I don't do it everyday currently but I have traveled back and forth a bit. I would see what monthly options are for either the mtba or amtrack. But regardless, if you are living in providence itself, you are looking at anywhere from 40 minutes minimum to 90 minutes for commute, twice a day depending on how close you live to the train station/ if you take mbta or amtrack. If you have the time in your schedule to make that commute time, it does seem like a more affordable option long term. In my opinion, it could be an exhausting commute to make everyday. I would consider looking at homes that are in towns along the commuter rail.

Hope this helps

I did this for a few years and it’s hard. At its best, you catch up on a lot of reading and shows, if you have a tablet, at its worst you end up missing a train/having a train stuck in a snowstorm for a few hours. You learn to adjust, but I’d say you’re looking at at least an hour and forty-five minute commute each way. I did it and I don’t regret it, but I wouldn’t do it again. It’s different when you have a family.

You should go live in a burb in MA like Abington…the commute sucks for real by car or by train from RI. The train is ok sometimes, the rest of the time it’s late or whatever…if you took a train from a closer MA burb you’d be much better off. Driving is awful due to traffic that’s a log jam. Even a MA burb Norwood would be better than RI as it’s closer to 93 but still traffic jams. Also won’t there be a dual tax thing if you live in Rhody and work in MA? RI is not cheaper than MA.

How about moving to Attleboro? A bit closer to Boston, very close to Providence for fun, and the MBTA is right there.

Something to consider - MBTA is not the only option in Providence. My friend commutes on Amtrak. Less options but faster. With both train options (Comm rail and Amtrak) it's doable. (Btw posting FROM the comm rail right now although I don't do it daily).

Providence line is way more reliable than others, in part because it shares the track with a major Amtrak route.

Good luck with your decision but I say it is doable!!

My wife did it for a little over 2 years and it got old pretty fast. Spending 3-4 hours of your day commuting can really take a toll.

I live in Providence and commuted to Cambridge for five years. I did it all different ways (Commuter Rail from South Attleboro, Commuter Rail from Westwood, T from Quincy, Carpool, Drive) but never started by train in Providence due to cost and lack of parking. It wasn't great, but the worst part was getting to Cambridge from South Station. When I started looking for other jobs, I didn't consider anything in Boston unless it was walking distance from South Station, Back Bay or Ruggles.

Have you considered changing jobs to any of the hospitals in Providence? It's not like we're in the back woods here. Home to Brown Med School and major teaching hospitals.

You must take Amtrak imo if you take MBTA you will want to die. It breaks down so often or just stops for no apparent reason. It turns a 1 hour ride into 1.5 hrs or more all the time. I took Amtrak for a while and it was still a bit rough but doable.

Lack of quality homes at fair pricing in MA. Similar homes are about $200,000 cheaper in RI and NH for that matter.

Yes, currently commute to Boston Tuesday-Thursday. I would avoid it if possible, it’s draining and just sucks. Adds at least 2.5 hours to your day and costs a lot (almost $400 a month). Lately there haven’t been seats available on the way home, so half the train is stuck standing for the entire trip. All of the convenient times amtrak trains have been cut, so you’re pretty much stuck with the commuter rail.

Thank you for this. At the moment we can’t easily change jobs and that is why we are considering this. On average how long were you traveling door to door?

How long was your door to door commute?

Thank you.

That doesn’t sound good.

Depends on how early you leave/ return. Any place on the CR is going to be crazy re house prices in MA so I won’t encourage you to do that. If you are on an off schedule can you drive? I know plenty of people who commute. More than you might think. It’s very common.

It was about 90 min door-to-door as long as I took one of the trains that made fewer stops. The South Attleboro station is closed now, so from Providence you'd have to factor that in. Someone here mentioned the Acela from Providence. I never tried that but I know some people use it to commute

Do you by any chance work the same shifts and could drive together? Or drive part way then take public transportation the rest of the way? I realize you'd have to factor in the cost of gas.

