Bay Colony Rail Trail
The Bay Colony Rail Trail is a partially completed rail trail in Newton, Needham, Dover, and Medfield, Massachusetts. It has open and when completed it will be. It is made up of 4 rail trails, the Newton Upper Falls Greenway, the Needham Rail Trail, the Dover Greenway, and the Medfield Rail Trail. Named for the former Bay Colony Railroad, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority owns the right of way and leases the trail to the municipalities. Most of the BCRT was once the Millis Branch, except the Upper Falls Greenway which was once the Charles River Branch Railroad that connected to the Highland Branch. The Bay Colony Rail Trail Association is a 501 nonprofit dedicated to the dedicated to the development, maintenance and promotion of the BCRT.
History
By 1958, the Highland Branch was abandoned, though freight service on the Upper Falls rail line of the Charles River Branch Railroad to Needham Junction and beyond continued until at least 1984. The Metropolitan [Transit Authority |MTA], the predecessor of the MBTA, acquired the Highland Branch ROW and built what would become the Green Line D Branch. The acquisition also included the Upper Falls ROW, but a proposal to extend the D Branch never occurred, eventually making the Upper Falls Greenway possible.By 1967, commuter service on the MBTA's Millis Branch had ended. In 1998, the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization completed a study which advised commuter rail reactivation between Needham Junction and Millis would not be cost effective. In 2008, the Bay Colony Railroad ceased operations on the section from Medfield to Newton, and formally abandoned its lease, reverting control back to the MBTA.
Upper Falls Greenway
The Newton Upper Falls Greenway is a compacted stone dust rail trail in Newton Upper Falls, connecting Newton Highlands to the Charles River. The ROW is owned by the MBTA with a long-term lease to the City of Newton. The trail was first proposed in 2011 by the former Friends of the Upper Falls Greenway led by resident Jerry Reilly, which organized volunteers to help build the trail. Work began to build the Greenway in 2013 by Iron Horse Preservation, a national non-profit that converts rails to trails financed by selling the scrap rail tracks and ties. However all progress had stalled by 2015, when the City of Newton picked up the work, and the trail was completed and dedicated in 2016. The trail is maintained by the city.In 2023, planning began for the Newton/Needham Community Way, to extend the Greenway into Needham.