MBTA overseers caution improvements for riders will take time
Frustrated MBTA riders should expect an “incremental series of improvements” to the transit system, the recently installed chair of the Board of Directors said Thursday.
Lifting slow zones, among other fixes to daily operations, need to be integrated into bigger changes -- like overhauling the MBTA’s organizational culture and decision-making processes -- in order to make a “significant impact,” Thomas Glynn said when pressed to predict the T’s performance within six months to a year.
“Those things take some time,” Glynn, former MBTA general manager and Massport CEO, said during a virtual MBTA Advisory Board forum.
People will see a “different T one year from now,” but Glynn indicated the public won’t see a difference in just two months’ time.
Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, the advisory board chair and a T board member, offered a potentially longer timeframe.
“We might be a year, a year and half, I think, from really turning the corner because we all know there’s some huge structural issues at that agency that’s been unattended to for a long time. That’s not a shot at anybody,” Koch said. “I think Charlie Baker was probably the first governor since Mike Dukakis to pay any attention in any real way to the T, and all the challenges and needs.”
The forum comes as the MBTA confronts a Monday deadline to update its workplace safety plan for federal regulators.
Federal Transit Administration Chief Safety Officer Joe DeLorenzo on May 19 rejected the MBTA’s work plan for rail right-of-way protections -- meant to bolster employee safety and prevent trains from hitting them -- because the plan’s protections would not be fully implemented until late 2023 or 2024. The FTA ordered the plan in April after five “near misses” between trains and T workers.
Safety improvements in the new work plan must take effect within 60 days, DeLorenzo instructed. The T could be barred from right-of-way access should officials fail to “appropriately revise” their plan, DeLorenzo said.
During the forum, MBTA leaders broadly addressed those safety woes while sketching new strategies to internally revamp the agency and to collaborate with stakeholders, including developers.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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