Usually you can take MBTA and if there is a problem you can take AMTRAK instead which has some quicker trains

It was about 1 hour 15ish minutes…sometimes less sometimes a little more. I lived close to the station in PVD and worked very close to South Station so that helped a lot!

Houses are cheap in attleboro

I can’t speak regarding the trains. However, my husband and I just purchased a home in Pawtucket because house prices are literally $100,000 cheaper in RI compared to MA (we lived in MA previously and are originally from the cape). Anyways, we live only a couple hundred yards away from the Mass border. My husband has to travel to Logan weekly for work trips. He can commute to Logan in about 45-60 min depending on the time of day. We are so close to the highway that it is almost easier than when we lived in Franklin, MA. So maybe checkout Pawtucket and consider driving? We also have a new train station coming soon I believe, so in the future, train could be an easy option.

We are still close to Providence (which was something we wanted) but we still get a suburbs feel and live on a quiet street with a big yard. We also got our house for so cheap it’s crazy lol. We are thrilled so far.

It’s a pretty tough pill to swallow. I don’t recommend. Quick math, 260 working days a year. 2.5+ hours of public transport a day (or more, but never less) remember getting to and from the train station… earlier than the train gets there. It ends up being ~27 days of your year will be spent commuting A MONTH OF YOUR YEAR in slight or moderate discomfort. You can always make more money in life you can’t make more time.

I used to commute, I took the commuter rail and ended up switching to Amtrak. It was worth the fare but the schedules are limited.

Before Covid, I took the MBTA commuter rail to Boston from providence for 5 years Monday-Friday. It takes a lot out of you. Each way was 1.5 hours door to door for me. I took a Lyft to the train station every morning because the parking garage fills up early in the morning, like, my train was 7:15am and the garage would already be filled. I slept a lot both ways but nothing was worse than the train breaking down or a train being out of service so other trains were packed. It’s a doable thing, but it is tough. You have to be ready for unexpected delays and long train rides! Good luck if you decide to do it. Become friends with the conductors and the drivers of the trains, it makes it easier.

If you work remote 3 days a week and commute 2 days, it’s not bad. It’s so much cheaper To live a little outside boston.

If you're going to do it and you can make your schedule work, Amtrak is the way to go. Their monthly pass is $40 cheaper than MBTA and half the time. Pre-COVID I was 5 days a week. It got a little monotonous but I also enjoyed the commute to decompress. It's not for everyone but it's a small price to pay for what I would argue is a better quality of life for my family here.

I did. Here's a very long post about it. I actually left my job in Cambridge partially because I couldn't take this commute anymore even on a hybrid (1-2 days a week in office) schedule.

I worked in Kendall but would get off the train at Charles/MGH then walk across the Longfellow for a nice start to the morning. This will be long.

I would drive to Attleboro and take the train from there which made my experience a lot worse. The MBTA is well known for wanting to do big impressive infrastructure additions instead of basic maintenance. In the case of my commute, that means their desire to do a brandy new train station in South Attleboro instead of just fixing what is there for now. South Attleboro is a lot more convenient than Attleboro. I know look on a map and it's 5-10 extra minutes just plan but it's a high variance 5-10 minutes and if you want to make the train you have to plan on the worst variance. I'm still mad about the MBTA fucking over all of us with this asinine decision. You can probably tell.

If you commute from Providence Station you will have a much better time but longer commute. You will have a better time because you can take Amtrak instead of the commuter rail if you plan, and Amtrak is a much better experience. I couldn't justify using Providence Station because of the time to get there plus the extra time the train takes to get from Providence to Attleboro. The Amtrak though is a bit faster, and a bit more enjoyable, less of a crunch (as it does not stop at all the local stations on the line).

