Somerville Community Path - History

History

The Boston and Lowell Railroad was chartered in 1830 and started service in 1835. The main line is now the MBTA Lowell Line.

From near Alewife on the Cambridge-Arlington border, to Lowell Street in Somerville, the Cambridge Linear Park and Somerville Community Path follow a railroad right-of-way that was laid out in 1870, and later known as the "Fitchburg Freight Cutoff", "Somerville Freight Cut-off", "Somerville Freight Spur", or Davis Square Freight Cut-Off. (In the 1980s and 1990s, after the Red Line extension, there remained an active freight spur from the Lowell Line to the "MaxPak" site, where the last industrial user went out of business in 2002.) The Boston and Lowell built the connection from its main line (at Somerville Junction, at modern-day Lowell Street) to the Lexington and Arlington Railroad (now mostly converted to the Minuteman Bikeway), which the Boston and Lowell had just acquired. Passenger service ran via this connection from 1870 until 1927. An extension connected to the Fitchburg Railroad main line, now the MBTA Fitchburg Line, between what are now Alewife Station and Brighton Street, Belmont.

After various corporate acquisitions and the decline of railroad service in the United States, the public Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority acquired the rights of way in 1973.

The existing paths from Alewife to Davis Square were created in 1985 by the MBTA, Cambridge, and Somerville, in conjunction with the extension of the MBTA Red Line from Harvard to Alewife. The Davis-to-Alewife segment of the Red Line was built using a cut-and-cover method. The surface landscaping for the path was added after subway tunnel construction was complete. Between Davis and Porter, the subway diverges from the surface street pattern, using a deep bore tunnel.

The path from Davis to Cedar Street was completed later.

Funding for the Cedar to Central portion was requested by the City of Somerville under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, but at the time was also included in the 2010 Boston MPO Transportation Improvement Plan for conventional matching state and federal funds.