Lea Jarrett rode the train for love.
A law student at Boston College, her boyfriend usually has to drive her up to Boston after her weekend visits. But on Monday, he dropped Jarrett at the station in New Bedford.
“This is kind of a game-changer,” Jarrett said.
Jarrett was one of about 60 people who boarded the Boston-bound 7:25 train on Monday morning — the first day of South Coast Rail, daily passenger train service from Boston to Fall River and New Bedford for the first time in 66 years.
State transportation officials have been working to restore passenger service to the South Coast since the late 1980s. Those leaders were initially optimistic the new line would open during the 1990s.
Until the trains left New Bedford station on Monday, MBTA commuter rail service went no further than Lakeville. Now, for $12.25 a ticket, passengers can connect to Boston’s South Station.
Paula Almeida took the train to work at the U.S. Department of Justice in Boston. She got a seat with a desk, where she set up a temporary office, even though there’s no Wi-Fi.
“I have my laptop and my coffee and I have my little hotspot,” Almeida said. “I take advantage of the hour-and-a-half that I have to South Station and get some stuff done.”
Almeida was very prepared for her train ride, because she had heard that the MBTA planned to build a train to New Bedford since she was in 5th grade.
But she’s not the only one who has been waiting patiently for South Coast Rail. Steve Hemingway and his wife bought a house in the ‘80s near what is now the Church Street station in New Bedford.
“We were intelligent enough to know that it wasn’t going to be overnight,” Hemingway said. “We just didn’t expect it to be 30 years.”
As the train flew by Hemingway’s house, he looked out the window and waved to his wife and dog in their backyard. He planned to exit at Quincy Center to have lunch with his daughter.
David and Pam Mello, a chatty couple from New Bedford, were supposed to travel with friends to get lunch in Boston’s North End. They canceled those plans when it started to rain. But they just couldn’t miss the first day of train service.
“We started watching the weather and we said, ‘Ah it’s not going to be any fun,’ so we blew everybody off,” David Mello said. “No one knows we’re on the train today.”
The Mellos planned to ride the train to South Station just to grab a coffee, and hop right back on the train to New Bedford. They plan to make the trip again in the coming weeks for doctor’s appointments in Boston.
One benefit of train travel of which many passengers took advantage: multi-tasking. One man from Dartmouth, who said he had a young child at home, took a short nap on the way to his finance job in Boston. Another ate his breakfast.
“It’s better than driving and trying to eat the eggs,” Jamie Brown said.
Jose Gonzalez was so excited for the new train that he described himself as “a little dog with three tails, waggling.”
He was using the train to visit his mom. He’s legally blind, so he needs public transportation to do that on his own — public transportation he did not have before South Coast Rail.
“I’ve been waiting and waiting for the train,” Gonzalez said. “And my mom, she’s dying to get the train so she can come and visit me, too. So finally, you know, it’s a dream come true.”
Gonzalez is also planning to have some fun now that the train is up and running. He likes to go to concerts in Boston. But when he went to see the Mexican singer Luis Miguel at the Boston Garden, he says he spent $240 dollars on rideshare trips. The next time he attends a concert, he can catch the midnight train back to New Bedford.
“Round trip, like $24-25,” Gonzalez said. “You cannot beat that.”
The MBTA plans to run 14 trains from New Bedford to Boston every weekday. On Monday, the journey took 97 minutes.
As the train pulled into Boston’s South Station, the conductor thanked the passengers for riding.
“Hope you guys enjoyed the ride today,” he said over the intercom. “Make sure you use it plenty in the future.”
The Public’s Radio’s Jeremy Bernfeld contributed to this story.
