As the late great Paul Harvey would say…”Here is the rest of the story”…regarding the North Plymouth T station.
The vision for the North Plymouth station was a compromise between the state and the town in recognition of the need to provide off-peak visitor service that linked Plymouth to Boston. It was a key element of a strategy to take advantage of an emerging conference and meeting sector of the visitor industry.
Once the decision to locate the workforce commuter station at the Kingston site (a decision that was based on politics more than practicality), North Plymouth was not a viable part of the main line. At the time, the Town of Plymouth put up a good, hard-fought fight, but the best we could get was the compromise. The spur design made it impractical as part of a workforce commuter line, as did the fact it offered no real public parking.
The GATRA system was a key to making the workforce and visitor uses viable. The original strategy for the GATRA buses was to include a peak-time (commuter) link to the Kingston station from various neighborhoods. The visitor service element was based on a plan to link the hotels and key destinations to both the North Plymouth (off peak) and Kingston (commuter/peak) stations. A provision to move people that wound up at the “wrong” station was also part of the plan.
Getting the GATRA system in place took a couple of attempts due to local opposition – based on stereotypical fears of who would use the system, as well as perceived competition for a tourist trolley.
As an aside, people of a certain age that grew up in Plymouth will recall that the operating train tracks extended to the downtown/waterfront. Any possibility of that becoming the new terminus was lost when the Sheraton (now the Hotel1620 Plymouth Harbor) and Village Landing were built.
In addition, the coalition that the town, Chamber of Commerce, Destination Plymouth, PCDC, and key players in the visitor industry formed lost its zeal as the leadership changed and small actors raised issues. Finally, any chance of a rail/transportation link was eliminated when the leadership elected to create the dedicated walking/bike path. At the time, it was proposed that the rail bed connecting Cordage to the historic waterfront could/should include a dedicated trolley/GATRA lane.
We considered what the following 10, 20 or 50 years would bring, but were met by the popular refrain from some key decision makers of the day (late ‘90s) on a myriad of issues when asked, “What are we going to do when…” was “I don’t care, I won’t be here.”
– Michael Gallerani