Boston’s public transit system is on the verge of disaster: stations are crumbling, staff are underpaid and undertrained, and safety incidents are rampant. We spoke with twenty-one insiders on how to solve the crisis.

1. More Free Buses

Kim Janey, former Boston mayor and current president and CEO, Economic Mobility Pathways (EMPath)

The T is a public good. We have to treat it like a public good, the way we invest in our libraries and our schools. I would continue and expand the free buses. As mayor of Boston, I launched fare-free transit with the number 28 bus, and Michelle Wu’s administration expanded it to the 23 and 29.

Some of the poorest people in our city ride the 28 bus. They depend on it to get to doctor’s appointments, to take their children to and from school or daycare, and to get back and forth to work.

When we made it free, ridership increased, and it also increased speed and reliability. You can have all the doors open; everyone can board the bus without digging for change and putting wrinkled dollar bills through a system that spits it out. So they’re staying on schedule.

At EMPath, many of our participants are unhoused or living in deep poverty. As they are trying to build their lives and careers and break that cycle of poverty, having a transit system that is operational, dependable, and affordable is essential to them being able to climb the economic ladder.

2. Keep the T Safe

Pete Wilson, senior policy adviser, Transportation for Massachusetts

We should appoint an independent safety oversight board with revolving terms so that we get an entity that has not only the expertise but also the focus and independence to keep accidents and malfunctions at bay.

Under the transit guidelines issued by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), each state has to designate its own safety oversight organization—for Massachusetts, it’s the Department of Public Utilities (DPU). When the FTA reviewed the T’s safety record last year, the report didn’t only point out the safety problems and shortcomings; it also highlighted the DPU and its lack of response. The report questioned the DPU’s independence from interference by the governor, given that the governor appoints MBTA board members and also approves the DPU’s three-member Commonwealth Utilities Commission. The concern is that the DPU might be coordinating with the governor’s office or with the MBTA to avoid political embarrassment. It’s definitely not transparent—there are things that we only know because the Boston Globe got information through Freedom of Information requests.

That’s why more recent entities—the Cannabis Control Commission and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission—have members appointed by the treasurer, the attorney general, and the governor—spreading out the allegiances, if you will.

An independent board, which is being considered by the legislature, could be set up to issue corrective actions and even have enforcement authority. People have a concern about political malfeasance or intrusion into certain things, and safety on the T should not be one of them.

3. Get It Straight

Doug Most, author, The Race Underground

It might be a pie-in-the-sky idea, but let’s get rid of the sharp turns to make the Green Line faster.

Why is the Green Line so slow and torturous in certain spots? It’s because these tunnels were built in a different era, with very sharp turns. We have these very short trains, and then they’re forced to hit the brakes and go 5 miles an hour around these bends.

These are hard left and hard right, almost 90-degree turns. It’s an unusual thing for a public transit system to have that.

Now, it’s a huge project to build a new tunnel under the Common; that’s not a thing to be taken lightly. And you might need to remove the Boylston Street station. There would be resistance, but I work at Boston University, and they just got rid of two stops on the B Line to make the Green Line faster along Commonwealth Avenue. People adapt and adjust.

Back in the 1890s, there was tremendous resistance to building a subway. People thought the underground was a horrible, scary place; merchants were really opposed to it because they could only think about how the construction was going to hurt their business.

What they were not able to recognize was that foot traffic and congestion in cities were so bad that this was going to improve their business and improve city life. So it sort of had to be forced upon them. And sometimes, that is the way things have to happen. Today, it is important for us to take the long view on some of these projects and not be short-sighted.

4. T Academy

Jamey Tesler, visiting fellow, Taubman Center for State & Local Government, Harvard Kennedy School

A successful T will be a larger T, a great employer that has succeeded at recruiting new and different people into the workforce. One way that I’m confident we could help the team achieve that is with a Massachusetts Infrastructure Academy. The goal would be to complement the initiatives of the Healey-Driscoll administration, the transportation secretary, and the general manager to aggressively hire people for the MBTA by offering an educational pathway that’s going to bring many more people into the transit industry.

The FTA safety report last year indicated that the T could need up to 2,000 net new employees. Not just bus drivers: safety positions, maintenance workers, engineers, transportation planners, and technology staff. The academy would support the MBTA, but it would also help the Regional Transportation Authorities, which have the same challenges. It would help the private partners that the MBTA and MassDOT work with. It would also help us accomplish our diversity and equity goals.

We would have a competitive process in selecting private educational partners—in western Massachusetts, the South Coast, the Boston region, and the North Shore. This has to be a partnership between the infrastructure agencies on the government side, labor, and some of our world-class educational institutions.

Photo by Vincent Alban/Boston Globe via Getty Images

5. Make the Road Agencies Pay

Christian MilNeil, editor in chief, StreetsblogMass

Sooner or later, the state is going to have to figure out how transportation is going to reach net-zero carbon by 2050. Right now, the plan is basically putting the burden on consumers, expecting us all to buy $50,000 electric cars. And that’s not working.

With the electric power sector, the burden was put on the big utilities. The state wrote laws that said, You are going to have to generate a certain amount of clean electricity every year; we don’t care how you do it, but you are going to be held accountable to these benchmarks.

What if we treat the Massachusetts Turnpike and Interstate 93 like power plants that generate pollution and say the amount of pollution coming from I-90 and I-93 needs to be cut by 50 percent by 2030? MassDOT would have an incentive to postpone some of its big highway projects and instead invest in higher-speed rail between Boston and Springfield to take some trips off the turnpike. Helping the MBTA electrify the commuter-rail system, which is currently run on diesel, meanwhile, might reduce trips on Interstate 93.

What’s more, if their benchmarks aren’t reached, MassDOT—or any other transportation carbon emitters—would have to pay a penalty. And the penalty should be sufficiently sized to allow the MBTA to considerably expand its service and take some trips off those roadways.

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