All the recent Twitter hubbub about fares at the new Brighton commuter-rail station got state Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack to thinking: Could there be other stations near downtown that have unfair fares? Read more.
The MBTA Fiscal and Management Control Board voted today to hire a construction company to build a $17-million station for the Fairmount Line between Blue Hill Avenue and Cummins Highway, about a quarter mile outside Mattapan Square. Read more.
An exhausted outbound Fairmount Line bought the farm just before Fairmount station and now the T says there are delays of 30 to 40 minutes, which is roughly twice as long as it would take the average adult to just get out and walk from Fairmount to the end of the line at Readville (yes, of course, unlike every other line, the Fairmount Line is not named for the last stop).
The T reports it's trying to get the stuck switch unstuck so the train that Sam Sam was waiting for, the one just sitting there just before the Fairmount stop, can get moving again.
A couple days ago, the Globe reported how Keolis treats the Faimount Line like its spare-parts bin - pulling equipment off the line when other lines have problems. This morning, Samantha Sergeant reports:
now 754 Fairmount Readville is having engine issues after already 20mins late! WTF R WE PAYING U 4?!?!
Praise to Keolis — not a phrase I normally use. However, I just got a call from their support folk about six minutes after I emailed a complaint. AND she resolved it.
This gist centers on a nickel. Read more.
Amtrak regional train heads under bridge on way to South Station.
Nine years after the state replaced the old Sprague Street bridge with a ho-hum concrete span, workers are getting ready to replace the old Fairmount Line bridge over the Northeast Corridor with one of the light-blue metal spans already in use along the line closer to downtown. Read more.
You never know what you'll see at the Readville train station, a.k.a. the world's largest model train set.
With it still being too hot to cook tonight, I drove down to Olympic Pizza in Wolcott Square, put in an order, then walked over to the station, where I spotted an unusual locomotive on a Fairmount Line train. Read more.
City Councilors Tim McCarthy (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan) and Michelle Wu (at large) want the T to publicly explain why people who use the Fairmount Line or who board the train at Forest Hills pay so much less than people who take commuter rail in from Roslindale and other parts of Hyde Park in particular. Read more.
Architect's rendering.
Developers have filed plans for a city-owned vacant lot in Uphams Corner that would include 80 apartments, eight townhouse condos and a building for light-industrial and office use.
The Indigo Block, proposed by a team lead by the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corp., would sit on a 2.75-acre lot at 65 E. Cottage St., next to the Uphams Corner stop on the Indigo, or Fairmount, Line. Read more.
News that the MBTA is canceling contracts for art on the Green Line extension - and on the Fairmount Line - got artist Elisa H. Hamilton to thinking on how art in Red Line stations helped shape her as an artist, and what the loss of the proposed art means:
Public transportation is one of the great equalizers here in the Commonwealth - the artwork created for our MBTA stations is not only meant to beautify, but also to create a sense of place for people in every walk of life. The decisions we make now in renovating and rebuilding our MBTA stations will impact our communities for a very long time. Art in MBTA stations gives an otherwise utilitarian space a sense of soul, a sense of color, culture, and life, a sense of the communities that these stations represent and serve. It fosters a tremendous sense of community ownership - every time T riders see this art, it says to them, "you are home."
Ari Ofsevit makes the case that adding electric wires and buying electric-powered cars would make a lot more sense on the only in-city commuter-rail line than the individual diesel cars the T proposed buying until the governor put the kibosh on them: Electrification would be cheaper in the long run and the trains would get to and from downtown faster.
City Councilors Tim McCarthy (Hyde Park, Roslindale and Mattapan) and Michelle Wu (at large) hope to hold a hearing at which MBTA officials can explain the differing fares for commuter-rail stations within Boston city limits - in particular at stations south of Forest Hills. Read more.
Somebody's attached a whole bunch of CDs to a fence at one of the entrances to the Fairmount station on the Fairmount line (on Fairmount Avenue, of course).
The Zoning Board of Appeals this morning unanimously approved a proposed 27-unit apartment building next to the Fairmount commuter-rail station.
The Southwest Boston Community Development Corp and the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corp. plan to spend $7 million to build 24 units for people making up to 60% of the area's median income and 3 apartments for people making between 60% and 80% of that amount. It will be built on a derelict piece of former industrial land.
Yeah, about that. Looks like a plow driver completely covered it up with snow boulders, so, as Molly Lanzarotta reports, Fairmount Line riders and people looking to get from one side of the train tracks and the Neponset to the other have to walk in the street again.
It's no better down the line at Readville station, where Boston Strolls reports sidewalks have gone unshoveled since that first January storm.
Backers of a plan to replace a condemned parcel next to the Fairmount train station with a 27-unit apartment building hold yet another public meeting to discuss the plans on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Hyde Park municipal building on River Street.
The Southwest Boston Community Development Corp., which proposed the apartments, has already had two public meetings on the plan. Although the plans have not changed in the year since they first became public, proponents will hold the third because ISD says the project needs two variances from the Zoning Board of Appeals, not the one the CDC originally thought.
Transit Police report finding a white man, age still unknown, dead on the Fairmount Line platform around 4:10 p.m.
Although detectives and the Suffolk County District Attorney's office are investigating, police do not suspect foul play:
Items located near the decedent suggest an apparent overdose.
State officials announced today the start of hourly service on Saturday and Sunday on the Fairmount Line will start Nov. 29 - and that they've made the current fares - the same as a subway line from Fairmount station north - permanent.
MassDOT also said it will solicit bids in December for 30 Diesel Multiple Units - single-car diesel trains that will let the T run Fairmount service on something closer to a subway schedule.
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