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The state officials behind South Coast Rail want you to know how many safety systems they need to test before passenger trains can start running next spring.
At one inconspicuous railroad crossing next to a hardware store in Berkley, there are more than 500 tests to complete. The tests must show that every safety function works, and that they work in sequence.
“If you find a problem at test 371, you stop,” said Ryan Coholan, the MBTA’s chief operating officer. “You start all over again.”
Coholan brought The Light’s reporters on a tour of South Coast Rail’s unopened New Bedford branch to demonstrate the complexity of the new project’s safety systems. The basic infrastructure of the project has been complete for months — tracks are laid, stations are built. But trains can’t carry passengers until an extensive series of safety tests are complete.
“The testing involved for any new build — it’s so detailed,” he said. “It has to be.”
Some tests are done with devices that sit on the tracks to simulate the presence of a train, by connecting the two sides the way a locomotive’s axles would. Others use actual locomotives like the ones that will one day carry passengers along the route.
Those test trains began running in June and can travel as fast as 79 mph. The day of The Light’s tour, a locomotive was scheduled to run the entire length of the route four times.
This testing will continue until next spring. After delaying the project twice in the last year, the MBTA has announced May 2025 as its new launch date.
During the tour, officials spoke in depth about the safety testing ahead of them. They said little about the months of delays behind them. For over a month, The Light has been asking the MBTA for an interview with General Manager Phil Eng to discuss the reasons for the delays, but the agency has not yet made Eng available
Eng made a half-hour appearance on WBUR’s Radio Boston on Friday. He spoke about new fare payment options and improvements to service in Greater Boston, but he was not asked about South Coast Rail.
Along the tracks
Laying the tracks and building the stations was the easy part, Coholan said. The safety testing takes time, he said, and it can’t be rushed.
Since the MBTA’s locomotive was busy with safety testing on the day of The Light’s tour, Coholan invited reporters onto the tracks in a modified SUV with an extra set of wheels that run on the tracks like a train. The vehicle started at the railroad crossing in Berkley and headed south toward New Bedford.
For safety on The Light’s tour, the modified SUV’s speed was limited to 20 mph.
The trains’ top speed of 79 mph is a big change for the area, Coholan said. The freight trains that people are used to seeing on these tracks move at only 10 mph and come just a few times a week, so some people walk or drive their ATVs along the tracks. If they hear a train, they just get out of the way.
Coholan stressed that it’s no longer safe to be near the tracks, now that trains will be moving faster than legal interstate highway speeds. By the time you hear the train and turn around, it’s too late to get out of the way, he said. It can take a commuter rail train a mile to come to a full stop from that speed — and he knows from experience. He used to operate freight trains before he became the MBTA’s COO.
“I’ve hit four people over my career,” he said. “Not one of them would have been prevented by me trying to stop.”
It’s not only humans the MBTA is looking out for — Eastern Box turtles cross these tracks and sometimes get stuck on their backs. When the tracks were rebuilt for the commuter rail, the MBTA added tunnels that turtles can use to go under the tracks.
“They work!” Coholan said. He wasn’t sure how turtles knew to use them, but they do.
The view along the route was mundane to the human eye — reporters saw mostly trees, bushes, fencing, and gravel along the northern part of the route, then some more familiar sights when the tour entered New Bedford.
But as future commuters turn their attention to a smartphone or laptop, computer systems will constantly analyze data from every foot of track, every second.
The automatic train control systems completed testing a few weeks ago. These systems detect trains on the track, sending real-time information to engineers and conductors about the conditions around them.
Finishing that testing was a key milestone that allowed the MBTA to hand off dispatching duties for South Coast Rail test trains to Keolis, the contractor that operates the agency’s commuter rail system.
Now, crews are about 10% of the way through testing positive train control, a set of more advanced systems that became federal requirements in 2018. Antennas along the route send instructions to the operator, such as how fast to go and when to brake. They can send a signal that stops the train if an operator doesn’t respond to the instructions.
Positive train control has over 800 functions, all of which have to be tested. As that’s being done, the MBTA is also training crews on how to operate the new line.
Each engineer spends five days riding the train back and forth along the route. When they go home at night, they practice drawing the tracks they just rode. They must be able to draw a detailed map of each interlocking from memory before they’re allowed to drive a train through it.
