Beacon Street's Green Line Stops Are Being Rebuilt. Here's How Your November Rides Change.

Through November 7, outbound C Branch trains skip Hawes Street and Saint Paul Street. For either one, the MBTA tells riders to walk a few minutes to Kent Street instead. Kent Street is also the station the MBTA plans to eliminate, because ridership there is low and it sits close to both Hawes and Saint Paul.

That overlap explains the rest of this fall. Taken together, the skipped stops, the shuttle exceptions and the five-minute walks are a rough preview of the C Branch Brookline will have in 2027: fewer stops along Beacon Street, each one wider, higher and farther from traffic.

Nine Stops Become Seven

The MBTA's C Branch Station Accessibility Improvements project is a $51 million effort covering the above-ground stations on Beacon Street in Brookline. Construction started in May 2026, and the MBTA projects completion in spring 2027.

The scope is bigger than resurfacing. As Brookline.News reported in February, Matt Conover, the MBTA's Deputy Chief of Green Line & Blue Line Programs, said nine C Branch stations would each be rebuilt, merged into an accessible station or closed. Here is how that works out on the map:

• Kent Street closes, and the space its asphalt platforms free up goes to six new trees.
• Fairbanks Street and Brandon Hall merge into one station.
• Dean Road, which is now split across its intersection, gets its outbound platform moved west to sit beside the inbound one, because the hill on the east side is too steep for an ADA-compliant path.
• Saint Paul Street gets its inbound platform moved to the east side of the intersection, also because of a steep slope.
• Summit Avenue gets both platforms moved to the block between Marion and Summit Streets.
• Hawes Street gets wider platforms. That closes the eastbound U-turn lane on Beacon Street, though the final design keeps eight on-street parking spaces and two large trees the first version would have removed.
• Tappan Street and Englewood Avenue were the first phase. Tappan's inbound and outbound platforms are back in service, and so is Englewood's outbound platform.

Conover gave the reason for spacing stops farther apart in safety terms. "Stations like St. Paul do not offer barriers from automotive traffic," he told Brookline.News. "As a daily rider, I often worry about my own safety." The MBTA also expects the changes to cut travel times by three to seven percent, so riders who walk a bit farther to a stop should get a slightly faster trip once aboard.

The Calendar From Here to December

The October 16 MBTA service announcement and the agency's live alerts page set four different service patterns for Beacon Street between now and December 10.

Both the Halloween weekend closure and the November 7 to 15 shutdown come from central-tunnel signal work, which replaces a signal system more than 100 years old. The Halloween closure stops at Kenmore on the C Branch, so the stretch through Brookline sits outside it. The nine-day shutdown is different. It reaches all the way out to Cleveland Circle.

Nine Days of Shuttles on Beacon Street

From November 7 through November 15, buses replace trolleys on the C Branch. Here are the details that matter for a Brookline trip:

1. The shuttles are free and accessible, running between Cleveland Circle and Back Bay, where riders can switch to the Orange Line toward downtown and North Station.
2. Three stops have no shuttle service in either direction: Saint Mary's Street, Kent Street and Brandon Hall. The MBTA says to use the next-nearest stop.
3. Plan on at least 25 extra minutes. The MBTA uses a trip from Cleveland Circle to Park Street as its example.
4. D Branch trains keep running west of Kenmore. Fares are free at Kenmore, Riverside and every surface stop west of Kenmore during the shutdown, and shuttles cover the gap from Kenmore to Back Bay. For anyone living closer to Brookline Village or Brookline Hills than to Beacon Street, the D may be the easier ride that week.
5. The Worcester Commuter Rail line is fare-free between South Station, Back Bay and Lansdowne. Regular fares apply beyond Lansdowne.

The shuttle exceptions follow the permanent plan. Kent Street is the stop slated to close, and Brandon Hall is the half of the Fairbanks merger with no shuttle stop. In both cases, the November bus route skips the same places the rebuilt line will.

The MBTA advises checking mbta.com/PlannedWork and subscribing to T-Alerts, since service notices can change after they are posted.

What the New Platforms Look Like

On the project page, the MBTA lists three main features: platforms raised eight inches above the top of the rail, sloped walkways up to the new platform level, and platforms that are wider, level and lit. The Boston Globe reported in September that the new platforms will be 7½ feet wide.

At Tappan Street and Englewood Avenue, crews took out trees, demolished the old platforms, reset granite curb and installed precast edge units with yellow tactile warning strips. Temporary platforms are now in use at Dean Road and Summit Avenue while work continues on weekdays. Tappan and Englewood show what the rest of the line will look like.

The Median Gets Replanted, Too

The project affects the Beacon Street median as much as the platforms. Across these stations, the plan removes 96 trees, 50 young and 46 mature, and the MBTA has committed to planting 98. Each new tree comes with a one-year maintenance period and warranty before it becomes town property. The replacements will go in evenly spaced rows in a continuous planting strip. That layout is meant to keep the tree-lined median Frederick Law Olmsted and John C. Olmsted designed in 1886.

Jack Schleifer, Brookline's Urban Forest Manager, told Brookline.News the design moves away from planting each tree in its own pit. "Here we have a contiguous lawn at the back of each platform," he said. The goal is to give roots more room and let more water soak in.

One tree near Brandon Hall stays. A resident who lives across from the station told the town's Tree Planting Committee that a red oak, about 50 years old, was home to an Eastern screech owl. The MBTA changed the design to save it. "Through our ongoing coordination with the town, we were able to find a design that did protect this tree," Gwen Dunlevy, the MBTA's Deputy Chief of Integrated Transit Programs, told Brookline.News.

A Second Platform Change Is Already Planned

Spring 2027 will not be the last change to these platforms. The Globe reported that the new eight-inch height is built for the Green Line cars running today, and that the incoming Type 10 trains, designed for level boarding, will eventually need another adjustment. "We know for sure that when we go to level boarding, it's not just going to be as easy as pouring 6 inches of concrete," an MBTA official told the Globe, while adding that the agency has "tried to set ourselves up for success in the future."

Brian Kane, executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, described the tradeoff to the Globe in terms of time. "The work being done now allows the T to have universal accessibility 10 years faster than it otherwise would," he said.

How far a given block sits from the merged Fairbanks and Brandon Hall station, or from the nearest stop once Kent Street closes, will shape its daily walk for years to come. If you'd like to talk through what the new C Branch map means for a home you own or are considering, Kennedy Lynch Team offers a complimentary market consultation.