Commuter Rail service from Wareham to Boston could begin as soon as the proper authorities give the green light, according to Selectman Alan Slavin, who has been working on bringing the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s Commuter Rail to town for more than a decade. 

Wareham already has most of the necessary infrastructure to support a Commuter Rail stop, Slavin explained, and it’s just a matter of making the decision to extend year-round service beyond Middleborough, which is currently the closest stop to Wareham.

The decision is in the hands of Mass DOT’s Rail and Transit Division, Slavin said.

“I cannot give anybody an answer whether or not this will happen,” he said during a June 15 Board of Selectmen meeting. “It’s not part of the South Coast Rail project — it’s a separate piece.”

The South Coast Rail project, which is currently underway, is an effort to extend Commuter Rail service to Fall River and Taunton as extensions off the existing Middleborough line. Phase one of the South Coast Rail project has a budget of $1 billion. (It is part of an $8 billion 5-year Capital Investment Plan).*

Extending year-round service from Middleborough to Wareham and parts of Cape Cod — either Buzzards Bay or Bourne — is a separate project that has not yet been approved. The Cape Cod Rail Study, which is evaluating the potential of such an extension, is set to be published later this year.

Slavin said trains from Buzzards Bay to Boston would take 91 minutes — and a train from Wareham to Boston would be 5-8 minutes less than that.

Thomas Cahir, the administrator of the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority and an advocate of extending Commuter Rail service to the Cape, said that Wareham has been pushing for service for a long time.

“If Buzzards Bay is ever successful in getting the trains — if the Cape is ever successful in getting Commuter Rail, Wareham will have that opportunity for sure,” Cahir said, noting that Wareham is on the way to both Buzzards Bay and Bourne. 

Slavin said he believes the decision will ultimately come down to the operating costs of extending the Commuter Rail. Almost no rail transit in Massachusetts is profitable, he explained, which means it must be subsidized. For that reason, he said the decision will likely hinge on how much service would cost per rider and how much of a subsidy would be required.

Cahir noted that the covid-19 pandemic has caused some setbacks.

“All transportation across the state and also the country has seen significant reduction in ridership, whether it’s busses, marine transportation or rapid transit,” he said. Some services have returned to 2019 ridership levels, but Cahir said that isn’t the case for Commuter Rail. 

“The ridership on Commuter Rail statewide has caused, I think, MassDOT to take a look at their Commuter Rail service across the commonwealth,” he said. “So although we recognize the benefits of having Commuter Rail options down to Cape Cod, elsewhere in the state, Commuter Rail isn’t doing as good as they would like to see it happen.”

With that in mind, Cahir said, the pandemic was “a little bit of an impediment” to getting “any imminent activity providing that service to the Cape.” He added that he met with Transportation Secretary Jamey Tesler this week to advocate for extending service to the Cape.

Cahir also thanked Wareham for leading the push to get Cape Cod Commuter Rail service. 

“I appreciate the great work that Wareham has done, the foresight that they have displayed in expressing the need to expand that Middleborough service for many years,” he said.

Slavin isn’t new to pushing for a Wareham Commuter Rail stop. He’s been doing it for years. 

“We don’t really have any way of forcing this other than just to lobby,” Slavin said. With that in mind, he added, “We’ll lobby.”

In Slavin’s words, a commuter rail stop is “something that would be great for the town.” Slavin said an expansion of service would be particularly useful now, as many people are leaving Boston and relocating to Wareham and other parts of the South Coast because “land’s so much cheaper.”

During the June 15 Selectmen’s meeting, Slavin said Mass DOT’s decision is the only real hold up: “It can be, actually, activated at any time if they feel like it because everything is already in place.”

In terms of a timeline, Slavin was blunt. 

“We could possibly have Commuter Rail as early as this fall, or it could be all the way out to 2023, or the MBTA could decide could decide that the cost [...] would be too high for the accounting department at the MBTA to actually pull the trigger do it,” he said. “It’s really up in the air.”

For now, Wareham residents hoping for Commuter Rail service will need to be patient.

“We’re trying hard,” Slavin said.

*Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the South Coast Rail project is part of an $8 billion 5-year Capital Investment Plan. Phase one of the South Coast Rail project has a budget of $1 billion.