The train operators are also learning the physical characteristics of the route.
“They know, ‘When I pass this house, that’s when I need to apply my brakes,’” Coholan said.
This round of testing is scheduled to wrap up by the end of January. Then, regulators from the Federal Railroad Administration will get their say. They will watch as the project simulates passenger service — running trains between stations on schedule, opening doors as if to let passengers on and off.
The project can only begin carrying passengers when federal regulators are satisfied. MBTA officials expect that will take 90 days, setting the project up for a spring launch.
Inside the bungalow
The area around the railroad crossing in Berkley is also an “interlocking,” where trains can switch among four tracks in up to 35 different ways.
“This is a very sophisticated location,” Coholan said.
There are dozens of these interlockings along the South Coast Rail route, each with their own names. This one in Berkley is Myricks Interlocking, named for the neighborhood around it. Farther south, Solar Interlocking sits across from a solar farm and Glory Interlocking has a view of New Bedford’s Old Glory Tower.
Each interlocking is controlled by a bungalow — at Myricks, the bungalow is a deep green metal box about the size and shape of a shipping container. It’s climate-controlled, watertight, and monitored 24/7 by CCTV cameras. Its systems are inspected every 30 days.
Inside, it looks a lot like an IT closet. Computer operated-systems line the walls. Each wire and device is labeled. But you won’t see a wifi modem, because these systems are insulated from the external internet to prevent cyberattacks.
Coholan stepped inside and pointed to a screen with a model of the interlocking. Dispatchers in Boston decide where trains can go, he explained, but this bungalow houses the systems that execute those commands.
In emergencies, the interlocking can be operated and trains can be dispatched from the bungalow. A wall of devices called lightning arrestors operates like a surge protector to keep lighting strikes from damaging the computer systems. The bungalow also houses a set of backup batteries, just in case.
“We always have a plan B, and a plan C, and a plan D,” Coholan said.
In the cities and towns
This project is bringing changes to the South Coast that extend far beyond the tracks.
The MBTA has been working with first responders in the cities and towns along the new route to prepare for new emergency scenarios that trains could cause.
“Some people want to plan for, the train flips over and a spaceship shows up,” Coholan said. “But as I do this longer and longer, you focus on the emergencies that do happen.”
The agency has been running drills for scenarios like collisions at crossings or utility problems. Last summer, Freetown-area responders practiced responding to a hypothetical situation where a train had hit a disabled vehicle on the tracks. In another recent drill, crews used Gatorade to simulate fuel leaking from a punctured tank, Coholan said.
These hands-on drills are great, but they take lots of time and resources, he said, so the agency is also distributing written education materials to local public safety agencies.
As Coholan drove the modified SUV through a railroad crossing in the Kings Highway area, he pointed out that other traffic signals around the crossing will start to clear cars from the area before the gates close to prevent backups.
Fox, the project’s outreach director, chimed in from the back seat to point out that New Bedford has been working on new “transit-oriented” zoning plans to redevelop areas around the stations, like Kings Highway.
“Congratulations to New Bedford on that plan,” she said.
The new zoning is aimed at encouraging walkable, mixed use development near the stations. Some city councilors have raised concerns that the districts don’t require enough parking. City planning officials say they plan to bring the new zoning to the City Council for approval next month.
A spokesperson stayed close throughout The Light’s visit to the South Coast Rail line. Although several railroad workers and project officials were present, the spokesperson specified early in the visit that only comments by Coholan and Jean Fox, the project’s outreach director, were allowed to be on-the-record.
When asked about the reasons for South Coast Rail’s multiple delays, Coholan said it’s all about the “order of operations.”
“You build a house, you can’t build a roof without building the walls,” he said.
He said a bad winter can slide a timeline significantly. The Light asked him if a bad winter was why South Coast Rail was delayed.
After advice from the spokesperson, Coholan did not answer directly.
“I think the MBTA is delivering a project that everyone should have confidence in and be proud of,” Coholan said.
As the tour came to an end, Coholan said the MBTA is excited to start service next year. New commuter rail lines aren’t very common anymore, he said.
He also acknowledged the public skepticism around the MBTA’s new May 2025 launch date.
“That date, a year in advance, is really tough to nail down,” he said.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
Nice to see the coverage. We need more of it! Good open information is of value to the communities from top to bottom .