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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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).

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.

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.