New Bedford, Fall River MBTA Trains Experience Weekend Issues

We’re just a week into South Coast Rail service connecting New Bedford, Fall River and Taunton to Boston, and we’ve already seen some delays and incidents that have caused concern for travelers.

First, there were delays of over an hour on some trains back on March 25, the second day of service.

That same day, an afternoon school bus in Freetown carrying middle and high school students was struck by the arm of a railroad crossing and just missed being struck by a train by under a minute, which the MBTA ruled was “human error.”

This past weekend, those taking the train back from Boston to the SouthCoast ran into trouble on both Saturday and Sunday.

MBTA’s Commuter Rail account on X

On Sunday, two evening trains from South Station to New Bedford – the 7:59 train and the 9:53 train – were both replaced by shuttle bus service “due to a crew availability issue,” according to the MBTA’s posts on X.

Jake O’Neill, Manager of Media Relations and Public Affairs for Keolis, which operates the MBTA service, issued the following statement to WBSM:

"Our goal is always to operate every train as scheduled. Due to crew availability issues, two trains on the Fall River/New Bedford Line and one on the Greenbush Line were cancelled yesterday. Customers were accommodated by shuttle buses. Passengers should subscribe to MBTA Alerts or follow @ MBTA_CR_Alerts on X for up-to-date service information."

South Coast Rail Ceremony

Dignitaries gathered on the morning of March 24, 2025 to celebrate the official launch of South Coast Rail service connecting New Bedford to Boston.

Gallery Credit: Mack Eon/Townsquare Media Intern

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

Gallery Credit: Sophia Crisafulli