Advocates call for T to increase safety
After several derailments and other accidents on MBTA trains and in stations — and after Gov. Charlie Baker vigorously defended the T’s record– transit advocates called on Bay State elected officials to make the MBTA safer.
“We know the solutions to the challenges facing the T, and we have the power to fix them,” said Josh Ostroff, Interim Director at the Transportation for Massachusetts Coalition following the Thursday rally on the State House steps. “The question is — what crisis will it take for our leaders to act with the urgency and scale required?”
Advocates including Brian Kane, executive director of the MBTA Advisory Board, called on Baker to appoint his members to the MBTA’s new Board of Directors, which he signed into law in late July. Baker has not appointed any of his five allotted members, while the Advisory Board selected its member in August.
“We acted quickly because we understand the importance of oversight for the MBTA. There is no oversight right now,” Kane said, adding that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation has not discussed MBTA matters in any meetings this summer. The Fiscal and Management Control Board, which Baker created in 2015 as a watchdog for the organization, lapsed at the end of June.
Kane also wants to see Baker regularly ride the T or bus, because even though he said the T is safe, “actions speak louder than words,” Kane said.
Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone, who also spoke at the rally, said he “accept(s) the criticism” of the state of the MBTA as an elected official. “We lose credibility as elected leaders if we don’t deliver what we promised,” he said.
Curtatone credited Baker and his Fiscal Management Control Board with the near-completion of the Green Line Extension project in Somerville.
The advocates also called for an overhaul of the MBTA’s finances via both “an investment plan leveraging incoming federal dollars” and “steady and sufficient legislative funding” to overcome the MBTA’s financial deficits and fix its “outdated infrastructure,” according to the group’s press release.