My experience is with the Commuter Rail though so let me tell you. It's fine. It is packed as hell now. If you have trouble with Covid-related (or general) crowding, it can be a problem. If you commute together with your partner, a bit less of a problem as you can take a double seat and avoid randos (enough of whom are assholes to make this a bit of a stressor). You will want to be back for your train home early to get a seat. Seriously, you have to be one of those people standing at South Station waiting for them to announce the track 10 minutes before the train leaves. At least for the rush hour trains. Otherwise more than a little chance you will be standing at least until Sharon, and almost no chance you'll be able to sit together.

The red line is running at something like 70% capacity with all of the MBTA problems. Like a lot of things, on paper (8 minute instead of 6 minutes headways IIRC) sounds like no big deal, but you feel the difference. And the average headway has a lot lot lot of standard deviation. Some days I waited as long as 25 minutes for a red line train. Then it would be overpacked. And of course, have two empty trains behind it. But, you can't always count on that so everyone packs into the first one that arrives.

What this adds up to is that you just have to account for a lot of time. So sure, on a good day, you might have:

Home to Providence : 5 minutes

Wait at Station: 5 minutes

PVD -> South Station: 50 minutes

South Station Walk and Wait: 5 minutes

Red line to MGH: 5 minutes.

That's not too bad. But you will find you don't want to cut it too close to catch the train, so you actually make the first 10 minutes 20 (give yourself 10 minutes to get there and plan on arriving 10 minutes early). Slow days even the express MBTA can take over an hour. Catch the timing wrong and you will be at South Station for 20 minutes. Get a red line train with shitty doors and you will spend 5 minutes at Park St as they constantly open and close (OK this is an exaggeration but god damn it felt this way some days). Now you are looking at an additional 30 minutes for you commute and frankly it sucks but I have a real problem with patience and might not be the best person to talk to about it. Also I'm a stats nerd so I actually tracked my commute times door to door and they were anywhere from 1:20 (good train luck including it being 5 minutes late which allowed me to catch it by a hair in Attleboro and took red line all the way to Kendall instead of morning walk) to 2:45 (missed train at SS due to slow red line from Kendall to South Station, this was not an outlier though it happened three times) Average was about 2 hours with the walk and 1:45 without. Again this is drive from Pawtucket to Attleboro, Express commuter rail (skips a few of the local stops) to SS, red line to MGH, walk to Kendall.

Some days I would drive to Quincy and just take the red line. This was more for if I was doing something in the evening and didn't want to risk missing the last commuter rail at 11). That was great in Covid-era traffic but sucks now. I also tried doing the drive to 128 station mostly because I like to shop at Wegman's but the fact that you can't get there easily from 95 (you have to go through the split or through very busy backroads in Norwood/Canton) makes it too high variance to plan.

I've done it. It was extremely difficult. You plan to read or get work done on the train but it's not always possible. Sometimes I'd stand most of the way. WiFi doesn't actually work so prepare to rely on your phone. The schedule isn't so hot so try not to miss your train home. All that said, it's doable for a limited time. After two years I really resented all the time I was losing to the commute.

Definitely consider how close the Boston station is to work, too. Commuter rail took about an hour in but getting on the green line from there blew another hour due to incredibly unreliable trains. Same thing in reverse, often missing the commuter train due to trolley issues. Just be prepared to have to kill some time...I did get to read a lot more!

I’m going to get downvoted for this…

Don’t move to RI. I just left after being there for 8 years. The government is a joke and literally NOTHING is done to help those that live there. The entire state is one big social experiment to see if organized crime should be running governments.

I commute 1 day a week from TF Green to Boston south station. We decided to move here because we wanted a nice house with a yard. I don’t regret it. I usually work and listen to audio books on the way anyhow so that’s not bad at all.

However, it does feel like ages on the ride and can get uncomfortable after 50 or so minutes.

The one thing we need less of is people from Boston making Boston money and then moving here and pricing Rhode islanders out of their own neighborhoods.

I think there’s a number of factors here, some of which you can only answer.

1. How close in PVD Will your house be to the station? Revisit this after #3.

2. The train itself from PVD to BOS isn’t bad although it seems to have picked back up in ridership (not sure if number of trains are back to pre-pandemic).

