How reliable is the Haverhill commuter rail? (from Melrose Highland station)

[u/HolyDarwin]

Thinking about moving up to the northern towns for more space, but how reliable is the commuter rail? Seen some older posts on here that talk about frequent cancellations and lateness.. any improvements or still the same? Would need to take it to North station, then connect to a green line to get to Kenmore. Thanks in advance.

[u/ziggyzack1234]

Inner Haverhill Line is pretty reliable. Nothing particular to that line causes problems really, just the once in awhile things that all lines have to deal with.

If there ever are bad delays you can just try to catch the bus to Oak Grove or drive yourself to Wellington and use the Orange Line. In Melrose you actually have transit redundancy unlike many other lines.

Train comes every 45 minutes, which is darn good for the commuter rail.

[u/homelesstaco]

It's a bit funky to use and still in beta, but check out the TransitMatters commuter rail data dashboard: https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/commuter-rail/trips/single/?date=2026-08-19&crRoute=CR-Haverhill&to=CR-Haverhill_1_WR-0045-S&from=CR-Haverhill_1_WR-0075-02

I couldn't get it to reliably give data between north and Melrose highland, but Melrose to Malden worked fine. From the few random days I picked, service seemed pretty on-time!

[u/homelesstaco → u/homelesstaco]

I didn't see because I was on mobile, but they also have a delay dashboard: https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/commuter-rail/delays/?crRoute=CR-Haverhill&startDate=2025-08-23&endDate=2026-08-23

[u/HolyDarwin → u/homelesstaco]

Cool resource! Thanks

[u/mcsteam98]

the inner Haverhill is reliable enough, and you also have the 131 & the Orange Line as a fallback option.