FTA has no plans to take over MBTA, administrator says

BOSTON — The Federal Transit Administration has no plans to take over operations of the troubled Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, FTA Administrator Nuria Fernandez said during a Friday hearing that also saw sharp criticism of MBTA management by Massachusetts’ two U.S. senators.

U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, both Democrats, took part in the field hearing of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy, chaired by Warren, at the JFK Federal Building in Boston.

An FTA takeover would be rare but not unprecedented; the agency took over safety oversight of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in 2015, a role it eventually handed off to the independent Washington Metrorail Safety Commission.

But Streetsblog Boston reports Fernandez said the FTA would continue to provide oversight “to ensure both the MBTA and [state Department of Public Utilities] complete all the corrective actions on the safety directives that were issued.” Those directives, issued in June, addressed such issues as the MBTA’s shortage of dispatchers and issues with moving equipment in need of repair, as well as the state agency’s oversight [see “Federal directives order MBTA to address safety issues,” Trains News Wire, June 15, 2022].

The Boston Globe reports that Warren, in her opening remarks, said the MBTA’s “list of management failures is a long one,” while Markey criticized the agency’s general manager, Steve Poftak, for communications problems — notably after the recent project that shut down the rapid-transit Orange Line for a month. Travel times on that line are now slower than before the shutdown, according to the group TransitMatters [see “Advocacy group says MBTA Orange Line service is slower …,” News Wire, Oct. 10, 2022].

Poftak said that during the shutdown, the MBTA found other areas needing work, and slow orders are being in place while those are being addressed. Presed by Markey, Poftak said he “failed to properly communicate” those issues, and agreed to publish information about trip times and work still to be completed, but declined to say when the work would be done. “If I put a date in place, it doesn’t prioritize safety,” Poftak said.

CommonWealth Magazine reports Warren asked Poftak, twice, how many of the 53 items covered by the FTA directives — which she called a “staggering long list” — been addressed by the MBTA. He said the transit agency was “still working that out with the FTA. … It truly varies from corrective action plan to corrective action plan. We will get some done right away. Some will be multiple years in execution.”

Warren also told Poftak she “nearly fell over” when she read an FTA finding that MBTA managers do not consistently make decisions about safety matters based on data analysis or documented facts: “That is the bureaucratic way to say that your safety decisions are just made up.”