3. You’d have to get from the train to Mass Gen - luckily that transfer isn’t that bad. You’ll see other horror stories of transfers and the unreliable and slow T.

4. Revisiting one, this will be the 3rd leg of the commute. That adds up.

At the end of the day, you can get a lot more bang for your buck in PVD. And that can lead to a much higher quality of life. It’s just a matter of whether that 90 mins on a train each way is worth it and every day. The one thing to also consider is if you’re looking actually in PVD and have kids/considering kids, consider the cost of school of private school is needed vs other locations.

Attleboro has a reputation for being way cheaper than other Mass towns.

Or maybe consider a burb like Cumberland where you can get to the Stoughton line pretty easily?

They may even re-open the S. Attleboro station at some point. This sounds like a solid idea.

Amtrak tickets in advance are often very cheap. You can regularly go two ways for the price of one Commuter Rail ticket. The tickets also "float" and can be moved to a later date in the app if your schedule changes. 36m from Providence Station to Back Bay (40m to South Station) can't be beat compared to other trains and driving.

I will add though, that I despise commuting and hated every minute of being more than a 10-15m bike ride away from work like I have now in Providence. But Providence is a superior place to live than Greater Boston.

I would purchase a house in MA over RI for starters especially if you are already working in MA.

I don’t ride the train everyday but often enough. each stop always has tons of parking now especially Attleboro,Mansfield, and Sharon.

You’re situation is nearly identical to ours. Glad to hear you’re liking it

On the flip side if you drove in you’d probably be paying double with the price of gas, parking, and general wear and tear on the vehicle.

How long was your door to door? What was the monthly payment for the pass?

The other Attleboro stop is open and has ample parking.

I’ve also never had issues with getting a seat as it’s stop #2 from PVD and #1 from South Station.

Wow. Thank you for sharing this. We love statisticians. This seems like a pretty honest account of the experience

Where did you live?

No. It’s not. The home inventory is garbage and the prices are unreasonable.

I did this for about two years and, as others have said, it gets old quickly. That said, I had to take the commuter rail to South Station and then get on the red line to alewife. The train between providence and south station wasn’t the worst thing in the world but it gets packed. Amtrak is a better experience but definitely more expensive. It’s doable but I would just prepare for an exhausting commute.

(Bored Yawn)

Thank you. That sounds like an honest opinion all around

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Nope. And you get twice the house in Pawtucket

SO got a job in boston. We don't live in Providence. But let me break down a day of travel

• Wake up at 6:30
• drive SO to train station
• Train for 2 hours
• Walk to job 20 min(?)
• Work and be trapped at work for 8 hours
• Run to train station
• Train 2 hours
• Get picked up at train station Drive 30 min home

It sucked the life out of both of us. THe parking passes were expensive. I"ve waited for 3 hours because the train home was late or got stuck or something. Small delays happen a lot.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I"d say getting a home/apt neat a different train stop might make it better. Think about the car and parking and monthly train pass. SO's job got a little discount on the monthly, but it's not cheap for the run down train cars.

My door to door averages between 54-62mins. This includes biking to the train station and walking from south station to my office.

I think the monthly passes are $348/month in Amtrak vs $388 for MBTA. My employer subsidizes my commuter passes to encourage use of public transit so the cost really wasn't part of the calculus for us when we chose to move down here.

Cheaper yes, but still unreasonably expensive compared to similar homes in RI.

It's not nearly as convenient from Providence as South Attleboro.

I am curious what train now makes no outbound stops from South Station until Attleboro?

I lived in Woonsocket and Burriville. I know Woonsocket has a rough reputation but the Mayor ( well I guess she was just recently removed but is running unopposed so she will be sworn in again?!? RI politics are stupid…) has actually done a lot of good and is actually trying to help all the people who live there as opposed to just the rich white people.

