In the first month after the March 24 opening of South Coast Rail, service to Fall River and New Bedford was plagued with canceled trains.
By April 23, service disruptions had been reported every day since the train opened, and over Patriots’ Day weekend, multiple train trips were replaced with buses, according to the Boston Globe.
Official alerts said the cause was “crew availability.”
This Thursday, the state plans to host a public meeting to address complaints about weekend train cancellations, staffing, and noise.
Bob Bridges, who lives in Fall River, told CAI about an experience he had on a Sunday. He spent the day in Salem and was trying to get home from South Station. Two consecutive trains were canceled.
“I said, ‘How am I supposed to get home?’ And the guy goes, ‘Take the eight o' clock.’ I'm like, ‘Two trains have already canceled. I'm not going to sit here for two more hours and find out that one's canceled, too.’”
He had to call his sister in Walpole to pick him up. He got home five hours later than planned.
“That's people's biggest fear, with the commuter rail, is that you're going to get trapped somewhere,” he said.
The private contractor that operates the commuter rail, Keolis, said things have improved since April. On May 21, the company said cancellations on the Fall River/New Bedford Line had been minimal over the previous few weeks, and that every train was running for the past four weekends.
More than 98 percent of scheduled trains on the line had reached their destination, Keolis said in an email.
But some South Coast residents remain disappointed in the train. At public meetings, residents along the formerly quiet, semi-rural stretches of the tracks in Freetown have complained about noise.
Bridges, who works in Cambridge, said he bought his home in Fall River in 2020 specifically because the train was coming. But he’s changed his mind. By the time he transfers to the red line of the T and gets to his office, the ride is too long.
“I'm going to sell my house and move closer to the city,” he said. “I'm not doing it. It's too much. … It was worth trying, but like I said, that's not how I plan on spending the rest of my life.”
Phil Eng, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, is scheduled to speak at Thursday’s meeting, along with others from the MBTA and representatives of Keolis.
The meeting starts at 5:30 p.m. at Morton Middle School in Fall River.
