Adam Vaccaro | The Boston Globe

“The state Senate is backing activists’ efforts to electrify the MBTA’s commuter rail system.

A proposal in the next fiscal year’s draft budget released by the chamber last Thursday would require transportation officials to study transitioning two MBTA lines—the Providence and Fairmount services—from diesel to electric power and report on the proposal by next March. The T would need to present a plan for running electric service on those two lines by September 2022.

The advocacy group TransitMatters unveiled a plan in February to electrify the system, starting with these two lines, as part of a plan to run more frequent commuter rail service throughout the day. The office of Senate President Harriette Chandler, who pushed for the language to be included in the budget, said it is directly based on TransitMatters’s ‘regional rail’ proposal.”