When the Plymouth Independent site went live on Nov. 21 of last year, the first batch of stories included one by Fred Thys about the status of the MBTA commuter rail station at Cordage Park. The headline read: “You still can’t get there from here.”
More than a year later – and three and a half years after the tracks were deserted – nothing has changed. You still can’t travel to and from Plymouth by train. The April 2021 closure was blamed on budget cuts at the then-reeling T, and a dramatic drop in ridership because of the pandemic. The agency framed the shutdown as “temporary.” Few believed that then. Almost no one does now. It’s kind of like exercising – once you stop doing it, starting up again is a challenge.
Not a week goes by that I don’t get asked whether rail service will come back to Plymouth. Often, the questions come from people who are relatively new to town. To them, it’s puzzling that the region’s population hub does not have a direct link to Boston. On the face of it, they’re correct. With the town growing at a steady pace, you might think transportation officials would figure the demand for commuter rail from Plymouth is strong and will increase.
Think again.
From the vantage point of MBTA and state officials, the local stop has long been irrelevant. There is a much bigger station, with plenty of parking, just over the border in Kingston. Plymouth ridership numbers were always slim, partly because trips were few and far between. And while the Kingston station is easily accessible from Route 3, Plymouth’s forlorn platform is off a secondary road (Route 3A), hidden behind the Harborwalk apartment complex. If you’re coming from outside the town’s center, it’s easier to go to Kingston.
Never mind that for hundreds of people who live at Harborwalk, the promised proximity to commuter rail was a key selling point – walk out the door and onto a train. Beats the expressway by about 40 miles and hours of stress, right?
When I asked the T for an update on the station’s status, I wasn’t expecting any revelations. I was correct.
“The MBTA is committed to exploring service opportunities that best serve the riding public as a whole,” spokesperson Lisa Battiston wrote in an email. “At this time, Plymouth station remains closed due to operational challenges associated with serving the station. Passengers can use Kingston station for service to and from downtown Boston.”
After the trains stopped in 2021, the T coordinated with the Greater Attleboro and Taunton Regional Transit Authority, known as GATRA, to make sure there were frequent bus trips from Plymouth to Kingston for travelers who can’t – or don’t want to – drive to the station.
But that’s not enough for some Plymouth business leaders and elected officials.
Amy Naples, executive director of the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce, which has more than 800 members, wrote me to “express deep concern over the MBTA’s continued closure of the Plymouth station.” She called it “profoundly disheartening to see the existing infrastructure – tracks, platforms, and facilities – sitting idle, offering no benefit to the community or region. This dormant resource represents a missed opportunity for connectivity and growth, as the station remains a vital link for residents, visitors, and businesses alike.”
Beyond that, Naples said, the continued closure “threatens to derail critical economic development projects and continued growth at Cordage Commerce Center and Harborwalk Apartments, which rely on public transit to attract residents and businesses. Losing this service harms local tourism and small businesses, diminishing Plymouth’s appeal as a destination for visitors from Boston and beyond.”
Incoming state senator Dylan Fernandes, who calls himself a “huge fan of train transportation,” says the station closure came up regularly on the campaign trail. With train travel, he said in an interview, “you actually get somewhere and get work done at the same time. It takes cars off the roads, reduces carbon emissions, and is overall a benefit for society.”
Once sworn into office, Fernandes said, he plans to “open up a dialogue” with the T and the Healy administration. It bothers him that the state appears to be “sitting on unused infrastructure that is upgraded and good to go if they re-open it.”
He’s also pragmatic. Restarting service to Plymouth is “obviously not something you can single handedly do,” Fernandes said, “but you can advocate for it.”
Matt Muratore, the outgoing state representative, agrees with Fernandes about the need for train trips to and from Plymouth. He also knows how tough it will be to make that happen.
“The meetings we’ve had in the last year or so [on the subject] haven’t been so promising,” Muratore told me. “As you know, the MBTA is having its own issues in and around the Boston area, and the concentration is really there, not so much down here.”
When Covid hit, “We said ‘please don’t shut it down.’ Because we knew that once it was shut down, it’s a hard thing to get back up and running again. The rest is history.”
Muratore said the Plymouth stop was never given much of a chance to succeed.
“The schedule wasn’t that great,” he said. “I think it was two or three times a day.”
Not exactly commuter friendly.
By contrast, there are typically a dozen or trips to and from Kingston on weekdays, between 5:30 a.m. and 11:15 p.m.
“They don’t really want to open it,” Muratore conceded, “but we’re still trying to advocate to do that. I still think it’s the right thing to do.”
But there’s a twist in this story that you probably didn’t see coming. An argument can be made for letting the station remain idle, and it has nothing to do with Plymouth’s transportation needs. Under the state’s controversial MBTA Communities Act – passed in 2021 just months before the Cordage stop went dark – the town would lose its status as an MBTA “adjacent” community, meaning it would have to create a zoning overlay that would allow more, denser housing within about a half mile of Cordage than is now required. The idea behind the law is to encourage cities and towns with rail service to build more homes close to public transportation. The concept is complicated, as all things having to do with Beacon Hill are. It doesn’t work so well in Plymouth because of the town’s geographic size – about 105 square miles – and the fact that the area around Cordage already is densely populated.
The numbers sound scary. Under the current status, the town must allow for 2,807 housing units, but they don’t have to be built near commuter rail, according to Lee Hartmann, Plymouth’s director of planning and development.
If the station reopens, however, that figure would increase to 4,210. Crucially, the additional housing would have to be located within a half mile of Cordage. That’s because Plymouth would lose its “adjacent” designation and be subject to more stringent requirements. While the law does not demand that all those homes be built, it makes it easier for developers to go ahead with projects.
“If such zoning was put in place, it would over time significantly change the character of North Plymouth,” Hartmann said.
Does that mean that the station’s shutdown allowed the town to avoid a housing crisis of sorts (even though it needs more housing in the long run)? Select Board member Kevin Canty believes that’s the case. Plymouth’s existing status allows for more “flexibility,” he said.
“The total number of [housing] units is smaller, and they can be spread out through the entire 105 square miles,” Canty said in a phone conversation.
(In case you were wondering, the Harborwalk complex by itself doesn’t come close to fulfilling the housing requirement.)
There is hope that the law could be modified. The Communities Act has faced resistance from officials and voters in some of the 177 cities and towns covered by it. The rebellion started with Milton, which is being sued by the state for non-compliance after voters rejected its terms in February. The case has gone to the Supreme Judicial Court. As it stands now, though, a community that refuses to comply with the act risks losing state funding for such needs as road, bridge, water, and sewer work.
“We believe that there is some likelihood that the law will change in some way due to pushback from some of the other communities,” Canty said. “We didn’t want Plymouth to fundamentally change its character and makeup to comply with a law now that may change in two or three years to be more favorable.”
Regardless, Canty doubts there is enough demand to make direct rail service between Plymouth and Boston viable. At least not out of Cordage.
“The last few years it was in operation, it was barely doing anything,” he said. “You would’ve been hard pressed to reliably use that to get in and out of Boston. That’s why when I used to take the commuter rail into Boston years ago, I would go to Kingston. A lot of Plymouth residents, even if this station came back online, would find themselves doing the same thing…People say, if we send the trains they will come. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Mark Pothier can be reached at mark@plymouthindependent.org. One other thing: Unlike our news stories, this column includes the author’s opinions.