With the Delta variant upending life in general, along with back-to-the-office plans, Massachusetts is heading into a period of great uncertainty about the future of public transit. We need leadership that’s flexible, far-sighted — and focused on transparency, accountability, and safety.
For those reasons, establishing a new MBTA board of directors should be a priority for Governor Charlie Baker. But right now, if he or the T leadership feels any sense of urgency about it, it’s hard to tell.
On July 29, Baker signed a law creating a new seven-member board. It gives him the power to select five board members, which he has not yet done. One of the five must come from three nominees selected by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. Under the law, Secretary of Transportation Jamey Tesler will be a member when the board convenes. The law also authorizes the MBTA Advisory Board, an independent group representing the cities and towns that contribute revenue to the T, to select one member; it has done so, selecting Mayor Thomas Koch of Quincy for the position.
With a new board still unformed, the T has been without its own oversight board since June 30, when the Fiscal and Management Control Board officially went out of business. (For now, the MBTA is being overseen by the MassDOT board of directors.)
Some history is useful here as a reminder of why this kind of oversight is so important. The Fiscal and Management Control Board was established in July 2015, after the catastrophic winter that came to be known as “Snowmageddon” revealed deep systemic deficiencies that led to massive service disruption. That public transit disaster coincided with the first months of Baker’s first term in office, leading him to convene a special panel to investigate what happened and why. The panel recommended forming a board to closely monitor the T’s finances, management, and operations. Out of that was born the board, which has played an important role in providing regular updates about the T’s operating budget, progress on capital projects, and general customer service issues.
As the Baker administration sees it, considerable progress has been made since Snowmageddon in terms of improving service and delivering on capital projects. For example, the T just marked the successful completion of a major capital improvement project on the E branch of the Green Line — just one example, a spokeswoman said, of how the T has used the period of low pandemic-era ridership to accelerate major infrastructure work throughout the system. According to the Baker administration, in fiscal 2021, the T made $1.92 billion in capital improvements. In 2014, the year before Snowmageddon, the T’s capital investment spending was only $600 million. Through partnerships with the cities and towns that own the region’s streets, there are new bus lanes. In fiscal 2022, there are also plans to procure electric-hybrid buses; upgrade track infrastructure; implement contactless fare payments and rear-door boardings; improve transit signals; and upgrade passenger information and amenities, and many other projected improvements.
Of course, there’s a big difference between completed projects and promised new ones, and accountability for meeting deadlines and budgets is critical. There are also pending safety-related questions. Nearly six months after a new Orange Line train derailed, the T recently announced that two of the four new trains that were pulled from service in March are now back online; the others are set to be reintroduced sometime this month. The new board should demand a full accounting for what exactly happened. Meanwhile, the new 152-car fleet of Orange Line trains are now set to be fully delivered by April 2023 — 15 months later than initially planned. And 252 new Red Line cars are scheduled to be fully in service by September 2024 — a year later than the original completion date. What’s causing the delay? The new board should want to know that, too. A July crash between two Green Line trains also remains under investigation and raises more questions about the system’s longstanding lack of safety technology.
And speaking of safety, what about enforcement of the T’s mask policy? All riders and T employees are required to wear face coverings to stop the spread of COVID-19. But the policy is not always enforced. The head of the T’s largest union has also said that Baker’s mandatory vaccination policy is something that must be negotiated, raising another immediate safety concern for riders.
Whatever progress has been made at the T came in part because there was a demand for transparency and accountability, via the Fiscal and Management Control Board. Transparency and accountability are needed as much now as before. Baker, now in his second term and contemplating a third, should bring the same sense of purpose and urgency to dealing with public transit during a pandemic as he did after a record-breaking snowfall.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us on Twitter at @GlobeOpinion.
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A new MBTA board of directors should be a priority for Governor Baker - The Boston Globe
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