Green Line Extension reaches milestone

On March 21, Boston-area transit passengers rode for the first time on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s Green Line Extension (GLX) to Union Square in Somerville. The MBTA Green Line is the oldest transit line in North America.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was performed at Union Square Station, followed by another ribbon-cutting and a larger celebration at a new relocated Lechmere Station in Cambridge.

A longer extension of the Green Line, which will take passengers to Tufts University in Medford, is scheduled to open later this summer.

The design-build contract for the $2.3 billion GLX project was awarded in November 2017. Beginning in 2011, as Owner’s Representative, Larry Williamson and the late Steve Taylor provided independent oversight on all elements of the project and reported monthly to the MBTA and annually to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

During the initial stages of the program, our value engineering studies resulted in project savings of $25 million — a savings of $100 for each $1 spent on the study.

The MBTA Green Line Extension will provide service to areas that lacked fast and reliable public transit. It will support more than 50,000 additional transit trips per day, significantly reducing vehicle emissions in the Boston area.

Improvements to availability of transit service to the local communities have been studied for more than 60 years. The GLX project was finally authorized as an environmental mitigation project upon construction of the Central Artery or Boston’s Big Dig.