Residents who live near South Coast Rail facilities complained about unbearable nighttime noise, litter, and service disruptions at a public meeting with MBTA executives in Fall River on Thursday.
The noise complaints dominated the meeting. Trains sometimes idle loudly all night at the Weaver’s Cove layover in Fall River, residents said — some likened it to the sound of an airplane right outside their home. Horn blasts have also interrupted their sleep, they said.
“It was a quiet residential area, and you came in and destructed all of our lives,” one woman said.
MBTA General Manager Phil Eng and other top officials didn’t have immediate solutions for the restless crowd of a few dozen people. But the executives promised they would work on the problems and come back soon.
“I assure you that we will show some action and we will take this to heart,” he told the crowd.
Thursday night’s meeting was only the latest episode of South Coast Rail failing to live up to expectations.
The new commuter rail line experienced serious disruptions during some of the first few weekends after it opened on March 24. Trains were cancelled and delayed dozens of times on Easter and Patriots’ Day weekend, and some riders reported being stranded for hours.
The poor service left riders frustrated and confused — how could a train line decades in the making be so unreliable, so soon after opening?
Warm weather on Thursday caused mechanical problems that delayed some trips along the line by an hour or more. Executives explained that the sudden temperature swing could warp the rails, which required them to slow trains down to avoid derailments.
One attendee who took a 3:42 p.m. train from South Station should have gotten to Fall River by 5:21 — just before the 5:30 meeting. But he said he arrived so late that he missed most of the two-hour meeting.
Service has improved. Trains still experience minor delays on a daily basis and cancellations still happen occasionally, but an MBTA spokesperson said last week that the line had gone five straight weeks with no weekend cancellations. This past weekend made it six weeks.
Representatives for the MBTA and Keolis, the contractor that runs the MBTA’s commuter trains, previously said staffing shortages caused the disruptions. They said Keolis had hired enough new staff by the time South Coast Rail opened, but there weren’t enough employees trained on the new line to cover for staff absences.
Executives pointed to statistics showing improvements in service since those April weekends.
“We worked around the clock to staff those trains,” MBTA Chief Operating Officer Ryan Coholan said.
None of the trains on the Fall River/New Bedford line were cancelled last week, charts showed. Eight cancelled trains the week before were because of a fallen tree, a trespasser strike, and mechanical problems — not staffing.
In an interview, Coholan said the MBTA continues to work with Keolis to keep training more railroad workers, despite difficult hiring conditions and extensive training required to onboard new employees.
Keolis Chief of Staff Alana Olsen Westwater declined to answer any questions from a Light reporter at Thursday’s meeting.
The MBTA has been slow to share data on the disruptions with The Light. The agency took four weeks to respond to The Light’s data request, even though the state’s public records law normally requires a response within about two weeks. Data the agency provided to The Light on Thursday only runs through the end of April and doesn’t explain the causes of the disruptions.
Noisy trains and dirty facilities
A few residents of New Bedford and Freetown spoke up, but most people who took the microphone were from Fall River neighborhoods near the city’s station and layover facility. They said trains idled loudly all night, keeping them awake.
One woman who lives near the facility said she had a decibel meter that measured 65 to 75 decibels of sound in her home at night, equivalent to the volume of a normal conversation or vacuum cleaner.
“It’s harmful to my health, to my sleep, to my ability to work, and to the value of my home,” she said.
The vibration was also irritating residents. One woman said it shook her whole house.
MBTA executives said they would look into ways to mitigate sound and vibrations, adding that they’ve had success with certain strategies in other communities. Coholan mentioned a 30-foot wall in Scituate and trees used in other areas to absorb the sound waves.
“We have ideas that we’re still brainstorming,” he said. “We want to make sure that if we implement something, that we can actually mitigate what you’re looking for.”
Residents complained about the “hooty-hoot” of train horns sounding past midnight and before dawn. One Freetown resident who lives near the tracks said he only gets three hours of quiet each night.
MBTA executives explained that the horn blasts are federally mandated at railroad crossings, so it’s not up to the MBTA. They said cities and towns can apply to the Federal Railroad Administration to set up “quiet zones.” Some frustrated residents said they had talked to their local officials and were told that there may not be funding available to do that.
A few residents spoke up about trash around the layover and station, saying it attracted enormous rats. Executives said every facility has a rodent mitigation plan with traps “at every corner.” Residents scoffed, saying the rats are too big for the traps. Eng said they would look into it, citing his past experience as a New York City transit executive.
The MBTA’s promises
Eng became popular with Bostonians after he made significant progress fixing the city’s crumbling subway system. They have chased him down for selfies, nicknamed him “Train Daddy Eng,” and even gave him a standing ovation at the most recent State of the Commonwealth address — according to a glowing profile of him that appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine last month.
The general manager was far from Boston’s warm embrace on Thursday. South Coast residents grumbled, huffed, and tapped their feet throughout the meeting. Sometimes they shouted out their frustrations while executives were speaking.
But Eng managed to prevent frustrations from boiling over. He listened patiently as a parade of angry, sleep-deprived residents took the mic and tore into his agency. Then, he promised that his team would start working on solutions immediately.
“Give us a chance to come back,” he said. “We will come back and we will talk to all of you openly about what we can do.”
The crowd gently applauded Eng’s assurances.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
I don’t want to be mean or crass but in regards to people complaining about the noise, or even the horn… for my entire life I’ve been awoken by car alarms, lawn mowers, loud vehicles, and more… I will simply say get over it. It’s discourse for the sake of complaining. Loud noises suck, sure, but that’s life.
Amen to that.
We are talking about locomotives and high decibel noise they project out in the area several times per day that studies have shown damage hearing and exasperate health problems, and shorten one’s lifespan. We are not talking about a neighbor cutting his grass a half hour every other week! This is a major public health issue.
Sorry, I disagree. I love hearing the train whistle. I traveled to and from Florida 15 times by train, I love it. “All aboard”. I think you have more worries from second hand smoke, even if in the past. That shortens your lifespan.
Try living in Harper’s Ferry West Virginia, the trains and horns right through the night since the expansion of trains across America.
Take note of the low turnout of citizens complaining, the government will subvert the complaints of the few, in order to promote the rights of the majority.
The irony of us begging for a train to boston then complaining about it. This is why we’re poor, uneducated and are looked down upon by Boston and the rest of the state.
You may put yourself in that category, I was born and raised in New Bedford and proud of it. Graduated with honors, worked all my life, never had assistance. Get yourself together, you may be undereducated. Put your big boy briefs on and get on the train……….otherwise you too, complain!
I’m for the train FYI. Born and raised in the South Coast and I love it as well. We are still dumb though.
Give it 6 months.
It’s just a matter of time before the same complaining (and if it’s not this it’s “Why doesn’t The State do anything for US?”) will line up for a buyout.
Papa Eng has the decency to show up, that’s leadership.