BOSTON — A Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority safety plan for track workers has been turned down by the Federal Transit Administration, which has ordered a new plan to be submitted by June 5.
The May 19 letter to MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng from Joe DeLorenzo, FTA associate administrator and chief safety officer, Office of Transit Safety and Oversight, called the plan submitted by the MBTA on May 5 “insufficient.” It includes items that would not be addressed until late 2023 or 2024, but the FTA says that “direct and focused actions” are required ‘given the immediate risk to worker safety on the [right-of-way].” The new plan must address right-of-way processes and procedures within 60 days.
The plan in question is in response to an April 18 “Immediate Action Letter” sent by the FTA after a series near-miss incidents between trains and workers on the MBTA rapid-transit system [see “MBTA trains had four near-miss incidents …,” Trains News Wire,” April 14, 2023]. Those are part of larger safety issues that led the FTA to issue a series of directives last year [see “DOT agency issues safety directives …,” News Wire, Aug. 31, 2022].
The FTA said it would work with the MBTA to distinguish between items requiring immediate action and those which could be addressed over a longer term. But it also said that if the MBTA failed to “appropriately revise the Work Plan and comply with the other requirements of the April 18 letter, [right-of-way] access will be prohibited.”
