BOSTON — The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority will hold three public meetings in the coming weeks to gather input about the future of Boston’s historic Mattapan-Ashmont High Speed Line.
Earlier this year, MBTA officials announced that they want to replace the Mattapan line’s aging Presidents’ Conference Committee streetcars with more modern light rail vehicles in the next decade. [See “MBTA proposes replacing historic PCC streetcars,” Trains News Wire, Jan. 29, 2019.] On Monday, MBTA announced the dates of three meetings where the public can learn more about the proposal: March 27 at ABCD Mattapan Family Service Center, April 2 at the Milton Council on Aging, and April 4 at the Lower Mills Branch Public Library in Dorchester. All three meetings start at 6 p.m.
Although beloved by locals and enthusiasts alike, the 2.6-mile Mattapan route on the end of the Red Line has become an historic oddity for the MBTA. The line has been plagued with service problems in recent years and MBTA officials have said it is hard to find parts to keep the fleet of 10 PCC cars — all built more than 70 years ago — on the rails. In 2017, the MBTA decided to spend $7.9 million to upgrade eight of the PCC cars in order to keep them in service for at least another decade. The agency also hired an outside firm to work with the community to create a roadmap for the route’s future.
The MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board is expected to vote on the proposal to replace the PCCs with LRVs — similar to the ones found on the Green Line — later this year.
Although a number of cities still use PCCs in regular service — including Philadelphia, San Francisco, and most recently El Paso — the Boston cars are the only ones in the United States to have never been retired from service.
