Commuter Rail Schedule Shifts Again with One Morning Train Restored
On Tuesday, State Representative Kate Lipper-Garabedian announced that she, State Senator Jason Lewis, and city officials in Wakefield and Melrose had convinced MBTA leadership to restore one morning inbound commuter rail train.
Commuter Rail Train at Cedar Park
This week, the MBTA began running the Commuter Rail line that runs through Melrose to Reading and Haverhill on a reduced schedule. This schedule is due to construction, specifically the replacement of 9 miles of rail between North Station and Reading. It is expected to continue through the summer. In the original version of this schedule, there were no inbound trains on weekdays between the train that leaves Melrose at 7:45 am and arrives at North Station at 8:10 am, and the train that leaves Melrose at 4:50 pm and arrives at North Station at 5:15 pm.
Outbound train service will also be reduced, although not as dramatically. There will be 15 outbound trains throughout the day that stop in Melrose, compared to the 21 outbound trains that currently stop in Melrose on weekdays.
Weekday Inbound Commuter Rail Schedule, With Changes Highlighted
A number of Melrose commuters who regularly travel into Boston after 8 am were concerned about the loss of this train, especially since the MBTA does not plan to run shuttle buses. Instead commuters are encouraged to take the 137 bus, which will be free during this disruption.
Following the state and city officials’ intervention, a new schedule will go into effect next Tuesday (May 28th). In this schedule, the train that leaves Melrose at 8:30 am and arrives at North Station at 8:55 am will be restored. Instead, a later train that was scheduled to pass through Melrose at 4:50 pm will no longer run from Reading to North Station, moving the construction window later.
There will still be a total of 9 inbound trains per day, compared to 20 inbound trains that used to stop in Melrose on weekdays under the previous schedule. There will still be inbound service throughout the day from Haverhill to Ballardvale, but those trains will change to the Lowell line at Anderson/Woburn and will not run through Melrose.
Outbound train service will not be changed from the original construction schedule, which reduced service from 21 to 15 outbound trains that stop in Melrose on weekdays. Weekends will be unaffected, with 8 trains running in each direction per day, each one scheduled to make all the stops between North Station and Haverhill.
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