Loss Of Worcester Express MBTA Train Will Be City Council Issue

WORCESTER, MA — One way or another, the Worcester City Council on Tuesday will likely take on the impending loss of the Heart To Hub MBTA express train to Boston.

Next Monday, new fall commuter rail schedules will begin, and the two daily Heart To Hub express trains will add five new stops, increasing travel times by about a half hour. Heart To Hub runs an inbound train leaving Worcester each morning at 6:30 a.m. and a daily outbound train leaving South Station at 4:55 p.m.

Keolis Commuter Services, which operates MBTA commuter rail trains, announced the change in a Sept. 11 news release, but did not explain the change. Keolis said Heart To Hub trains starting Oct. 2 would begin stopping at the Grafton, Westborough, Southborough, West Natick and Boston Landing stations during each daily inbound and outbound trip. Keolis still considers the Heart To Hub train "express."

Tracy Novick, a Worcester School Committee member, petitioned the Worcester City Council last week asking the city to intervene in the schedule change to preserve Heart To Hub service. Novick also asked councilors to work with Keolis and the MBTA to alert riders about major changes sooner in the future.

Novick told councilors she, along with many riders, catches the daily 6:30 a.m. Heart To Hub train because she needs to be in her office in Boston by 8 a.m. each day. The schedule change will mean she'll have to start taking the 5:45 a.m. train — a change so drastic it might convince some commuters to just drive. The service reduction would also be a major inconvenience for people moving to Worcester who commute to Boston by train, she said.

"It is not too much to ask that at least once a day there's a train that takes an hour or less from the second-largest city to the largest city in Massachusetts," Novick said.

District 2 Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson at the Sept. 19 meeting used her personal privilege to hold Novick's petition for one week, delaying a discussion about it. Mero-Carlson, whose district includes Union Station, did not explain the hold during the meeting, and did not immediately respond to a call for comment on Monday.

Novick's item will be back up for a discussion during Tuesday's meeting. The petition will come alongside a request by At-Large Councilor Moe Bergman, who chairs the council's transportation committee, that City Manager Eric Batista "make immediate efforts to communicate with the city's state delegation and all relevant parties relative to the need to restore the reported elimination of the direct Heart to Hub express train." Bergman was not available for comment Monday due to the Yom Kippur holiday.

The Heart To Hub service launched in spring 2016, connecting Boston and Worcester by a one-hour train ride for the first time in decades. The trains were eliminated following travel slowdowns associated with the pandemic in 2020, but returned in a new form in May 2022 with a stop at the Framingham station, as well as the Back Bay and Lansdowne stations before South Station in Boston.