The Trans-Commonwealth Railroad is a series on the challenges and efforts to connect the length of Massachusetts by rail. The $50 million Longmeadow State Senator Eric Lesser secured in the Senate Transportation bond bill for East-West rail is unlike the previous budget orders on the
NEWTON—The same highway and rail line that divide Boston also splits Newton. In the capital city, the corridor separates neighborhoods from each other. Here, it pierces several of this city’s villages. Frothing traffic spills out into veins of streets, branching outward from the Turnpike. The Worcester Line tracks and dismal stations along I-90 provide little relief.
Some time ago the Massachusetts Department of Transportation—or simply MassDOT—announced plans to replace an aging viaduct east of the former Allston Turnpike tolls in Boston. The agency will bring the Pike to ground and elevate the adjoining Soldier Fields Road. That decision was widely praised.
WORCESTER—For much of the past few years, progress on a host of rail projects in Massachusetts has ground to a crawl. Last week Gov. Charlie Baker’s Department of Transportation, in laying out its rail plan for the coming decade on January 26, seemed to lift