MassDOT advertised Phase I of the Belmont Community Path for construction bids on September 12, 2026. Bids open at 2 p.m. on November 10. The project has been talked about in town for more than two decades. Its state record lists it as project 609204, the "Belmont Component of the MCRT (Phase I)." For anyone who walks to Belmont Center, crosses at Brighton Street, or rides the Fitchburg Line, the bid date marks a handoff. Belmont's part of Phase I is essentially finished. The next stretch belongs to the state and a contractor, and its first visible milestone is further off than "out to bid" makes it sound.
The handoff happened on a Monday in August
The deciding night was August 10, 2026. That evening the Select Board signed five documents: the final MBTA lease for Phase I, permanent and temporary easements on private property, a land donation from the Belmont Citizens Forum, a license to use Department of Conservation and Recreation property, and a vote allowing use of School Committee land. Town counsel Mina Makarious summed up the result in the Belmontonian's account: "Taken together, it gives you the acquisition rights for all things you need for the path."
In a project like this, the town and the state split the work. Makarious described Belmont's role as acquiring rights of way and working with the engineers. The state then releases the funding. According to The Belmont Voice, state and federal money through the Transportation Improvement Program covers all of the construction. Design and right-of-way costs fall to the town. Belmont used a $475,000 MassTrails grant, matched by $160,000 in Community Preservation Act funds, partly to pay the independent appraisers who set compensation for property owners.
Select Board member Matt Taylor described the August vote this way:
"This was the last major milestone before it really becomes a state project and then the state takes over."
Getting there was close. The 2026 annual Town Meeting received an unexpected $1 million bill for an easement on a small spur of Alexander Avenue, which is needed to reach the planned tunnel, and voted to fund it. The Belmontonian reported that if any appraisal or easement had missed its deadline, federal and state funding would have been denied and the project would have had to start over.
The calendar the town published
After the August vote, the town released a projected timeline. Here it is as the Belmontonian reported it.
| Window | What happens |
|---|---|
| By January 2027 | State selects a winning bid |
| January to September 2027 | Construction submittals: data, drawings, and material samples go to engineers for approval |
| June 2027 to June 2028 | Procurement, including specialty subcontractors and long-lead materials |
| July 2027 to August 2028 | Preliminary path construction |
| August 2028 | Alexander Avenue pedestrian tunnel, with Fitchburg Line service suspended for one week |
| August 2028 to July 2029 | Finishing the path |
The Belmontonian gives a tentative Phase I opening of mid-summer 2029. The photo caption on the same article says late summer 2029. These are projections. No contract has been awarded yet. One date has already shifted: Taylor had cited a September 5 advertising date, and MassDOT's official record shows September 12.
Winter on paper, summer on the ground
The MassDOT project page lists "Construction Begins" as Winter 2026/2027. The town's schedule fills those months with submittals and plan review, and puts preliminary path construction in July 2027. Taylor said the first six months of 2027 would involve "a lot of coordination with drawings, site visits, and walks, and plan review."
The two sources fit together if you read them this way. The contract year is likely to start this winter, but the period that leaves evidence along Brighton Street or near the high school looks like it starts next summer. Neither the town nor MassDOT has published a construction management plan showing specific lot closures, detours, or staging areas. Anyone who tells you which parking spaces disappear and when is guessing.
What abutters have been told is more specific. The contractor must "protect and restore property." The town will pay for rodent control around the tunnel under the railroad. A resident engineer will be hired as a point of contact, and that cost is included in the contractor's state contract.
The dollar figures haven't settled either. The state's bid schedule lists a project value of $35,864,137. The MassDOT project page shows an estimated total contract cost of $45,655,440.70. The Belmontonian reported that MassDOT approved the town's $48 million request in the current Transportation Improvement Program in July. The bids opening November 10 will set the real number.
The week the Fitchburg Line stops
Of everything in the timeline, the August 2028 tunnel work will reach the most people at once. The Alexander Avenue pedestrian tunnel is scheduled to take one week, and Fitchburg Line commuter service will be suspended during that week. Riders from Belmont, Waverley, and stations farther out will all feel it, including people who never plan to use the path.
The tunnel is the main reason for the whole Phase I design. MassDOT describes it as a 0.18-mile north-south connector that passes under the active rail line to and through the high school campus, which will become a combined middle and high school. It includes drainage improvements and an expected sump pump system. The same connector adds a new actuated pedestrian and bicycle crossing on Concord Avenue. Today, getting from the neighborhoods south of the tracks to Concord Avenue on foot means going around the railroad. The tunnel lets people go under it.
What the finished 1.11 miles connects
The east-west part of Phase I runs 1.11 miles from the Clark Street Bridge off Pleasant Street, through the town center, to Brighton Street, where it meets the existing Fitchburg Cutoff Path. The plans call for a 16-foot paved path with 2-foot grass shoulders and landscaping along its length as a buffer for neighboring properties. At Brighton Street, the current at-grade rail crossing gets a fully actuated signal for all users, coordinated with the existing rail gates. MassDOT expects a standard signal to be easier for people who aren't using the rails to understand, and therefore safer.
When Phase I opens, here is what it connects:
- East: the Fitchburg Cutoff Path, which leads to Alewife Station, the Minuteman Bikeway, and on into Cambridge and Boston
- North: the Middle-High School campus and Concord Avenue, through the tunnel
- West: Belmont Center, which the path passes through before it ends at the Clark Street Bridge off Pleasant Street
Belmont Center will look a little different by then. Leader Bank bought the former Bank of America building at 72 Leonard Street and plans to move its Pleasant Street branch there. It projects an opening in autumn 2027, after a nine-to-twelve-month renovation. For now, the Belmont Farmers' Market runs Thursdays in the Belmont Center lot at 10 Claflin Street through October 29, 2026, open 2 to 6 p.m. in October.
The path also fills a gap in a longer route. Phase I and Phase II together form a 2-mile link in the Mass Central Rail Trail, which is planned to run 104 miles from Boston to Northampton. Nitsch Engineering was chosen to design Belmont's section in 2019. The trail's first segment opened in West Boylston in 1999.
Phase II is where Belmont's work is now
With Phase I handed off, the town's attention shifts west. Phase II runs about a mile from the Clark Street Bridge through Waverley Square to the Waltham line. Community Path Project Committee chair Holly Muson said in August that it would go through a process similar to Phase I, but with "a greater level of complexity in terms of design and obtaining right-of-way easements."
That process is at an early stage. The town's FY2027 Community Preservation Act application asked for $250,000 toward Phase II design matching funds. It says the final route is still being evaluated and needs Select Board approval. The same application lists what the full path would serve: Belmont Center, the new Middle-High School, Waverley Square, the 73 and 74/75 bus lines, Fitchburg commuter rail, Lone Tree Hill, and the Alewife Reservation. It would connect the Fitchburg Cutoff Path at Brighton Street to the Mass Central Rail Trail at the Waltham border.
Phase I took from Nitsch Engineering's selection in 2019 to an August 2026 signing night, and it was nearly lost at Town Meeting. Phase II starts with an unsettled route. Belmont residents will have a say in the coming route decisions, in public Select Board meetings and Town Meeting votes like the ones that saved Phase I. The next fixed date is November 10, when the state opens the Phase I bids. The project's official site is the place to watch for updates between now and then.
If you live along the Phase I route or near Waverley Square and want to talk through how a multi-year public project lines up with your own plans over the next few years, I'm happy to look at the published timeline with you. I follow the path's milestones as they're announced. More on the town is on my Belmont neighborhood page. Let's Connect with Corinne Schippert.
