC can't book a train to New Bedford via Amtrak for any amount of money - they'd have to get to South Station and buy an MBTA CR ticket. While inconvenient, this is a connection that exists and should be purchasable in a single transaction. Notable though, they had announced in 2023 a Thruway coach to New Bedford. That no longer appears to be bookable.

I'd love to see Amtrak and the NEC commuter operators make moves towards integrated ticketing, such that you can book Atlantic City to New Bedford on a single ticket. AC/Philly (op. by NJT) - Philadelphia/Boston (op. by Amtrak) - BOS/New Bedford (op. by MBTA). Now, that is admittedly a slog, but what about a hypothetical SCR Phase 2 transfer at RTE? Combined the NEC commuter agencies have 700+ unique stations - thats enough potential pairings that there might just be something there without actually touching how the service is provided... and I'd point out that Amtrak already provides some amount of through ticketing via its thruways program. Add the CR operators.

don't know if theres a better place for this, but are folks aware of any studies on the effect of common ticketing in Britain? Ie, there you can buy a single ticket between any two station pairs, regardless of the operator - You can buy a ticket from an random suburban commuter station like Clydebank and be through ticketed on any number of different services through, for example, Fishguard - which would require traveling on no fewer than 3 rail operators.

In particular, I'm wondering if there are plausible ridership and connectivity effects if we were to support such a model regionally on the NEC - allowing someone to book a ticket through from Framingham to say, Raritan NJ or Paoli PA. Those are all connections that exist today, but the friction of buying 3 separate tickets (MBTA/Amtrak/NJT) and the fact that none of those places are shown on the same transit map, I'm realizing that the NEC rail system feels a lot more siloed and unconnected than it necessarily is. This is less a service proposal, but more of a human behavior question, right - its the "you can't get there from here" problem, when in reality you actually can, its just high friction. Boston folks can be expected to know that Framingham to S. Station to get a NE Regional to NYP is doable. Asking them to also know they can get to Atlantic City via NJT @ PHL is less plausible. On a single agency scale it probably doesn't move the needle, but combined the NEC commuter agencies have 700+ unique stations - thats enough potential pairings that there might just be something there without actually touching how the service is provided.

Implementation seems relatively straightforward too - The CR fares on both ends of such a trip are fixed fare "open" tickets in UK rail parlance, with only the NEC Amtrak segment being dynamically priced and reserved seating. You'd just need to fetch the commuter agencies timetables, fare zone logic and station codes, and deliver up to 2 extra QR codes as "boarding passes" for those commuter services.

There is admittedly some nuance glazed over there ‐ Metro North operates primarily out of GCT, aso youll probably have to limit it to PSA/NYP trains, similarly LIRR you'd need to exclude GC madison starting service. The other is North Station originating MBTA services being the one I've most pointedly ignored for the moment. Absent NSRL, I think I'd only want to make the connections to Southside lines available - it may be a driver for NSRL in the long term, but as a Phase 1 the connection to the Downeaster I don't think is enough to drive the issues unless you're going to also add a thruway bus between NS and SS. http://archboston.com/community/threads/reasonable-transit-pitches.4187/post-510858
Click to expand...
 
BostonBoy said:
Years ago we used to stop at Rye instead of New Rochelle, in New York. I cannot recall the particulars but I knew it was political, not market driven.
Click to expand...
I once saw a post online by a now-retired railroader who worked during that era. He said Rye stayed on the schedule because Rye was the place of residence of Roger Lewis, Amtrak’s (first) president. I can’t find the post or else I’d link to it, and you never know for sure if these things are apocryphal or accurate, but I remember he also said Lewis had a summer residence in Mystic, and when the perennial discussions around “can we cut any stations from the NE Regional schedules to speed things up” came around under his tenure, he allegedly wanted to see Amtrak drop Old Saybrook, Westerly, and Kingston, but conspicuously not Mystic, the smallest ridership of them all. Again, who knows for sure, but if you heard it was political as well, maybe it’s not too far off from the truth!
 