I worked in downtown Providence, North Providence and on the East Side. The last 3 years I worked in human services trying house people all over the state. I spent SO MUCH TIME correcting government officials on laws and regulations and even their own math… 

The housing crisis is going to get worse and if you’re planning on moving to RI be ready for a LOT of unhoused individuals around.

Thank you

What is “SO”?

It's an abbreviation for "Significant Other" Whoops. SHould have clarified.

It make stops but people have commented they had no seats.

I’ve had no issue getting a seat from either of those directions/stops. they do offer certain runs with less stops now though.

No, houses in Cumberland should not cost 700k and it's all the Boston commuters that have made it that much as it is

Look at other expenses too - insurance and taxes are higher. My auto insurance doubled going to RI 5 miles away from Attleboro

I do this 5 days a week but I highly suggest renting for a year and testing the commute out. As you can tell by the rest of these comments some people hate it, some people find it manageable.

Oh. Haha. Right. Sorry

What is your door to door time? Overall cost of the parking/train per month?

I take amtrak. Door-to-door is hour and a half. Im in the office from 8am-3pm. 340 for the amtrak tix, 140 to park at the mall and 100 redline mbta cost = $580/mo.

If you and your SO commute together that could be nice

Did it. Hated the loss of time, not just on the train but driving to the train and paying for parking to take the train. I wouldn’t do this again.

And spending a LOT more time on the road unless you’re somehow able to avoid 7-10am and 4-7pm

I’m doing this right now. Providence -> back bay. The 656 Amtrak is $6 and it takes 35 minutes door to door. Very doable in my opinion

There is no dual tax if you live in one state and work in another. You do have to file two tax returns, but you don’t get taxed twice. I’ve done this for many years.

OP, just fyi like Providence, Pawtucket (aka the Bucket as the residents call it) still has a fair amount of stigma from some wealthier residents when it comes to the public schools. This is an urban district. If that's something you aren't interested in and you are planning on having kids, then you will be adding 35k+ per kid per year. Those home savings will quickly vanish when compared to public schools in SE Mass.

Also, like another commenter said,some costs will shoot up like insurance rates, so add all those in.

Wow. Can you be specific as to how you’re accomplishing that? Feel free to dm

Nothing really crazy. If you buy the ticket in advance it’s usually $6. Much cheaper than a monthly pass or even 10 ride pass (if you can get them all at $6. Sometimes they’re a little more) And that particular train (656 am) there’s only 1 stop between providence and back bay. It goes providence -> Rt 128 -> back bay -> south station. It might say longer on the Amtrak app or website but it’s literally 35 minutes from providence to back bay. If it’s slow or there’s traffic on the tracks maybe 40. It’s very doable in my opinion and I don’t find it really taxing at all.

How flexible are your hours at the hospital? My wife has kicked around this idea where she’d get a job at a Boston area hospital and just do 3 7am-7pm shifts a week. Commuting in and out at those hours would skip a lot of the problems a 9-5 commuter would encounter.

There is also a monthly pass you can buy for Amtrak.

Wow. We will look into this. That might solve a lot of problems. Are there any other options throughout Tempe day that are express with only one stop? We will consult the schedule online.

We could probably drive in before then. Start at 5:30-6 but the return trip is a little up in the air. My wife can do on calls and get days off too. So we hope to consolidate to 3 times a week

Yep, I am in providence now and thankfully not commuting by train on a hour or so ride. Which easily becomes 4 hours of your day. But I did do this for over 5 years between Baltimore and Philly on Amtrak (about an hour ride per the schedules). Consider that the trains will be late or cancelled with some consistency. That if you miss a train you are probably waiting an hour for the next one. That you will a few times a year be trapped on a broken down train in the middle of no where for several hours… you know while you are supposed to be in a meeting or something. That you will get to the train station at least 10 minutes before your scheduled departure and that you will not have easy parking at that train station. The conductors will all be nice except the ones that aren’t and holy shit can they ruin your day when they are an asshole - which you will experience when you ride every day. I assume commuter rail is not super comfortable so I don’t know how easily it would be to get work done, but on Amtrak once you are seated you will have a mostly comfortable ride and I was always able to get work done (which is why I would still choose this over an hour car commute each day). I love trains. I actually kind of miss this hell and I sometimes travel by train to see friends even when it isn’t convenient just to relive the experience. The cafe car is great for a beer and a random conversation. I think 2 or 3 years of it is good. I was definitely burned out after that though. For context before this commute I had a 5 minute bike ride work and before that a 7 block walk. So adding all that time to my commute wasn’t easy to keep up with.

