Back of the Hill station is a surface stop on the light rail

MBTA The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (abbreviated MBTA and known colloquially as "the T") is the public agency responsible for operating most public transportation services in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. The MBTA transit network in ...

Green Line E branch, located in the Mission Hill neighborhood of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts. It is named after, and primarily serves, the adjacent Back of the Hill apartment complex, a Section 8 development for elderly and disabled residents. Back of the Hill is located on the

street running A street running train is a train which runs on a track built on public streets. The rails are embedded in the roadway, and the train shares the street with other users, such as pedestrians, cars and cyclists, thus often being referred to as r ...

section of the E branch on South Huntington Avenue. The station has no platforms; passengers wait in bus shelters (shared with route 39 buses) on the sidewalks and cross a traffic lane to reach Green Line trains.

History

The

Boston Elevated Railway The Boston Elevated Railway (BERy) was a streetcar and rapid transit railroad operated on, above, and below, the streets of Boston, Massachusetts and surrounding communities. Founded in 1894, it eventually acquired the West End Street Railwa ...

opened streetcar tracks on the newly-laid-out South Huntington Avenue between Centre Street and Huntington Avenue on May 11, 1903. The company began Jamaica Plain–Park Street service via South, Centre, South Huntington, and Huntington as a branch of existing Boston–Brookline service on Huntington Avenue. All Huntington Avenue service (except for and short turns) operated on South Huntington after September 10, 1938. The line became part of the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1947, and part of the

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (abbreviated MBTA and known colloquially as "the T") is the public agency responsible for operating most public transportation services in Greater Boston, Massachusetts. The MBTA transit network in ...

(MBTA) in 1967; it was designated as the E Branch of the MBTA Green Line in 1967. By the 1970s, E Branch trains stopped at and , with no stop between them. The Back of the Hill apartment complex, located just north of Heath Street, was built in 1980 and opened in 1981. The E Branch was closed for track work from June 21, 1980, to June 26, 1982; trains began stopping at Back of the Hill then or after. Back of the Hill is the least-used stop on the

MBTA subway The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) operates rapid transit (heavy rail), light rail, and bus rapid transit services in the Boston metropolitan area, collectively referred to as the rapid transit, subway, or the T system. The c ...

system, averaging only 35 riders per day by a 2011 count. It was one of only four stops to average fewer than 100 riders per day.The others, as of 2014, are (44 riders/day), (58 riders/day), and (91 riders/day), all on the Ashmont–Mattapan High Speed Line. In 2021, the MBTA indicated plans to modify the Heath Street–Brigham Circle section of the E branch with accessible platforms to replace the existing non-accessible stopping locations.

References

External links

MBTA - Back of the Hill

Station from Google Maps Street View
Green Line (MBTA) stations Railway stations in Boston Railway stations in the United States opened in 1982 {{MBTA-stub