Submitted by Annual_Account9238 t3_10jqma5 in providence
Looking to buy a home in east providence. Work in South Boston 3x weekly. Would need to commute to South Station then red line 2 stops to my job. Is this commute worth it? What are your experiences commuting from providence to Boston via commuter rail?
I would be taking the Broadway station. But close enough. And there’s a bus that is convenient that drops me from broadway to near my work.
Hi, I've lived in Providence and worked in Boston for about 8 years.
Will you be driving to the commuter rail from your house or getting dropped off? If driving/parking, I'd recommend parking in the new Pawtucket/Central Falls station or in Attleboro where the parking is much cheaper than Providence.
3x a week is not too bad. When the train is working, it works fine. It's comfy and roomy, and it's easy to do work on the train if you have hotspot. Not uncommonly, there are delays of about 10-15 minutes. It's less common to encounter a significant delay of 30 minutes plus. I'd recommend taking the "express" trains that skip a couple of the stops between. One example is the 7:40am train out of Providence.
If you are getting dropped off and depending on how flexible your schedule is, you can buy Amtrak tickets in advance that are only $9 for certain times (I think there's like a ~3:20pm out of South Station) and it takes about 36 minutes to get to Providence. There are fewer cheap Amtrak options in the a.m., but you can take Commuter Rail one way, and the Amtrak the other. The Amtrak is really nice if you can swing getting picked up in Providence (it doesn't make intermediate stops between Boston except for Route 128).
Good luck!
Thanks. I would be driving to the station. I read some horror stories on Reddit from commuters on the train but I wouldn’t want to do that drive every day.
Do u have a link for the cheap Amtrak tickets? I can’t find them online
There isn't a link. You just have to do the search on Amtrak.com and then if they are available, the $9 rides will come up as a trip option. They're usually off peak times.
Got it. Do you know if it’s certain days ? Would it be south station for the destination or is it only out of south station and to pvd?
I've had luck on weekdays coming out of back bay to pvd at 3:27, probably a south station one a few minutes before. I've only seen like a 10:30am or so from pvd to Boston.
If weekends, the commuter rail has a $10 all weekend pass.
i do this everyday and highly recommend amtrak. Its 45 min from pvd to south station as opposed to an 1:15 by mbta. Makes a huge difference.
Sometimes it's even less than 30 minutes. MBTA runs more trains, but I'd rather plan my day around Amtrak and not deal with that mess.
They cut back service on both the mbta and Amtrak. As you have a car might might want to do a little of both to give more flexibility.. really depends on what time you need to be there.. if you can get there noon the 10ish Amtrak is awesome.
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Sometimes driving into Quincy and taking the red line the whole way makes sense, especially if you're not starting in Providence (highly recommend living within walking distance to the train station - truly life-changing with that commute). That said, if you don't mind the short drive to Providence from EP the move is to park in the mall garage because you don't have to play parking chicken. Also a monthly Amtrak pass is not that much more that a monthly MBTA pass, there's also the 10-packs of tickets at a flat rate - everything you need to know is here https://www.amtrak.com/deals-discounts/multi-ride-rail-passes/multi-ride.html
A lot of people don't utilize the Peter Pan bus either - at one point I was alternating between Amtrak, MBTA, and Peter Pan. Between the three of those you basically have the flexibility to get from here to there at any time during the day. It's not super luxurious, but it's good in a pinch if you miss your train and they also offer 10-packs at a discount.
I commuted to Cambridge from Providence for five years, five days a week. It was terrible. Having to jump on the red line from South Station - or do the reverse later - really felt like a second commute on top of the commuter rail. Of course it was only 20 more minutes, but it just made the whole thing feel much worse. When I was job searching I did not look at anything that was not walking distance from South Station, Back Bay or Ruggles.
On the "home" side of the commute, I would not look in East Providence anywhere south of Rumford. That way you can cross the Seekonk River to the train without using 195/Washington bridge. The traffic on that stretch of 195 is terrible in both directions both morning and evening rush hours.
As others have said you can take the Red Line right from Quincy to South Boston and avoid South Station all together. But I would still avoid 195/Washington Bridge at all costs.
My condolences. That is/was a heroic commute.
I've worked from home since 2019 and I honestly don't now how I went to Cambridge five days a week. Those five years started in 2009 and I work in the building trades as a designer, so there were no jobs in RI architecture firms. Everyone had been laid off the previous year.
This guy knows...
Did it for two years, PVD to South Station. Would not recommend. Sometimes, it was comforting to find myself on the train on a winter morning, but overall, I would recommend telecommuting or finding a job closer to home. I personally would take 20% pay cut to eliminate commuting that distance. It might make sense if you're just starting your career or a baby boomer with a work till you die ethic, but imho it's not worth the additional time being sedentary, schedule constraints, and unnecessary interaction with crowds. The added leg of the redline to South Boston is the miserable cherry on top. If you said it was to the other side of Boston like Cambridge or Longwood, I would laugh at you and disparage your miserable existence. Don't even get me started on taking the bus. If your employer has parking, I would say driving is best because at least you have some control. If you can't afford to live in boston, why are you working in boston?
brick1972 t1_j5m9hdg wrote
I did Pawtucket -> Kendall for about 2 years, on a once or twice a week cadence. I took the train from Attleboro which limited me to the commuter rail.
On mobile but maybe later I will repost advice I gave the last time a similar question was asked. Here are some general thoughts on the negative side.
The problem with the train commute is you have to be there when the train leaves. If you miss the train it adds a lot of time. This used to be easier to deal with in PVD with Amtrak but they have reduced service. Anyway, because of this large change in time (30-60 minutes depending on when you are going) with a missed train, you have to make damn sure you are at the station when it leaves. This means if you have a 10 minute drive to the station +/- 5 minutes, you have a 15 minute drive to the station. You will quickly learn not to take chances.
I regularly had 8 AM meetings. This fucking sucked. I'm just going to be straight up with you. My timing was such that taking the 6:34 train from Attleboro would get me to the office at 8 AM if everything went right. I couldn't rely on that so guess what - 5:34 train it is. My boss gave me a 15 minute late pass on days I commuted which was enough cushion but some meetings I had to be there on time.
Same thing coming home. You have to be absolutely militant about leaving the office on time. No last second conversations to talk about that one email. The red line has some variance, though you are going against the commute (I think you are going to Andrew based on your post) so it should be a bit more consistent. Still, it is often a bit late. So same deal. 6 minute headways again now so I would give 15 minutes from arrival at Andrew to arrival at the CR platform as a worst case and again, you have to plan around the worst case.
the upsides are that it is hella better than driving, the train can be relaxing sometimes (though the rush hour trains are stuffed between Canton or Sharon and S.S.). It is more reliable than people credit. I like the way they pour a Guinness in the pub in South Station which made missing the train more tolerable. To be honest, the worst thing was timing the transfers and how packed and miserable the red line was. If I could have walked from South Station to the office it would have been much better. And, it might be better now, I was commuting during the MBTA self-destruct sequence of 2021 and early 2022.