When the Medford/Tufts stop opened in December 2022, it marked the end of an almost 30-year project to extend the Green Line into the Medford and Somerville communities. Since then, the MBTA has had its fair share of problems — such as a plague of slow zones and issues with the tracks that run through Medford and Somerville — that current CEO Philip Eng has mostly managed to navigate the T out of. Now as the T looks forward to beginning new initiatives rather than fixing old mistakes, extending the Green Line to the West Medford Commuter Rail stop could be a great place to start.
This extension would only increase the length of the line by 1 ¼ miles and would be somewhat less ambitious compared to other projects the T is looking at, but it would still make an outsized difference for the Tufts and broader Medford communities.
As the last stop of the E branch of the Green Line, the Medford/Tufts stop serves several different purposes — carting Tufts students to and from Boston, connecting people with other forms of public transportation, giving commuters a place to park, providing a cheaper way to get into the city and allowing for less trafficked drives. Extending this line would improve the ability of the Green Line to serve each of these purposes. An extended Green Line would increase interaction between Tufts students and the Medford community, better connect the Green Line with the commuter rail and other forms of transportation and help alleviate the parking fiasco that has developed around the Medford/Tufts stop.
Extending the line to West Medford could provide an economic and cultural benefit to the Medford community, especially from an influx of Tufts students. While many students view Davis Square as the best off-campus location for restaurants, pharmacies and fresh pasta, providing easier transportation to areas of Medford might help to change this perception by opening an additional way for students to get off campus and into the local communities. Expanding transit access would likely promote economic growth, benefiting the Medford community by bringing more customers to local businesses. Even though the stop would not bring people directly into downtown Medford, the increased transportation would also have a cultural investment, as the easier access to Medford would encourage students to participate in events around the city and interact more with the Medford community.
Furthermore, this extension would connect the line directly to a commuter rail stop, which would help reduce travel times and overall traffic in the Medford area. Currently, the E branch of the Green Line, which runs directly next to the Lowell Commuter Rail line, shares a scant one stop with the Commuter Rail: North Station, the Commuter Rail’s terminus. This means that there is no walking-distance rail access to the Lowell line unless one goes all the way into Boston, even though the Commuter Rail goes through all of the same stops. Having the Commuter Rail connection would allow people who live north of Boston to access the Commuter Rail easily via the Green Line, instead of having to drive, Uber or take a bus into Boston, hence relieving traffic from the already-packed roads. Having this connection also contributes to redundancy in the transit system, which helps avoid issues stemming from shutdowns of certain lines and stations. We can see this demonstrated by the Orange Line, whose terminus at Oak Grove was built with a Commuter Rail platform and which was, in 2022, made into a permanent stop on the Haverhill Commuter Rail line. During the 2004 Democratic National Convention, North Station was closed, meaning that the trains had to stop at Oak Grove. Being able to use the Orange Line from Oak Grove allowed commuters to have less disruption in their travel. In comparison, due to the lack of redundancy for the Lowell Line, commuters have to get off at the West Medford stop and take a bus to South Station.
As anyone who has walked down Boston Avenue has seen, the parking situation for the Medford/Tufts stop is a nightmare. Given the number of people who drive to terminus stations to avoid the exorbitant fees of city parking, having the station abut a major throughway that also happens to be the main parking area for a medium-sized university leads to a nasty, crowded situation, especially since the only public parking nearby the station is street parking. Extending the line to West Medford would not solve this issue completely — while there is a parking lot at the station, it likely wouldn’t have enough spots to meet the full demand — it would be a better situation for parking than the one we have currently.
Of course, projects like these take a lot of time, money and work to come to fruition. However, expressing interest in this new extension is the first step we can take towards building a better transit system for our communities.
