The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization kept the Swampscott Rail Trail in its federal funding program on March 19, but moved roughly $8.9 million in construction money from FFY2026 to FFY2029, citing project readiness.
The vote came two weeks after Swampscott learned, with no prior notice, that a draft regional funding plan had dropped the trail altogether. The project had held a slot since 2022 for federal-aid construction money meant to finish a path that first broke ground in 2020.
The town avoided losing the slot outright. It also lost three years. The delay landed three months before the town adopted “Swampscott 2035,” a master plan that lists finishing the Rail Trail among its early “fix-it-first” priorities.
The funding slot is the schedule
Federal transportation money flows through the region’s MPO, which programs projects into a rolling, multi-year Transportation Improvement Program, or TIP. The TIP assigns federal transportation dollars to specific projects in specific fiscal years.
Being on the TIP is the funding slot. It is also a schedule claim: a project is programmed for the year it is expected to be ready to build. Design has to be far enough along, permits in hand and land rights secured. When the MPO decides a project will not be ready in its programmed year, the money can move to a later year or off the plan entirely.
That is the test Swampscott failed for 2026, and the reason its construction money now reads 2029.
Town got no prior notice
Town Administrator Nick Connors laid out the problem to the Select Board on March 4. The draft TIP suggested the rail trail was coming off “with no prior notice to the town’s team,” according to the meeting minutes.
Connors had already contacted the town’s legislative delegation, Rep. Jenny Armini and Sen. Brendan Crighton, and MassDOT’s Government Affairs office. The delegation was arranging a meeting with the MassDOT secretary. No vote was expected at the MPO session the next day; the draft had only been floated.
The board’s response was to build the record. Member David Grishman asked staff to compile a full accounting of the money spent and hours invested in the trail since 2017, to bring into the meeting with the secretary. Member Mary Ellen Fletcher asked whether enough money remained in the project’s account to finish it. Marzie Galazka, the town’s director of community and economic development, was assigned to gather the documentation.
Connors reported back on March 18. He, Grishman and the delegation had met with the MassDOT secretary and senior staff. MassDOT agreed to review the town’s materials ahead of its normal schedule and give feedback before June rather than waiting for the standard cycle.
If the trail were dropped from the current five-year program anyway, the fallback was to reapply in the fall for the next cycle, FFY2028–2032. Pressed by board members on the cost of taking land for the trail, Connors said Town Meeting had authorized funds meant to cover both design and any necessary takings, but “acknowledged the need for a clear plan.”
Committees asked MPO to keep funding
The town’s staff escalation was not the only response. On March 9, the Swampscott for All Ages Committee, an age-friendly advisory body, noted that TIP funding for the trail was “in jeopardy” and voted to send its own letter to the Boston Region MPO supporting continued funding.
On March 17, the Open Space and Recreation Plan Committee, which tracks the trail as one of its formal goals, unanimously approved a second letter of support. Neither committee runs the project, and neither letter carried a signatory into the public record. The letters show the trail was active across the town’s civic structure when the money was at risk.
MPO kept the project but moved the money
On March 19, the MPO did not remove the Swampscott Rail Trail. It moved the construction money to FFY2029, pointing to project readiness.
According to same-day coverage in Swampscott Tides, the source for the vote’s mechanics, one MPO board member, Thomas Bent, dissented, several abstained, and another member, Dennis Giombetti, asked for recurring progress reports on the project. Bent and Giombetti are MPO figures, not Swampscott officials. Those vote details do not appear in any town record.
What “readiness” meant, the MPO did not spell out in any document the town holds. The most visible gap in the town’s record is land: the right-of-way and the takings needed to complete the trail were authorized but not yet secured, and Connors flagged the missing “clear plan” on March 18. That is a reasonable read of the readiness finding, not the MPO’s stated words.
MassDOT now lists the project in preliminary design, with the town responsible for design and right-of-way. Per the Tides account, MassDOT believed Swampscott could get the trail permitted and designed in time for 2029.
Galazka put the cost of the delay plainly to Tides: it “will really risk losing the momentum that we have built so strongly.”
What has to happen before 2029
The trail Swampscott is trying to finish has a long record. Advocates trace the idea to the 1970s. Town Meeting seeded it with about $850,000 in 2017, by one candidate’s account. The first segments were built in 2020–21 as part of the Northern Strand network linking toward Salem and Marblehead.
In December 2021, a Special Town Meeting took up the deal that made the next phase possible: conveying a 2019 easement back to National Grid in exchange for a 99-year ground lease at $1 a year for the Humphrey Street–to–Stetson Avenue segment, helped by a $150,000 gift from the Friends of the Swampscott Rail Trail.
Between now and 2029, Swampscott still needs the readiness the MPO said it lacked: a firm plan for the remaining land rights and takings, design far enough along to satisfy MassDOT’s early review, permits, and the progress reports the MPO now expects.
The spring escalation kept the slot alive and won an early look from MassDOT. It did not bring back 2026. Grishman, who carried the town’s case into the meeting with the secretary, did not run for reelection; his term ended at the April 28 election, before that work came due.
Sources: March 4, 2026 Select Board regular session, Town Administrator’s report (data/committees/select-board/minutes-2026-03-04.md; transcript data/analysis_markdown_prof/7OVHHxADCuQ.md, rail-trail item [0:11:14], Grishman’s accounting request [0:14:55]); March 18, 2026 Select Board session, TA report on the MassDOT meeting (transcript data/analysis_markdown_prof/FrF6L0o1ncg.md [0:02:55], land-takings discussion). Committee letters: Swampscott for All Ages minutes, March 9, 2026 (data/committees/swampscott-for-all-ages/minutes-2026-03-09.md); Open Space and Recreation Plan Committee minutes, March 17, 2026 (data/committees/open-space-recreation-plan/minutes-2026-03-17.md, Goal 42). Project history: Dec. 13, 2021 Special Town Meeting, Article 12 easement/ground-lease authorization (transcript data/analysis_markdown_prof/9HCOsxs6aXw.md; the transcript records the motion and discussion but not the final vote); the ~$850,000 2017 figure is Wayne Spritz’s recollection at the April 8, 2026 candidate forum (data/analysis_markdown_prof/QZ3QRj8dgeA.md [00:28:59]). The March 19 MPO vote details — the move to FFY2029, the readiness rationale, Thomas Bent’s dissent, the abstentions, Dennis Giombetti’s progress-report request, MassDOT project number 610666, the ~$8.9M / FFY2026 / since-May-2022 programming, and Galazka’s “momentum” quote — are single-sourced to a web fetch of Swampscott Tides, March 19, 2026, logged at data/political_context/2026-05.md L930; they do not appear in the town minutes. The 1970s conception and 2020–21 first-segment dates are press-attributed, not corpus-confirmed. The MassDOT secretary is described by role: both transcripts render the name as “Secretary Eng,” which the corpus cannot confirm and is likely a diarization error, so the name is withheld. Delegation spellings (Sen. Brendan Crighton, Rep. Jenny Armini) follow data/people/ and committee rosters; Armini is corpus-confirmed, and the March 18 minutes spell her name directly. Names and roles — Connors (Town Administrator), Galazka (Director of Community & Economic Development), Grishman and Fletcher (Select Board members; Grishman’s term ended April 28, 2026) — verified against data/people/ and rosters over the phonetic transcript renderings. Prior coverage this piece sits inside: 2026-06-28_master-plan-2035-adopted.md, for the plan’s “fix-it-first” billing of the Rail Trail; that piece is explicit that the June 17 plan contents are press-sourced.