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The opening of the Green Line Extension on Monday morning, after years of anticipation, was met with excitement from riders, and relief that years of construction are coming to an end.
The second, longer stretch of the Green Line Extension opened at 4:45 a.m. for an inaugural ride, finally connecting Medford and parts of Somerville and Cambridge to Boston after the idea was proposed in the 1990s and the MBTA broke ground in 2018.
An estimated 50,000 daily riders will use the new five-stop line to travel between Boston, Somerville and Medford, according to MBTA officials.
A who's who of Massachusetts politicians are ushering in the new line Monday morning, with the state's U.S. senators, some congresspeople, the governor, state lawmakers and mayors of cities connected by the line coming together for a celebration.
Among the riders leaving from the now-farthest Tufts/Medford stop Monday morning was Tufts University's mascot Jumbo the Elephant.
"I first heard about the new T when I was a prospective student at Tufts 25 years ago, they told me it would be done by the time I graduated," GLX rider Matt Collins said. "I took a ride to see what life would have been like."
Somerville resident and T rider Eric Hustvett said he lives near one of the stops and has watched it under construction for years. He is frustrated by how long the T took to come, he said, but excited that it's finally here.
As for how the long-anticipated ride was, "surprisingly smooth," he said.
Unaddressed in all the hoopla was the question of what the new line will do to the already shaky finances of the T. A 2019 study by the T’s Fiscal and Management Control Board, reported by Commonwealth magazine, stated that the annual cost of running the Green Line extension will be $44.6 million while the revenue will be just over $1 million. The fare recovery ratio (revenue divided by expenses) will be just 2.3 percent. The balance must come from the state’s taxpayers or other parts of the T’s budget.
