T creates $120G post for commuter rail safety czar
The MBTA is creating a $120,000-a-year post to oversee safety on its commuter rail system, which in recent months has faced a rash of deaths, new federal mandates and internal complaints over its private operator’s ability to investigate safety concerns.
The T, which began advertising the job yesterday, called the deputy director post a “safety-sensitive senior management position” and said it will include the responsibility of helping oversee the agency’s $2.69 billion contract with Keolis.
With a salary up to $118,860 a year, the new manager will also help implement the T’s $450 million rail safety project known as Positive Train Control, investigate incidents such as derailments and respond to other “unusual occurrences” on the T’s sprawling network, according to T officials.
Joe Pesaturo, a T spokesman, said the new position was created in direct response to a federal mandate that agencies create a comprehensive “System Safety Program,” which will be subject to Federal Railroad Administration audits and includes a range of required policies and procedures.
The mandate went into effect last month, according to federal records.
The commuter rail system has already been battling other safety issues. The T said in the fall it was exploring ways to curb a sudden surge in people being killed by trains after recording 19 deaths in fiscal year 2017, more than double the previous year.
Pesaturo said the new hire would work with Keolis and T officials to “prevent such incidents from occurring.”
The Herald reported last month that Keolis had also fumbled the early stages of a probe into how a car abruptly broke free from a moving train in September, drawing complaints from T officials about the company’s “historic failure” to conduct such investigations and communicate with the agency.
Federal officials had told Keolis they also intended to impose a civil penalty on the company for its handling of the investigation, according to emails the Herald obtained.
T officials have said that they’ve since smoothed out the communication issues with Keolis, which denied it had failed to provide key info to the agency. Pesaturo said yesterday that the new position was “completely unrelated” to the T’s past concerns.
But the new hire would add to the T’s recent efforts to beef up the administrators overseeing Keolis. In September, it hired former T general manager Dan Grabauskas to serve as a $30,000-amonth executive director of the commuter rail, a position they intend to eventually make permanent with another hire.