The trolley rumbles up to the Ashmont/Peabody Square platform on a shallow incline before it creaks and rattles to a stop at the eastern terminal of the Mattapan Line. The doors open squeakily to let out a stream of passengers.

New riders heading toward Mattapan take their place. The car shudders into movement and screeches slowly around the looped track, descending swiftly onto its route again.

State Rep. Brandy Fluker-Reid, who represents parts of Dorchester, Mattapan, and the town of Milton, said the Mattapan Hi-Speed Line, which runs on a 2.6-mile loop through those neighborhoods, is like a “roller coaster.” She wasn’t the only one with that thought in mind.

“I’ve never been a fan of it. It just looks outdated,” said Chichi Hernandez, an employee at Sweet Life Bakery and Cafe in Lower Mills. She used to commute on the trolley 10 years ago from Ashmont to the Milton Station stop. Today, she drives. “It makes me a little nervous.”

The Mattapan Line is the last MBTA rapid transit line still using Presidents’ Conference Committee streetcars, which were introduced in the city in 1937. The last of these vehicles on the Green Line were retired in 1985, but the Mattapan trolleys have been running continuously for more than 80 years and are the oldest PCC cars still in service in the country.

The MBTA laid out significant changes planned for the Mattapan Line in March 2018, starting with a refurbishment of the remaining serviceable PCC cars. Alongside these developments, the T introduced proposals in 2019 to bring the line’s eight stations up to ADA standards and revamp infrastructure while laying the groundwork to bring Type 9 light rail cars currently used on the Green Line to the Mattapan Line within the next 8 to 10 years. 

Most recently, in March 2024, engineers were seeking permits to drill “exploratory borings” along the tracks to prepare the transition to Type 9 cars, which require less maintenance and can transport 212 passengers per car (PCCs can carry up to 130 riders). A year later, those Type 9s are nowhere in sight.

The project is in its eighth year this month. Only two of the nine PCC cars have been redone, far behind schedule.

Legislators, including Fluker-Reid and state Sen. Bill Driscoll, and some of their constituents are frustrated with how long plans are taking, coupled with a seeming lack of explanation from the T.

“It’s clearly not a priority for the MBTA. That is evident in the fact that [...] we don’t know what’s going on,” Driscoll said. “If workers were actually being posted and tasked with doing the work, I have a hard time believing that it would take this long.”

The MBTA invested $127 million into refurbishments and the transformation combined, a total that has not changed since 2018. With potential changes in funding availability and the consistent project delays, Driscoll wondered whether the ongoing projects will cost hundreds of millions of dollars or if the money still exists.

“It’s a real concern because of how long these delays are continuing. That money could go elsewhere or evaporate.” Driscoll said. “I think the T really needs to be the one to answer that question.”

When plans were first announced, the MBTA aimed to complete refurbishments on its current trolley cars by 2020. Driscoll, whose constituency resides in Milton, said the MBTA “reset” its timeline on the project in 2022 following delays caused by the pandemic, unforeseen lead paint removal, and the complexity of the refurbishment. The first revamped trolley went into service in spring 2022, followed by a second in the summer. The T promised a new trolley every five to six months, but the remaining seven have not been updated.

“[In 2022], there were MBTA officials saying, ‘We know we need to repair the relationship here with the ridership and constituency and elected officials and that we haven’t lived up to commitments. Going forward, this is the reset,’” Driscoll said. “It has not happened.”

When Driscoll requested an update on the refurbishments after the Neponset River flooded Milton Station in February and disabled two trolleys, he did not receive an immediate response.

Within the reset, the MBTA promised quarterly updates for legislators whose constituencies live along the line and biannual public community meetings. The MBTA hosted its last public meeting on the transformation project in June 2023 and does not have another scheduled in 2025. Both Driscoll and Fluker-Reid confirmed they last met with the organization in June 2024 and have not confirmed a new meeting.

Fluker-Reid recalled that the MBTA took legislators on-site to see trolley refurbishments in action at the start of the reset, compared to the current lack of updates.

