Southborough
Southborogh opened as an infill station on the Framingham/Worcester Line on June 22, 2002. It is a modern Park & Ride station. The station opened the same day as neighboring Westborough (to avoid traffic overwhelming one town or the other). The station is closest stop to the Boston Marathon start line, 3 miles south of the station down MA-85. The marathon doesn’t normally provide shuttle buses from the Commuter Rail station to the start line for runners, but it seems that the railroad could be a much more efficient way to move the thousands of runners compared to running hundreds of school buses from Boston Common down the Mass Pike the 26.2 miles out to the race start. The station is also the last one leaving Boston on the Framingham/Worcester Line within the I-495 outer beltway of Boston.
The station consists of two low-level side platforms that begin just with a staircase west of the underpass of River Street (who’s sidewalk provides the pedestrian connection between the two platforms) and run west. The platforms end at small mini-high platforms for ADA accessibility with the Inbound platform slightly longer than the outbound platform, making these ends of the platform slightly offset from each other. The mini-high platforms each contain a simple canopy with a colored blue roof, and there is a second canopy structure in the middle of each platform.
The platforms parking lot with 378 paid parking spaces is located along the western half of the Inbound platform, that includes ADA parking spaces and a pedestrian pick-up and drop-off area directly along this platform. To reach the Outbound platform there is the staircase from the very end of this platform, along with an ADA sidewalk along the driveway into the parking lot, down to River Street, there is a second smaller parking lot at a lower elevation to the main parking lot closer to River Street.
The Outbound platform is along a dusty parking lot that isn’t for MBTA commuters but for Cordaville’s Market (formerly Fitzgerald’s General Store). It has entrances at either end. At the western end of the platform is the entrance from the underpass, with a staircase directly up to it, and ramp that leads down from the staircase before turning due north (away from the underpass) and leading up to the sidewalk that is the station’s underpass by the intersection of Southville Road and River Street. The other entrance is via a sidewalk leads from Southville Road between the store’s parking lot and trees that block a single family home, arriving at the platform directly behind the ramp up to the mini-high platform.
Photos 1-41 taken on June 19, 2024
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Last Updated: October 8, 2024
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Westborough