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Commuter rail ridership in southeast Massachusetts has surged since South Coast Rail service began in March.
On average, riders are taking 2,000 more trips each day on the MBTA’s Fall River/New Bedford line than they did last year, when the route was the Middleborough/Lakeville line.
The new trips amount to a 33% increase in ridership along the line, even as ridership across the MBTA commuter rail network overall decreased by 6%.
“I think it’s awesome,” said Seth Kaplan, a transit advocate with the Boston-based group TransitMatters. “There’s a demand there for people who once had transit to have it restored to them.”
The Light’s analysis was based on MBTA ridership data from April through September 2025, compared to the same period in 2024.
If the 2,000 new daily trips are coming mainly from South Coast riders, that would exceed previous estimates that the extension would generate 1,600 new daily trips.
“We want ridership to be as high as possible, given the investment the state made in this infrastructure,” said Chris Dempsey, a transit advocate who served as the state’s assistant secretary of transportation under Gov. Deval Patrick. “2,000 per day is a respectable and encouraging number.”
The long-awaited South Coast Rail extension added six new stations to the MBTA network, bringing passenger rail back to the region for the first time since 1958. Local leaders celebrated the extension as a way to connect residents to better jobs and schools to the north, as well as another way to attract tourists to the South Coast.
The latest ridership data offers some insight into how riders are using the service.
Who’s taking the T?
Local museum and business owners told The Light this spring that they saw an uptick in Bostonian visitors. But the data suggests that commuting workers, rather than leisure travelers, make up most of the increased ridership.
Weekday ridership increased by 36%, while weekend ridership increased by only 13%.
Ridership on Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day — federal holidays when many workers have the day off — looked more like what you’d see on a typical weekend day.
Even as peak tourism season ended, ridership remained at roughly the same levels through the fall.
The recent data only shows ridership on the Fall River/New Bedford Line as a whole. It doesn’t show exactly how many people were going to or from the new South Coast stations.
Is it helping traffic?
At the South Coast Rail kickoff celebration on March 24, Gov. Maura Healey touted the project’s benefits for drivers.
“It’s gonna help with traffic congestion, which is something that we’ve made a priority,” she said. “We want shorter commute times for both train riders and car drivers.”
A state environmental analysis from 2017 predicted that the project would shift some commutes from roads to rails, resulting in a reduction of 66,400 “vehicle miles traveled” each day. That’s equivalent to eliminating roughly 600 daily round-trip commutes between New Bedford and Boston.
But there’s no sign that the trains have taken a significant number of cars off the roads between the South Coast and Boston, according to The Light’s analysis of state traffic data.
Freeway traffic on Route 24 and Route 140 is about the same as last year.
That didn’t surprise transit advocates.
“The reality is, as much as we wish transit service would solve congestion, that alone is not sufficient,” said Dempsey, the former Patrick administration official.
The promises of less traffic on Route 24 may have been “overstated,” Dempsey said. He noted a concept in transportation called “induced demand” — when the government tries to relieve congestion by building a new road or train line, this can actually encourage more people to travel, resulting in more traffic and the same amount of congestion.
The traffic data isn’t perfect. A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation cautioned that traffic counts along this corridor are limited, and any findings from those counts would be “inconclusive.”
With that in mind, here’s what the data shows.
A traffic counter on Route 24, just south of the Harrison Boulevard exit in Avon, logged a slight increase in traffic during the past several months, compared to the same time last year. The average number of cars passing the counter each day between April and October increased 2% from 2024 to 2025.
Another traffic counter on Route 140 in Freetown showed a 1% increase in traffic during the same time period. That counter showed traffic was down by 2% in October compared to the previous year, but it’s not clear what could have caused the small drop.
It probably didn’t have anything to do with South Coast Rail — early MBTA data for October doesn’t show an increase in train riders compared to the previous month. It’s possible that ramp closures for the I-195/Route 18 interchange replacement could have a ripple effect on Route 140 traffic.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
2,000 additional riders a day is 10% BELOW projections of 2,280 average daily riders.
2,000 riders a day is nothing to sneeze at. We waited decades for this train. I’m so glad we finally have it.
It read expected 1600 riders. Where are you getting expected 2280 from?
I think it’s been a real boon – for my husband and me! We are Older Adults who like to day-trip to Boston for various events. We tend to go on weekends. I will say, though, that often the conductors do not charge us for the roundtrip tickets. And when that happens, we are not counted as passengers. I’m sure we aren’t the only ones. It is so reasonable, price-wise, that I want to pay!!
I’m so old that as a youngster in Fall River, 11 or so, circa 1955, I actually rode the train from FR to Boston. I’m thrilled that rail is back. I wish the ride from FR or NB could be faster – eventually the route will be revised – but I don’t understand folks who refuse to board, claiming it takes too long to get to Boston and they could do better by driving. Pardon me: If you want to sit in your car and put up with the traffic and the costs of gasoline and parking, good luck. Folks in FR and NB should thank their lucky stars that they had legislators and mayors who fought for years to restore rail service and who finally succeeded. I now live in RI and we are fortunate indeed to have MBTA service to Boston on the Providence Line. Finally, if you are going to an event at Gillette Stadium that is being served by the MBTA – a Patriots game, definitely, but also certain other dates like a big concert – for God’s sake take the train! M. Charles Bakst, Providence
Lower weekend use could be due to the very scanty schedules. Very difficult to attend an afternoon event and get home at a decent time.
This is great news. It shows that South Coast residents are changing commuting habits and adopting the train. It will likely help the New Bedford housing market over time as well, as buyers look for locations with train access commutable to Boston. This was the case when the train came into Plymouth and Kingston.
To make the train work there needs to be a late night train available to get home after attending events (Concerts, Theater, Sporting, Etc.).
2.3 billion dollars / 2000 average daily riders = $1,150,000 per rider in construction costs
1.1 billion dollars / 2000 average daily riders = $500,000 per rider in construction costs
No matter which number you go with (there is disagreement online as to how much the project cost), it’s hard to see how $500,000 to $1.15 million per rider is a good investment. For that price, we could have just bought land and built homes for these 2000 people closer to the Boston along the existing commuter rail lines. This project is still just a politically corrupt feast of tax dollars.