When the first Green Line train pulled out of Medford/Tufts early yesterday morning, somebody dressed in a furry elephant suit was onboard. Read more.
Green Line Extension
WBUR recounts 32 years of effort to get the Green Line Extension built.
MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak announced this morning that the Medford branch of the Green Line Extension, the long one, the one with more than one stop, will start taking passengers on Dec. 12. In recent days, the T has been running test trolleys up and down the line.
You can laugh or you can cry about Green Line Extension service this afternoon.
At 1:51 p.m. Jill Rodgers sent a Green Line cri de couer from a trolley sitting motionless on the viaduct between Lechmere and Union Square, you know, the part of the Green Line that was shut down for a month to make it work all nice and smooth and stuff. Read more.
While 'neath the streets of Boston, Anna Seda on cello, Jacob Deck on Celtic harp and Ben Rechel on bass play their updated version of the classic Boston song: Read more.
State and Boston officials today detailed their latest efforts to provide alternatives for Orange Line riders and Green Line riders north of Boston for the month-long shutdown that starts Friday night - and to caution that eliminating train service that normally handles 100,000 people on weekdays will affect everybody else in the region as well. Read more.
Shuttle buses, more commuter-rail service and the 39 bus! All that and more.
The MBTA announced today that it hopes to finally, actually, really, no kidding, open the Green Line Extension all the way into Medford by "late November," just in time for you to go over the river and through the woods to visit the Medford house where Lydia Maria Child's grandparents lived, prompting her to write the famous Thanksgiving song. Read more.
Some thought it might never happen, but at 4:50 a.m., after decades in the making, the first trolley to take passengers rolled out of Union Square in Somerville. Read more.
Adam Nichols captured some of the action tonight on the Union Square stub, where Green Line operators have begun driving trolleys to test things out and get familiar with the new line. Read more.
The MBTA announced today that the first scheduled service on the Green Line Extension to Union Square won't be until at least March of next year. Read more.
The Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership reports officials announced today that the Union Square stub line is now scheduled to open in December instead of October and that the main part of the extension is now scheduled to start up in May, rather than the previously announced December.
Remember when it was about to get cancelled because it was going to cost too much? CommonWealth Magazine reports the project is now forecast to come in under budget, only in part thanks to $103 million in federal recovery aid for mass-transit projects and possibly enough so to let Cambridge and Somerville recover the $45 million they ponied up to keep the project going.
Here's a detailed drone-based video of the work towards extending the Green Line past Lechmere. If you want to skip stuff about the history of the Green Line and work on the existing sections, skip to 4:50 (and yes, the narrator is not from around here, as you can tell by his pronunciation of "Tremont" and "Zakim" but it's still a cool video).
Nathaniel Stinnett watched some of the demolition of the steel part of the Lechmere viaduct this morning. It's coming down for the realignment of the Green Line towards the new Not-Lechmere station being built as part of the fabled Green Line Extension.
Lechmere station sometime after 1922. Source.
Tonight marks the last time the T will use the current Lechmere station for anything trolley related. It shuts tonight and in 11 months or so, there'll be a brand-new station nearby as the current tracks are extended towards Somerville.
Of course, what comes down must have gone up. Read more.
Workers on Tuesday will begin putting down stripes on Charles River Dam Road in preparation for bus-only lanes for the buses that will replace the Green Line between North Station and Lechmere for a year while parts of the current Lechmere Viaduct is torn down and then moved as part of the Green Line Extension into Somerville. Read more.
The MBTA announced this morning it's cancelled meetings tonight on the Better Bus Project at the Bolling Building in Roxbury, the Green Line Extension at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge and a "public engagement" meeting at the Framingham Public Library, "out of an abundance of caution" over, well, you can guess what.
Tim Murphy got a bird's eye view of the work on the Green Line Extension at Lechmere:
Lechmere Station taking shape. In this “Dissected” style view, you can see what will become the center island platform with the eastbound track to the right and the westbound on the left.
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