On December 12, 1895, the
West End Street Railway opened its Forest Hills Yard with a 12-track carhouse on the east side of Washington Street, serving newly electrified streetcar lines. The
Boston Elevated Railway (BERy), successor to the West End, opened a second carhouse on the site two years later. The
Jamaica Plain via South Huntington line was soon extended to Arborway, improving connections with the other lines. The BERy replaced the older carhouses with a new six-track carhouse and a bus garage in 1924–25. Buses gradually replaced streetcars; all of the Arborway-terminating lines except the South Huntington line (Arborway Line, later
Green Line E branch) were converted to bus by 1956. In 1962, the MTA opened its headquarters building at 500 Arborway. Arborway closed on December 28, 1985 when the line was "temporarily" suspended and ultimately closed. When the new Forest Hills station was opened in 1987, a loop for the E branch was included as part of the station complex, so that Arborway would only be used for layovers and maintenance. No streetcar ever used the station, which was instead later used for
route 39 buses from 2000 to 2017. The Arborway carhouse remained until 2001 when it was demolished and replaced by a smaller facility for
CNG-powered buses. The project was paused in mid-2025 due to a lack of funding, and would take 5-6 years to design and build once funded. State funding for the garage was announced in October 2025 as part of an $850 million transfer from the Commonwealth Transportation Fund to the MBTA. ==References==