The MBTA wants to run daily commuter trains from Boston to Gillette Stadium under an approximately year-long pilot program, according to a proposal state transportation officials plan to pitch to local leaders in the coming weeks.

The pilot program, which an MBTA spokesman said wouldn’t start until at least the fall of 2018, would revive a version of a controversial plan the state pushed in the waning months of former Gov. Deval Patrick’s second term, only to be sidelined amid intense local opposition.

The pilot calls for commuter rail service between Foxboro and South Station on weekdays, with “preliminary plans” for four round-trips scheduled daily, T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.

The Kraft Group, which owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, and its subsidiary, Foxboro Realty Associates, would pay $200,000 toward operating the trains, though Pesaturo did not immediately say what officials expect the total cost of the pilot to be.

MassDOT staffers are expected to brief selectman in Foxboro and nearby Walpole in two weeks, according to the T, before bringing the proposal to the MassDOT board, likely in December.

Pesaturo said the pilot would supersede a January 2015 memorandum of understanding with the Kraft Group, which had called for full commuter rail service instead of a pilot. That plan drew the ire of several elected officials, including Congressman Joseph Kennedy III, who said lawmakers were never told of the $23 million deal, launched under Patrick, to buy the freight lines on which the trains would run until the plan was in its final stages in 2014.

After he took office in 2015, Baker was critical of the expansion plan to buy the tracks, saying the focus should be on the rail system’s already crumbling infrastructure amid that year’s record-breaking winter. But MassDOT later finalized the purchase in June 2015, with Baker calling it an “opportunity to improve the quality of the service of the existing lines.”

At the time, state officials had left open the door to a pilot program as it renegotiated the deal with the Kraft Group.

The T currently runs limited commuter rail service to Gillette on Patriot game days and for other major events at the stadium.

“The proposed pilot would be a public-private partnership and is planned to have benchmarks to measure ridership and the impact of the service on economic development in the Foxboro area,” Pesaturo said. “MassDOT looks forward to having conversations with elected leaders and members of the community as this proposed pilot program is discussed.”

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