BOSTON — The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and its contract operator, Keolis, will expand planned fare reductions on the Newburyport/Rockport commuter rail line to help address the upcoming Sumner Tunnel reconstruction project, the MBTA announced on Thursday.
From July 1 through Aug. 31, the fare for the entire line will be $2.40, the equivalent of a subway fare. Previously, the fare reduction had been planned only for the Salem and Swampscott stations, as part of a broader program that will also include free service on the Blue Line subway [see “MBTA to offer free or reduced-fare rail service …,” Trains News Wire, June 12, 2023]. The new plan means the discount will be available at 13 more stations to the north and east.
“We hope the public takes advantage of this excellent mitigation and considers Commuter Rail not only as a travel alternative this summer, but as the best means of travel even after the tunnel reopens,” MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said in a press release. “I thank our partners at Keolis for their support.”
The Sumner Tunnel project will close the 90-year-old highway tunnel that makes up part of State Route 1A, connecting Boston with Logan Airport and East Boston. It’s the first of two summers of planned closures.
An insult to the taxpayers!
I looked at a map. A more accurate photo caption would be that the train is leaving Salem (background) and coming into Beverly, with the Route 1A highway bridge in the picture’s left. That’s not the importance of my comment. From the photo, the movable bridge appears to be new or relatively new, newer than anything that would have been built by the Boston and Maine Corporation. Can anyone provide info?
This double track bridge carries commuter trains to both branches, Rockport and Newburyport. Is there any freight? Maybe. I’m old enough to remember box cars in downtown Peabody, not too far from this photo.
There’s no byline on the article. The photo credit is Scott Hartley, a New Englander whom I hugely respect as a New Haven expert. With this photo of an ex- B&M Corporation route, he’s gone over to the Dark Side.
There is freight just to the south of here, but not for much longer. Rousselot in Peabody is the last customer, and they’re closing at the end of the year. There was a nicely written article about it in the June issue of the competition’s magazine.
BRIAN — I never heard of Rousselot so I looked it up. It’s a world-wide conglomerate of food and biomediacal, gelatins. Apparaently from the website, the company operated in Peabody only since 2011 — but it’s always possible the plant was older and acquired in a merger.
Speaking of Peabody, it was named after one of the Bay State’s old and rich families. The last the family was heard from was in the 1960’s, when Endicott Peabody served a single two-year term as governor and his sister Marietta Tree was somebody or other, maybe a White House physician or something like that. Governor Peabody’s great accomplishment was initiating MBTA, successor to the much smaller MTA. Peabody, a Democrat, was both preceded and succeeded by Gov. John Anthony Volpe, a Republican. We know him as USSecDOT, the man who singlehandedly got the founding of Amtrak past his anti-Amtrak boss, Dirty Dick Nixon.