Warren was joined by Senator Ed Markey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Federal Transit Administrator Nuria Fernandez, and Transit Matters Executive Director Jarred Johnson at the congressional subcommittee hearing to discuss the economic impact of inadequate maintenance of the T, Warren’s office said recently.
Warren chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs’ subcommittee on economic policy.
Warren also invited MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak and Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities Chair Matthew Nelson to testify.
“The T is failing,” Warren said, per a transcript of her statements. “In the last two years, there has been a series of dangerous and even deadly collisions, derailments, and accidents on the T. Multiple derailments on the red line. A collision on the green line that injured dozens. Workplace injuries. A horrific death when a red line passenger was caught in a door and dragged off a platform.”
The hearing comes less than two months after the FTA issued a scathing report about safety at the MBTA following a year of serious incidents, including the dragging death of a passenger on the Red Line in April.
“The combination of overworked staff and aging assets has resulted in the organization being overwhelmed, chronic fatigue for key positions in the agency, lack of resources for training and supervision, and leadership priorities that emphasize meeting capital project demands above passenger operations, preventive maintenance, and even safety,” the report said.
Warren said Friday that the FTA “really laid into the T’s management, finding that – and again, I quote: ‘MBTA’s Executive Management does not consistently ensure its decisions related to safety risks are based on safety data analysis or documented facts.’ Simple translation? When it comes to safety, the T’s management is just making it up.”
The report also said the DPU has not used its full authority to prevent safety failures at the MBTA and ordered the agency to complete a legal assessment of its independence from the T.
In response to the FTA’s preliminary finding over the summer that dispatchers at its operations control center were working shifts as long as 20 hours, the MBTA cut subway service by more than 20 percent, increasing wait times for trains and frustrating riders. Though they were supposed to last only through the summer, those cuts remain in place.
The FTA also found persistent track defects, especially on the Orange Line where the MBTA had put speed restrictions in place for several years in some cases. The MBTA shut down the entire Orange Line from mid-August to mid-September for upgrades.
Despite promises of faster service post-shutdown, travel times remain slower from end to end on the Orange Line compared to before the shutdown, according to the tracker from Transit Matters, a public transportation advocacy group.
“Overall, the FTA analysis contained 20 findings regarding safety problems at MTBA and provided the agency with a list of 53 actions required to address these concerns,” Warren said Friday, according to the transcript. “It also contained 4 findings regarding DPU’s failures and provided DPU with a list of 9 actions required to address these concerns. And by the way, FTA also found that seven leftover action items from a 2019 audit of DPU were still unresolved.”
She said the situation is dire.
“This is a dangerous situation that has been allowed to fester for far too long,” Warren said. “We are here today at our field hearing to examine management of the MBTA and DPU and to press for change. Every single FTA action item needs to be checked off – immediately. But that alone is not enough. The people of Massachusetts need a safe system, but they also need a transit system that works—a system that is reliable, accessible, frequent, dependable, clean, and that gets you where you need to go without crazy delays.”
Warren said the congressional Bipartisan…
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