MA: MBTA’s new South Coast Rail opens to applause from riders

Like all other Commuter Rail trips, the first train Monday morning on the MBTA’s new Fall River/ New Bedford line set off with a jolt. But unlike the rest, it was followed by an unfamiliar sound for the early hour: applause.

Joyous riders boarded the train before dawn Monday for the first MBTA trip to and from the South Coast of Massachusetts in over 65 years.

For some, Monday’s ride was a normal workday commute, but one made far easier with the extended train service and six new stations. Others hopped aboard Monday hoping to be among the first to see the South Coast train running after years of development.

Dmitry Zinoviev woke up at 3 a.m. Monday with his mind made: He would be on the first train out of New Bedford at 4:27 a.m. The Lexington resident drove over an hour to the station, rode the train 90 minutes into Boston, and turned around to board the first outbound train back to New Bedford.

“I can sleep another time,” Zinoviev, a professor of math and computer science at Suffolk University, said.

Grinning ear to ear, he threw his hands together as the train rolled out of Boston’s South Station at 6:45 a.m.

The project was long-delayed — former Gov. Bill Weld once promised it would be completed in 1997, according to the State House News Service. Instead, it dragged on under multiple governors, with project costs rising and the expected opening date pushed further and further back.

Gov. Charlie Baker ultimately committed to a two-phase approach for the project in 2017, which Gov. Maura Healey’s administration completed.

The section that opened Monday extended the Middleborough/Lakeville Line and renamed it the Fall River/New Bedford Line.

A second phase would extend the Stoughton Line south and connect more communities to the Fall River/New Bedford Line, though the MBTA does not list an expected timeframe for when the project could be completed.

“The people of Taunton, Freetown, New Bedford, Middleboro and Fall River have been waiting for passenger rail service for far too long,” Healey said last month when the opening date for the line was announced.

She lauded MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng for not “kicking the can down the road” and delivering the project.

“Driving into the city is an absolute nightmare,” said Leo Sullivan, of Wareham, who has taken the Commuter Rail from Middleborough into Boston since 1999. “You sit in a parking lot and spend a lot of time swearing.”

Monday was his first day boarding the train at the new Middleborough station, one of six new stops built by the MBTA to extend the train to the South Coast.

On the train, Sullivan said he could flip his laptop open and enjoy a coffee, skipping the chaos of the highway.

“It’s smooth, it’s fast, it’s scenic,” said Ted Robinson, of Fairhaven. “You can’t beat it with a stick.”

He and his wife Judith moved to the South Coast community from Boston’s Beacon Hill about four or five years ago.

On Monday, they planned to spend a simple day in the city and return home. But they were particularly excited for friends still living in Boston to be able to easily travel south to visit.

“It’s a dream come true,” Judith Robinson said.

The MBTA plans to run trains every 70 minutes on weekdays and every two hours on weekends.

Rides are free through the end of March. Fare service will continue on weekends through April, Healey’s office said. After that, the full fare will be $12.25 and the reduced fare will be $6.

Crowded into two rows of seats on the outbound train from South Station, Joseph Rinaldi and a group of friends said it was the first time they had heard applause on a Commuter Rail.

“I did start the clapping,” Rinaldi, of Boston’s North End, admitted with a grin.

He and another member of the group run a real estate development company with a project underway in Fall River. When they got the project four years ago, they promised to be on the first train to the city once Commuter Rail service began.

“We think it’s going to be great for Fall River,” Rinaldi said.

The city of 94,000 was poised to become better connected to New Bedford, its 100,000 residents, other areas of Southeastern Massachusetts and New England’s commercial and cultural hub in Boston. Rinaldi and his group were thrilled.

They joined Wilfred Roberge, an Army veteran living in Brockton, in a jovial chant that rang through the train car just before 7:30 a.m.: “Trains! Trains! Trains! Trains! Trains!”

“As they say in the Army Transportation Corps,” Roberge yelled down the aisle, “nothing happens until something moves!”

Eng greeted the group as he strolled through the train car passing out souvenir buttons. Later Monday morning, Eng, Healey and other state leaders celebrated the South Coast Rail’s opening at a press conference at East Taunton station.

“It’s a fantastic day,” Eng said onboard the southbound train.

“The South Coast Rail is going to be a game-changer for the region,” Karen Antion, the MBTA’s South Coast Rail program executive, said last month.

The South Coast has at times been Massachusetts’s “forgotten coast,” Chance Perks, a conservation agent for the city of New Bedford, said onboard the train. The new line will connect the region with Boston, but could be a “double-edged sword” if more people relocate to the region, increasing demand for housing, he added.

Yet after five years of work on the South Coast Rail project, “to see it get here is just great,” Perks said.

On the 7:25 a.m. northbound train from New Bedford, seats gradually filled with commuters.

The cars remained generally quiet, but that didn’t mean riders were any less excited.

For 40 or 50 years, “we’ve been hearing [South Coast Rail] was going to come,” said Mark Jacintho, of Acushnet, who boarded the train to Boston with his wife, their daughter Jessica Cormier, her husband and three grandkids. They planned to spend the day at the Museum of Science.

“This is amazing,” Jacintho said.

Carol Thornber, the dean of the School for the Environment at UMass Boston, would previously drive 35 minutes from Somerset to Middleborough to then ride the train an hour into Boston.

On Monday, she drove from Somerset to the new MBTA station in neighboring Freetown. It made for a longer train ride, but less time in the car.

“This is much easier,” she said.

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