The New Bedford Light ran an article yesterday (March 23, 2026) to mark the one year anniversary of the opening of South Coast Rail. Fair use quotes from the start of the article:

One year later, is South Coast Rail delivering on its promises?
It’s too soon to say, according to some experts. Local businesses say they aren’t seeing the benefits.

Massachusetts didn’t spend more than $1 billion on South Coast Rail for nothing.

When the MBTA commuter rail extension opened on March 24, 2025, state officials said it would help the South Coast’s economy by increasing foot traffic to local businesses, providing access to better jobs, spurring more housing production, and shortening commutes.

One year later, it’s still not clear that the project has accomplished its economic goals. Some local leaders are encouraged by data showing more Bostonians are visiting the New Bedford Whaling Museum. But business owners say those visitors aren’t spending money at local stores and restaurants. Experts who watch the local economy say one year is too soon to expect big changes.

“We’re just starting,” said Derek Santos, executive director of the New Bedford Economic Development Council. “I can’t stress that enough.”

There’s no doubt that people are riding the train. Right after the extension opened, ridership on the newly renamed Fall River/New Bedford Line increased by an average of 2,000 trips each day, The Light reported in November. The latest MBTA data shows that the major bump in ridership has continued through at least January.

Why those people are riding the train, and how that impacts the economy, are harder questions to answer...
Click to expand...
 

South Coast Rail generates noise issues in 1st year. What can be done?​

Prior to construction of the layover, Weaver’s Cove was thickly wooded, undeveloped land. One could imagine they lived across from a forest. Once cleared, a trainyard became easily visible from its neighbors’ front windows. Residents like Miozza may have been wondering when a sound wall would be built.
“I just made an assumption that where the property meets North Main Street, there would be some large barrier fencing there for noise,” Miozza said. “I just assumed they would do that.”
The MBTA has not been inclined to build one. At a meeting in June 2025, MBTA Chief Operating Officer Ryan Coholan said that “Everyone loves the idea of a sound wall until they have a huge wall that they’re staring at.”
In response to complaints, the MBTA has installed black sound-dampening material close to where trains are parked. Yet neighbors say the hum persists.
Click to expand...
 

Will South Coast Rail bring Rt. 140 in Taunton back to 'glory days'?​

The MBTA's South Coast Rail project is spurring development all across southeastern Massachusetts, and Taunton is no exception. Near the East Taunton Commuter Rail Station is a 275-unit apartment complex, a casino, and a video arcade. And there's more development still to come at the site of the former Silver City Galleria mall, Taunton Department of Economic & Community Development Executive Director Jay Pateakos said. Pateakos said that Primo Water, a water related distribution company, will be relocating to the former Silver City Galleria mall property, which is located across Route 24 from the East Taunton Commuter Rail station.
[...]
Nearby, commercial development has ramped up significantly. A former Pizzeria Uno that was vacant for five years is now home to Free Play Bar & Arcade, which has other locations in Providence and Worcester. About 5,000 square feet of retail space is going to be built near the station, and Pateakos said he’s hoping for a brewery or distillery to make its home there. He’s got requests for movie theaters. “But then you’ve also got the [Wampanoag] tribe and the First Light Casino, which is literally a half-mile down the road,” he said. “We go by there at 8:30 and it’s packed.”
[...]
Historically, Taunton state officials had been resistant to the South Coast Rail route, which bypassed the city’s downtown in favor of a station 3 miles to the southeast. Pateakos says it’s challenging the city to think of ways to conquer that “last mile” problem — to install more wayfinding signs at the station directing visitors where to go, to link the commuter rail station with buses to the casino, area retail or the downtown. “We want to bring 140 back to its retail and destination glory, and South Coast Rail is a huge part of that,” he said.
Click to expand...
 
I know the article wasn't literally saying the highway would get better, but it's such a bass ackwards way to refer to an area, especially when talking about transit. Also, the idea of bringing back "retail" as a destination clearly illustrates that these people are a little behind on the economic trends.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top