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New commuter stop really gets people going
BOSTON -- With the stairs of the overpass still wet from powerwashing, the new commuter rail station off Pleasant Street opened for business, the Boston Globe reported.
''We've been waiting for years,'' said Katy Shander-Reynolds, who added that she and her family first heard about the proposed commuter rail station when they moved to town in 1993.
''Every time they would predict an opening date, we said, `Yeah, we're going to be on the first train.'''
Delayed for years, and then delayed again this summer, the Ashland commuter rail stop has become a reality for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Worcester line Saturday morning.
The Ashland station is part of a $14.2 million rail expansion project that included two other stations in Southborough and Westborough.
Starting today, the Worcester line is offering 10 scheduled round trips on weekdays from Ashland to South Station, including eastbound trains scheduled to leave Ashland at 6:38, 7:08, 7:37, 8:07, and 8:45 each weekday morning. Five round trips a day are scheduled for weekends.
The parking lot, with 675 spaces, will cost $1 a day on weekdays and will be free on weekends.
The MBTA began commuter rail service from Worcester to Boston in 1994, according to T spokesman Brian Pedro, and added stops in Westborough, Southborough, and Ashland this summer.
It took that long partly because the T had to work out logistical problems with CSX, the railroad company that owns most of the tracks and controls dispatching, Pedro said.
''We're excited and happy, and relieved that our Worcester commuter rail expansion program is finally complete,'' Pedro said. ''This fills in the last gap.''
As the first day of the new service was a Saturday, most of the 15 or so people there for the first inbound train weren't commuting to work.
Mark Shander-Reynolds planned to take three of his children - Corey, 15, Aidan, 7, and Liam, 21/2 - on the train to visit family in North Cambridge, while Katy Shander-Reynolds was planning to drive to Cambridge later in the day with daughter Marya, 4, and niece Brook Shander, 4.
Though they're excited about the train, neither plans to use it for work: She is a Spanish teacher at Pincushion Hill Montessori School in Ashland; he is as a chemist in Billerica. They said they would like to see connections around the outskirts of Boston - a wheel to connect the spokes. There were about as many people on hand to greet the train as to take it.
As the train prepared to leave, Larry McInnes, Mary Santerre, and their children, Noel, 11, and Cara, 9, posed for pictures in front of one of the cars, but didn't get on.
McInnes, a Web designer in Ashland, said ''civic pride'' brought the family to the station.
Santerre, whose irregular schedule as a nurse in Boston does not lend itself to the commuter rail schedule, said she recently took the children to Boston from the new station in Southborough, and predicted the family would use the Ashland station to get to the sites of Boston.
Selectman John Ellsworth and his wife, Margot, were also on hand to greet the train as it pulled in from Worcester.
''It's just nice to see it finally here,'' Ellsworth said. ''It's going to change this town dramatically.''
Margot Ellsworth, a real estate agent, predicted that the commuter rail station would increase property values.
''We're just thrilled because it's going to do good things for the value of the town,'' she said.
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
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