Did it for like 2 years. Had to be to work at 8am, so I had to leave my house at 6am everyday, drive to the south Attleboro station (traffic builds up around that time already so I came close to missing the train several times). I’d get to ruggles station around 7:45. Took the train home at about 5ish and would get home around 6:45 each day.

It’s nice not having to worry about driving, and getting to relax on the commuter rail for an hour. Providence and south Attleboro are also some of the first stops in the morning, so you’ll always have a seat. But on the way home it was always packed and I never got a seat until people had gotten off after several stops. It’s also expensive . $4 a day for parking, and my job paid for a good portion of my monthly pass, but it was still over $250 a month for me.

I’m pretty sure all the northeast regional amtraks from providence to Boston are 1 stop in between

My pals just bought a nice 4br 10 mins from of Providence in a nice neighborhood for half of what a burned out crackhouse would cost in Lynn, MA.

Good to know

Buy in RI and when you get sick of the commute you can work locally and love life!

10 mins from providence isn’t “a little outside of boston”. We agree that RI is much more affordable and the houses are actually decent. Lynn has curbed the market on crack houses with asking prices of $550,000. It’s a joke

That would be the end goal eventually.

Just FYI, the Acela is not appreciably faster than the Northeast Regional train between PVD and BOS because it makes all the same stops and its top speed is mostly constrained by track limitations. It is, however, much more expensive.

>it’s stop #2 from PVD and #1 from South Station.

I read this as Attleboro is the #1 stop from South Station.

I work mostly in mass. Last summer I was in downtown Boston. This summer I’ve mostly been in Quincy and canton. It sucks. My shifts are always 12 hours, and usually 6 days a week so by the time I get home there’s enough time to shower and then sleep. Not sure how long your shifts are, but it’s something to keep in mind. I kinda settle into a routine and it becomes alright, but it’s never exactly pleasant. The vehicle you drive greatly influences it though. Last summer I drove my fathers fancy genesis sedan for a week after the alternator in my shitbox died and that car was so much more comfortable for the ride it truly made a difference throughout my week.

We plan on taking Amtrak at this point

Probably for the best. My job requires me to bring a lot of tools as well as have the ability to drive between locations within the state. I’m kinda stuck using a car sadly.

Don’t do it. It will turn a 40 hour a week job into a 60 hour a week job. It’s not worth having a house you’re never in.

Currently doing this commute (typing from the train rn lol) and I will say the 715 train from Providence is rarely full, and every time i walk near the lot by the train station it's nearly empty. The train back around 5 gets packed, I've always been able to find a seat though. The internet is spotty but if you have a good 4g plan it works for probably 70% of the ride. The train has thus far been pretty reliable, although I've heard some horror stories I've never experienced a significant delay (15 mins max occasionally). All that being said, I am only doing this commute for a year, and cannot fathom doing this long term with how draining it is every day. It helps a lot for me that my destination is right near the station in boston as well.

MBTA or Amtrak? Are you traveling 5 days a week?

5 days a week MBTA, Amtrak doesnt have enough trains and I need the flexibility of hourly trains.

When my wife worked at Mass General she drove to quincy Adam's and took the red line in.

I have a friend who commuted from Richmond RI to Boston via the commuter rail and he loved it

Which station did he use?

Wickford

Cumberland prices are out of control due to low inventory. My house I bought for 450k in 2016 is now valued at 800k+