FREETOWN — In a lot of ways, it was a groundbreaking on already broken ground.
Tuesday marked the highly celebrated beginning of the South Coast Rail project’s southern expansion, which would bring MBTA Commuter Rail Service from Boston to the cities of Fall River and New Bedford.
The occasion was not the first groundbreaking for the project, which has been gestating in Massachusetts politics for roughly 30 years. This point was not lost on MassDOT CEO Stephanie Pollack, who took a moment to recall a 2015 conversation she had with state Sen. Michael Rodrigues, D-Westport.
At the time, Rodrigues warned Pollack of the shovels he had collected over the years from past SouthCoast Rail groundbreakings and said he didn’t want another one until construction was already underway.
“We’re here today because there is actual construction work underway,” Pollack told an applauding audience of local and state officials.
Pollack and Rodrigues were joined by Gov. Charlie Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and many of the region's state representatives for the ceremony. A total of 45 politicians and government officials plunged gleaming shovels into the symbolic mound of dirt positioned beside a set of Freetown train tracks for the ceremony.
The project has undergone a series of fits and starts since Gov. William Weld first asked the state Legislature to approve funding for preliminary studies. A series of obstacles – including loss of funding and environmental impact concerns – have plagued the project since it began, but many attendees at the Freetown ceremony were confident that the proverbial trains would finally pull out of the station, and soon.
When asked what made him sure the project would be completed by its proposed 2023 end date, Baker said South Coast Rail has two things going for it that it didn’t have for a long time: a completed construction plan and a designated funding source.
“Those are really the two big things it didn’t have before," Baker said. "It has a real construction and design plan and the second thing is a real capital plan. And that basically guarantees that it’s going to happen."
Baker said $1 billion in funding has already been allocated in the state’s five-year capital plan.
“We’ve already got contracts on this. People are doing work on it. We’ve already acquired property. We’ve got all the permits," Baker said. “This is literally a groundbreaking held after the project had begun.”
Work already underway represents Phase I of the South Coast Rail project. Thus far, the project has included culvert installation along the train’s proposed route in East Freetown, as well as track upgrades and bridge renovation.
The next four years of the project will see Commuter Rail's Middleborough/Lakeville Line extended to New Bedford and Fall River, which will require reconstructing 17.3 miles of the existing New Bedford main line tracks and 11.7 miles of the Fall River secondary tracks. Upgrades will also have to be done to 7.1 miles of the Middleborough secondary track between Pilgrim and Cotley junctions. Two new layover facilities will also have to be constructed, as well as six new train stations.
Representatives from Fall River, New Bedford and surrounding communities said they were optimistic bout the project’s future.
Rodrigues, whose first South Coast Rail groundbreaking was over 20 years ago, praised the state’s most recent efforts and talked about the potential impact Commuter Rail service will have on the region.
“The communities of the South Coast deserve to be economically competitive with the rest of the region, and South Coast Rail is a large piece of that,” he said. “I applaud the Baker-Polito Administration for finally making this long-promised project a reality.”