The Union Square Branch of the Green Line Exten­sion Project, with ser­vice to Somerville, opens today in Mass­a­chu­setts.

An arti­cle by Adri­an­na Mac­Neill pre­viewed this mile­stone event for the decades-long Green Line Exten­sion Project (GLX), not­ing the new access to tran­sit offered to pub­lic tran­sit by the new rail line’s open­ing. MBTA spokesman Joe Pesat­uro is quot­ed in the arti­cle say­ing: “When both branch­es of GLX are open, 80% of Somerville’s pop­u­la­tion will be with­in walk­ing dis­tance of a rail sta­tion. Today, that fig­ure is only 20%.”

The oth­er branch Pesat­uro is refer­ring to is the Med­ford Branch, which is expect­ed to open this sum­mer. “In all, there will be six new sta­tions, as well as a recon­struct­ed and relo­cat­ed Lech­mere sta­tion. The new sta­tions include Union Square on the first phase, plus East Somerville, Gilman Square, Magoun Square, Ball Square, and Col­lege Avenue sta­tions as part of the sec­ond,” reports Mac­Neill.

The source arti­cle, linked below, includes more detail on the long his­to­ry of plan­ning lead­ing up to today’s his­toric open­ing, as well as the most recent his­to­ry of delays from the past sev­er­al years. For more back­ground, see also arti­cles pre­view­ing the open­ing, pub­lished ear­li­er this year by the Boston Globe and Boston.Com.