Alewife station Minuteman Bikeway, Cambridge Linear Park, and the Fitchburg Cutoff Path. Alewife opened on March 30, 1985. Originally only to be a temporary terminus during construction of the Arlington section of the Red Line, Alewife became the regular terminus when the further extension was canceled. The station is named after Alewife Brook, a nearby tributary of the Mystic River, which in turn is named after the alewife fish which inhabits the Mystic River system. Alewife features six pieces of public art which were built as part of the first stage of the Arts on the Line program. Boston transportation planners expected
Alewife station to build an Inner Belt Expressway within the Route 128 corridor in the 1960s. MA Route 2 was designed with eight lanes to carry large volumes of radial traffic, east from Alewife Brook Parkway, through Cambridge and Somerville to the Inner Belt at the border of eastern Somerville and eastern Cambridge. When the Inner Belt was canceled, Route 2 became an overbuilt highway that terminated at what was little more than major city streets. When the westward extension of the Red Line was being designed, building a station near the end of Route 2 with a large parking garage seemed