The press release lit up The Bulletin in-box on March 26.

“The MBTA today announces that the proposed Fiscal Years 2027-2031 capital plan will fully fund the remaining design and construction cost of the redesigned Arborway Bus Maintenance Facility… battery electric buses will operate out of the Arborway [facility] on Day 1.”

That day will be in the spring of 2031 with a planned construction start in 2028.

The project was stalled about a year ago beginning when Representative Samantha Montano came to the Feb, 25, 2025 Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC).

“The [Arborway] capital funds did not make the funding cycle,” she said. “The project can’t go forward. The T has told us the Arborway is a no-go.”

Apparently the T kept trying.

On April 30, 2026, the MBTA board voted $371.5 million to fully fund the Arborway facility’s remaining design and construction.

“The O-100% design bid phase services and construction phase services with Michael Baker International [of Pittsburgh] for a lump sum of $16,180, 307 with a contract duration of five years,” the board document stated.

Lemon Brooke [of Concord] is the landscape architect with a $199,000 contract.

Ninety percent design is scheduled to be completed in November 2027 with construction start in the spring of 2028, the Board document stated.

Construction is proposed to cost $285 million.

The board packet had more detail of the Arborway bus garage:

Capacity service for up to 200, 40-foot, 100 percent battery equipped buses, charging capacity for mixed fleet, an open-air canopy-covered bus storage and charging, two service bays, 15 maintenance bays, support facilities for maintenance activities and staff, fire alarm and protection, and employee parking spaces.

The facility will be 100 percent battery equipped, with a mix of battery and hybrid buses on day one, stated the press release.

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“We will be phasing in battery buses as the market can support, as we move to what the industry can deliver.”

According to the MBTA, $78.6 million in federal funding has been awarded for new hybrid buses. After over two years of often contentious Jamaica Plain public debate at numerous virtual and two in-person meetings, the design was frozen at 15 percent in October 2023. When redesigned to meet resident demands, it is a one-story, 25-foot-high covered bus storage and charging garage adjacent to a two-story maintenance and office building.

That plan also included a relocated employee parking lot on Washington Street adjacent to the main entrance and exit of the electric buses.

According to the press release, “once the construction is complete, the old Arborway facility will be demolished and the area will be available for redevelopment.”

The Arborway bus garage serves routes through Roxbury, Dorchester, Hyde Park, Roslindale and Jamaica Plain; one of the most extensive in the MBTA system. The announcement comes on the heels of the 80 percent completion of the Quincy bus garage on the Burgin Parkway.

A preview of what the Arborway battery bus garage will look like was posted on April 27 with an MBTA update on the Quincy garage.

The Quincy garage was built in 1904 for streetcars, and like the Arborway – also built for street cars – is located on a parkway and a main street, adjacent to a public park and near a rapid transit stop.

The 300,000-square-foot Quincy garage will serve 120 battery-equipped buses that will run over 20 bus routes; there will be 23 maintenance bays.

The contract for $298.7 million was voted by the T board in October 2023 as a Final Guaranteed Maximum Price.

Public meetings on the fully funded design and construction have not been scheduled yet according to the MBTA.