BOSTON — The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority will halt service most of on its Haverhill commuter rail line for 58 days beginning Saturday, Sept. 9, to accommodate signal system upgrades related to Automatic Train Control upgrades to positive train control.
Trains will be diverted from the Haverhill Line to the Lowell Line south of Ballardvale via the Wildcat branch, running express between Ballardvale and North Station, save for a stop at Anderson/Woburn, where they will connect with shuttle buses serving the stops that are being skipped along the Haverhill line. The shuttle buses will also connect to the transit Orange Line at Oak Grove, where passengers can travel to or from North Station.
More information on the service disruption through Nov. 5 is available here, and more on the ATC/PTC project is available here.
Why a two-month shutdown? Amtrak and SEPTA didn’t require a 2 month shutdown to install ACSES and in some cases, resignal the lines.
What else are they doing?
During installation of automatic train control and positive train control systems, the service on the outer section of the line will operate via the Wildcat Branch and the inner Lowell Line, while North Wilmington station will be closed.
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The Haverhill Line (formerly named the Haverhill/Reading Line) is a branch of the MBTA Commuter Rail system, running north from downtown Boston, Massachusetts through the cities and towns of Malden, Melrose, Wakefield, Reading, Wilmington, Andover, North Andover, Lawrence, and Haverhill.
The service operates on the Western Route of the former Boston and Maine Railroad, which extends north to Portland, Maine, though MBTA commuter rail service has not continued north of Massachusetts since 1967.
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