By Nathan Metcalf, Reporter Correspondent
It has been seven years since the MBTA announced a 10-year plan to phase out the vintage Presidents’ Conference Car (PCC) trolleys that are still running on the Mattapan High Speed Line. Now more than 80 years old, the orange-colored cars that serve thousands of customers each day have their detractors, including T officials who pledged to replace them with the newer “Type 9” vehicles that currently run on the Green Line.
But the 1940s-era vehicles also have a dedicated fan base, including transit history buffs and photographers who make treks to Boston just to ride and document a ride along the line’s 2.6-mile stretch from Ashmont to Mattapan Square.
On New Year’s Eve afternoon last week, 25-year-old William Whynacht of Norwood steadied his a Minolta SR-7 film camera to record his trolley ride. “I wanted to ride them before they’re gone,” he told a reporter.
While he conceded the historic character of the trolleys as compelling and worth preserving, he added that doing so only makes sense if maintenance remains practical. “If it becomes impossible or too expensive,” he said, “then replacement makes more sense,” he said.
Last month, at the first public meeting in two years focused on the trolley line’s status, MBTA officials acknowledged that the project announced in 2019 remains essentially stuck in neutral— at about 15 percent design. When first announced by the Baker administration, the plan, based on studies that began in 2017, estimated a $200 million overhaul would be needed to make improvements to the right-of-way and the eight stations along the route.
The agency has committed to fully refurbish each of the PCC cars that were then still in service – at a cost of roughly $1 million each. Since 2019, rehab has been completed on four of the vehicles and a fifth is currently being worked on at an MBTA facility in Everett.
Last month’s meeting — and the revelation that the MBTA doesn’t have the funds in hand to prepare the line to carry the larger, heavier Type 9s— has rekindled a debate over whether the line should be modernized or just preserved with the current PCC fleet.
To try to get a sense of what trolley riders actually think, The Reporter spent several hours riding and speaking with passengers, whose views ranged from sharp criticism of the World War II-era vehicles to deep affection for them as symbols of two iconic sections of Boston — Dorchester and Mattapan— and Milton, the suburb next door.
Thatiana Bellamy, a 29-year-old Mattapan resident who rides the trolley on weekends on her way downtown, was blunt. Compared with other MBTA lines, she said, the Mattapan Line feels outdated and unwelcoming.
“This one is the worst one,” said Bellamy. She pointed to dim lighting, the lack of on-board visual stop announcements, and difficulty navigating crowded cars during rush hour. Newer vehicles, she argued, could improve accessibility and change how people treat the space.
“If it looks newer and cleaner, maybe people will treat it better,” she said.
Sean Staffiery, 60, who lives in downtown Boston andrides the trolley regularly to get to work in Dorchester, said he appreciates the history of the PCC cars but added, “If upgrading makes more sense for everybody, then that’s the way to go.”
Others expressed more conditional views, with some noting that recent refurbishments have strengthened the case for keeping the vintage trolleys in service.
Owen Murphy, 23, of Milton,(above) who rides the trolley line nearly every day to get to work, said the cars that have been refurbished have made a noticeable difference.
“They’ve already started to restore the old trolley cars, like the one we’re on right now,” he said. “It’s really improved the experience and kept the integrity of the historical features alive. I think investing more money into saving the current trolleys, rather than replacing them with new ones, is more important.”
Jovanny Joseph, 21, of Mattapan, who frequently uses the trolley to connect to the Red Line at Ashmont, described a similar attachment. He compared the trolley to a “teddy bear,” familiar and dependable, and said he has never experienced a major breakdown when he needed to use the line.
For some longtime riders, the argument extends beyond reliability or cost.
Laurie Sheridan, 80, a Milton retiree who has ridden the trolley for more than three decades, said the line has served as a social anchor in her life and factored into her decision to move nearby in the early 1990s.
“It’s neighborhood glue,” she said, describing the trolley as a rare public space where people of different ages, races, and backgrounds regularly interact. While she acknowledged accessibility challenges, particularly at Ashmont, she said breakdowns have been rare in her experience.
The various rider perspectives are mirrored in the disagreement apparent among transit advocates.
Above, passengers prepare to board a PCC car at Ashmont station on Dec. 31, 2025. Nathan Metcalf photos
Caitlin Allen-Connelly, executive director of the advocacy group TransitMatters, says that preserving the PCC fleet risks locking riders into inferior service.
“The Mattapan Line as a museum is an injustice,” she said. While acknowledging the refurbishing of several PCC cars, she said the process is slow, expensive, and unlikely to match the reliability or accessibility of a modern fleet. Type 9 cars, she argues, are fully accessible, offer higher capacity and are better suited to withstand winter weather and long-term wear.
Wrapping up her view, Allen-Connelly said, “We should not be designing a future system around vehicles that require custom parts and specialized maintenance.”
But Bradley Clarke, a transit historian and president of the Boston Street Railway Association, disagrees with her. He argues that refurbished PCC cars, particularly those rebuilt with propulsion systems from Brookville Equipment Corp., have proven reliable in other North American cities and could continue operating on the Mattapan Line for decades to come.
He noted that El Paso, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Toronto are among the transit systems that continue to use vintage cars regularly, and added, “Don’t fix what ain’t broke.”
He said the PCCs currently in service are not museum pieces but functioning vehicles. Replacing them, he warned, could introduce new technical problems, particularly at Ashmont, where tight curves and terminal design may not easily accommodate the larger Green Line cars.
MBTA officials have stated that Ashmont station would need to be modified to accommodate the Type 9s. They note that studies indicate that the newer vehicles could still use the Ashmont loop.
Clarke also argued that many accessibility concerns stem from station design rather than the vehicles themselves, noting that mini-high platforms already meet federal standards. In his view, continuing to refurbish the existing fleet would be cheaper and faster than waiting years for a full conversion to Green Line equipment.
“You’re substituting one difficult situation for another,” he said.
As the MBTA weighs its next steps, the local divide is apparent. For riders and advocates alike, the disagreement is less about nostalgia than about which risks about time and money the region is willing to take, and about who bears the consequences if the long-deferred plan to transition the line never comes to fruition.