“In that meeting and that site visit, we received quality information in terms of what was happening,” she said. “It seems as though our information became less clear as the project became further behind in timeline.”

Before her time in office, Fluker-Reid said there was talk in community meetings as early as 2012 about the possibility of Type 9 light rail cars replacing the PCCs. The timeline then was also 8 to 10 years for the project. With continual delays, Fluker-Reid said, she and some of her constituents now wonder whether refurbishing the trolleys is still worth the time or money. New parts for the trolleys are difficult to obtain because of the age of the vehicles.

“The community has been of the impression that these [Type 9] lines would be here [...] And even when having done the reset, they still have not met the deadlines that they articulated,” she said. “It’s really hard to build community trust and establish credibility when they say that this is the new timeline, and then they fail to meet the benchmarks of said timeline.”

Former Lower Mills resident Linda Lewi, once a regular commuter on the Mattapan trolley from the Milton Station stop, said she felt that upgrading the line was a “second thought” to the MBTA. When the T demolished the decrepit Adams Street stairwell at Milton Station in 2023 to begin making the station ADA compliant, Milton community leaders expressed long-held frustration on how little the MBTA had committed to improving the stop; they claimed the stairwell had been in disrepair for a decade and the demolition plan would only make poor conditions worse. The town had sued the MBTA the year prior on the issue.

“The MBTA clearly had absolutely no intention to do anything,” Lewi said, calling conversations at community meetings “circular.” “And nobody can ever give a good reason why it’s so slow.”

In its last community meeting – in June 2023 – on the Mattapan transformation project, the MBTA said that an accessible sloped walkway was in “early planning and design.” The old entrance to the stairwell on Adams Street remains unchanged today, with access blocked off. Passengers have to walk across the neighboring Extra Space Storage parking lot to reach the platforms from Adams Street.

Regardless of setbacks with the transformation, some riders have fond memories of the 1940s PCCs. Dorchester resident Kathy Glynn remembered hopping on the trolleys for fun or to get around the city while growing up in Jamaica Plain. She was also open to a newer system for the Mattapan Line.

“The important thing is that there’s a connectivity and that the schedule is such that it runs frequently enough,” she said, adding that there needed to be enough infrastructure at stops for passengers. “Other than that, I don’t have a problem if they change the style.”

Robert Cromwell, who is 78, has been riding the Mattapan trolley for as long as he can remember. As for getting him to his destination, he says the current cars work well enough.

“I look at the things that I can change, the things I can’t change,” he said. “If I didn’t like it, then what would be one of the reasons? Is it not going to my stop? Yeah, it goes to Mattapan Station. Is it frequent? Pretty much.”

As project delays have piled up, Fluker-Reid and Driscoll have continually questioned the T on what will happen to the Mattapan Line. Before his more recent update request, Driscoll wrote to MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng and MassDOT Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nut in February 2024, asking whether the T was committed to completing Mattapan Line-related projects, because communication had returned to “relative silence.” He said he did not get a clarifying response. 

In response to the Dorchester Reporter’s request for an update, the MBTA wrote that it was “committed to delivering safe, reliable, and improved service for the public across all our modes.” 

The statement continued, “We fully and deeply understand how important the Mattapan Line is to the community and have been assessing the Mattapan Transformation effort to date to determine how best to move this project forward. We thank the community for their patience in allowing us the necessary time to ensure the next public meeting will provide sufficient information that demonstrates our commitment.”

During her first term, Fluker-Reid sat on the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee. During an oversight hearing in 2023, she invited Eng to ride and experience the trolley to highlight the importance of the ongoing projects. Though an MBTA liaison said that Eng would be open to taking the trolley, he has not yet accepted the offer.

Fluker-Reid noted that Mattapan and Dorchester residents often feel “forgotten” by large organizations like the MBTA because of the slow, uncertain progress on projects meant to benefit predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“We all want what’s best for our community,” she said. “It’s an outdated system that is somewhat dilapidated; it does not meet the needs of modern day travel and transit; and this community deserves and needs something better.”

This story derives from a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.