ARLINGTON — Where did it all go off the tracks?
In the late 1970s, what was then a blue-collar suburb saw plans to extend the MBTA Red Line under its streets, providing an easy link to Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston.
The federal government had money to spend, and the massive effort to extend the subway from Harvard Square to Alewife was just around the next curve.
Then Arlington did something that, with 50 years of hindsight, seems unthinkable to many of its modern-day residents. The town said no. The stops were never built. The Red Line ends at Alewife.
Now, at a time when most cities around here would kill for a T stop to escape their traffic woes, many of the town’s residents want a re-do, as unlikely as that may be.
“The people who were in Arlington in 1978 don’t have a right to set our priorities,” said Paul Schlichtman, a local School Committee and Town Meeting member who is a leader of an advocacy group called Extend the Red Line. “The town has changed. People changed. Their needs have changed.”
The Arlingtonians of yesteryear had their reasons.
Many in town leadership backed the idea of new stops in Arlington Center and Arlington Heights and touted the economic and quality-of-life benefits of connecting to the rest of Greater Boston — but only if the Red Line went all the way to Lexington. They feared that putting the end of the line in the middle of town would be a traffic disaster.
The state, however, couldn’t say when, if ever, there would be enough money for the project to extend that far.
“It could be a lifetime before they get around to moving the T beyond Arlington,” Msgr. John Linnehan of St. Agnes Parish, then a powerful political force pushing against the stops, told The Boston Globe in 1977. “In the meantime, Arlington would be permanently altered.”
The church and its Catholic high school’s leaders were also appalled by plans to build a large MBTA parking garage next door and successfully pushed to pass a state law in 1976 banning transit facilities within 75 yards of its property.
Underlying much of the opposition was not just concerns about gridlock but also the change new transit would bring, including all the people it might ferry into their quiet town, which in 1970 was more than 99 percent white, said Tim Dowling, a Cambridge transportation planner who wrote a 2025 master’s thesis at Tufts University on Arlington’s rejection of the stops.
“The town was a lot more on edge about the dangers of public transit investment, and what could influence their nice, homogenous community,” Dowling said.
Ultimately, in a nonbinding 1977 referendum, town voters were asked their opinion about four options on how far to extend the Red Line: to Route 128 in Lexington, to Arlington Heights, to Arlington Center, or to Alewife. They decisively voted them all down. Even the best-liked concept, which would see the Red Line built all the way into Lexington and end near 128, was opposed 8,206 votes to 5,143.
The idea of the Red Line halting at Alewife was even more unpopular. Arlington voters, who thought it would add to congestion on its roads while also keeping the Red Line out of reach for most residents, rejected that by more than a 4-to-1 ratio. But that’s the result they got.
There had been hope things might change, but political will to find the money for an extension to or through Arlington waned.
Another state law in 1980 prevented any further planning of the extension without the Legislature’s approval, and that was that.
Arlington these days is more diverse than it used to be. It has shed some of its parochial tendencies, removed laws banning most alcohol sales, and invested heavily in its public schools, which now get high rankings.
There is a well-worn path to Arlington for people who spent their young adulthood in Cambridge and Somerville, and bring with them an appreciation for trains, bike lanes, and hip restaurants.
As time passed, busy Arlington Center became a traffic gauntlet, despite the lack of a Red Line stop — or maybe, depending on whom you ask, because of it.
And some residents looked on with envy as the extension of the Green Line finally opened deep into Somerville, transforming public transit access there — another reminder of what could have been.
So an effort to start over was born.
In 2024, with strong support from Town Meeting, Arlington’s representatives at the State House passed a law that repealed the ban on T buildings near Arlington Catholic.
They also added a $50,000 earmark to the state’s fiscal 2027 budget to study the feasibility of picking up where their predecessors left off and adding Red Line stops and/or bus rapid transit in the town; they are pushing to create a commission to weigh those possibilities.
In September, they filed a bill that would repeal the 1980 law that ended study of the Arlington extension.
“There is a strong belief from my constituents that Arlington deserves better transportation options for them and their neighbors,” said Sean Garballey, an Arlington state representative who grew up in the town and supports those legislative efforts.
Residents get little sympathy from some of their peers in other towns that also aspire to more T access.
“When you talk to people about this, the reaction is, ‘You had your chance and you screwed the pooch on that one. Too bad for you,’” said Vincent Baudoin, a 40-year-old architect who lives in Arlington. “That’s unfair.”
But now, as then, opinions vary. Not all residents, even its many new and young ones, want Arlington to have a more bustling pace that might come with greater T access.
Jake and Lauren Flaherty, both 31, are among those opposed. The couple moved to Arlington four years ago after stints in Davis and Central squares, and said they were put off by the drug use and disorder they saw near their neighborhoods’ busy T stops.
“There’s a quaintness here. There’s a charm here,” said Jake, who works in Boston. “I don’t know if you lose some of that quaintness and charm if you start bringing in the effects of the Red Line into town.”
“It would be way more convenient, for sure,” said Lauren Flaherty, who now commutes via Alewife, where her husband picks her up by car. “But it would change the town.”
Others are just frustrated by what can feel like a missing link to points east.
For those willing and physically able, trips to Alewife can be done in just a few minutes by bike on the Minuteman Bikeway. But on a crummy day or in colder months, or for those with mobility issues, the only other options can be to take a slow and grueling trip to Alewife by car or aboard a packed bus.
“I have to walk, then take a bus, then hop on a train. It’s a lot of steps and it adds so much time,” said Ben Gottesman, 28, who works in marketing.
If he were deciding today, he said he would back new Red Line stops in town, no question about it.
“I’m definitely for it,” Gottesman said. “Like, ‘Oh my God.’”
No matter how anyone feels, there is no sign that an extension is on the horizon. It is not in the MBTA’s current long-range planning, nor is there much federal money being spent on subway lines.
The plans gathering dust since the 1970s are simple enough. They call for a “cut-and-cover” construction project on the existing right-of-way currently used by the bike path — a relative breeze by mass transit standards, advocates say.
Yes, the work would have to overcome land-procurement hurdles, the engineering challenge of tunneling under a busy intersection, plus a thicket of environmental rules that weren’t in place a half-century ago. The cost would be substantial.
But the idea is to be ready for the day the government wants to spend big on public transportation again, said Schlichtman.
“There’s sort of this defeatist attitude you encounter, both in town and beyond it,” Schlichtman said. “If people think that it would be a nice thing to have, but it’ll never happen, it’ll never happen. So what I set off to do is let people believe it. This is doable.”
Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.