Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants the next governor of Massachusetts to fire the senior officials at the MBTA and install new leadership to address the T’s poor safety and reliability record.
During a conversation with Boston Public Radio’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagen, Warren said that the MBTA has suffered from a lack of federal support in the past but that the agency currently has the resources it needs to improve its service.
Warren said that the biggest impediment to improvement is the lack of accountability displayed by MBTA General Manager Stephen Poftak and top officials at the Department of Public Utilities, which is in charge of safety oversight.
Warren’s comments follow a federal oversight hearing into the T’s record she held over the weekend alongside Sen. Ed Markey. During the hearing, she highlighted the findings of a Federal Transit Administration investigation — which, among other things, faulted the T for failing to focus on maintenance and not hiring enough workers to keep the subway running on time.
"This is about accountability for management," Warren said. "Look at the federal investigation on this — you don't have enough people because you're not putting out requests for good-paying jobs. The management is not making this an attractive place to work. I've never seen a report like this federal report."
The FTA reported that the MBTA is understaffed by about 2,000 employees. The MBTA has publicly made that its hiring goal by June 2023.
Warren admitted that the state Legislature has failed in the past to provide enough support to allow the MBTA to stay ahead of its repairs. But, she said the agency now has more money at its disposal than ever before, just not the individuals in place to make those changes happen.
"This is not a problem you're simply going to solve by taking a dumptruck load of money and backing it up and showering it across the T and the T will be magically better," Warren said. "We've have no vision for four years at the T."
The state Legislature recently approved $666 million dollars for the MBTA and there is roughly $580 million dollars available under a federal infrastructure funding bill passed by Congress this year. Warren said that even with that money, the T's safety track record won't improve until there are changes with its overseer: the Deparment of Public Utilities.
"It doesn't have to be this way. Nationally, the T is a huge outlier," Warren said. "Of all the transit systems across the country, the T is responsible for more than a third of all the accidents and more than 90% of all the personal injuries."
During the hearing she held in Boston this past weekend, Warren asked the DPU chairman Matthew Nelson what experience he had related to the maintenance of a transit system. Nelson said that neither he, nor the other DPU's commissioners, have a background in transit safety.
Warren said Wednesday that revelation shocked her.
"If we're gonna make change then it's gonna be that we're going to have a governor who has the vision of what needs to be done and then puts people in place to execute on that vision," the senator said.
