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BOSTON (State House News Service) - Gov. Maura Healey on Wednesday named Framingham Mayor Charles Sisitsky as the newest member of the MBTA Board of Directors, capping off the latest governance transformation at the agency as its service and safety problems continue to mount.
Sisitsky, a longtime municipal official who began his first term as mayor in 2022, will immediately have his hands full. Tracks are in a state of disrepair across large chunks of the MBTA's subway system, including the nearly brand-new Green Line Extension, and officials appear to be struggling to lift slow zones faster than they add new ones.
Meanwhile, the agency remains under a scorching spotlight from the Federal Transit Administration, which is still concerned that the T is not doing enough to protect workers from being struck by trains and has threatened withholding federal funds without sufficient corrective action.
Infrastructure problems have now extended to some of the newest tracks in the entire network: parts of the Green Line Extension, whose two branches opened in March and December 2022 to great fanfare from the Baker administration, currently cannot safely support travel faster than 3 mph in some sections, agency data show.
MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said crews performed a regularly scheduled "geometry scan," which looks for track defects that may not appear visible to the naked eye, earlier this month and "found some areas where the width between the rails was slightly out of the limits of the regular track standard." In some locations, the tracks are narrower than they should be, Pesaturo said.
The Boston Globe first reported Tuesday about the new restrictions on the Green Line Extension, pointing out that the 3 mph maximum allowable speed in stretches is slower than many people can walk.
Pesaturo said officials are still working to determine the cause of the improperly spaced rails.
He added that slow zones will remain in place "until the defects are addressed during overnight periods on the Medford branch and during the ongoing closure of the Union Branch," the latter of which is shuttered until Oct. 12 to allow for repair work on a highway bridge that crosses over the tracks. Pesaturo estimated the restrictions will be lifted on the Union Square branch by the time train service reopens.
Officials did not explain why the defective Green Line Extension tracks were not identified earlier, nor say whether they were improperly installed or instead have degraded in recent months.
"Since becoming General Manager, delivering safe, reliable, and improved service has been a priority. To do that, we remain committed to addressing infrastructure problems that we have inherited caused by years of disinvestment and past decisions that have led us to this point in time," MBTA General Manager Phil Eng said in a statement. "We know we have significant work to accomplish, not only to rebuild public trust as we remove speed restrictions but also to rebuild our workforce and reorganize our leadership team. The MBTA is in the process of safely performing as much work as possible during diversions, overnights, and weekends to improve our riders' experience with safe, timely, reliable, and frequent trips."
MBTA overseers are also grappling with ramped-up regulatory scrutiny more than a year after the Federal Transit Administration completed a sweeping safety investigation that uncovered widespread problems.
Since then, the FTA has warned the MBTA on multiple occasions about "near miss" incidents between workers and moving trains that continue to occur. And on Friday, FTA Chief Safety Officer Joe DeLorenzo chided the T for failing to comply with a Sept. 14 order prohibiting deployment of lone, unaccompanied workers on the tracks, sometimes referred to as Level 5 protection.
In a Sept. 22 letter, DeLorenzo said FTA and Department of Public Utilities inspectors observed a dispatcher on Sept. 20 "directing an MBTA employee on to the right of way under Level 5 protection to assist a disabled train," calling it "a direct violation" of the previous federal directive.
According to the Globe, MBTA officials said they believed they could continue to use lone workers while awaiting an FTA response to their request for an exemption to the ban in emergency cases.
The FTA on Friday approved a version of that request, with DeLorenzo writing that his team was "disappointed in the initial response" but "appreciates the MBTA's follow-up response to this situation and the expedited action taken."
"Given the gravity of the situation, FTA, along with DPU, will closely monitor the MBTA's implementation of these exception measures," DeLorenzo wrote. "Failure to implement these measures and comply with FTA's [immediate action letter] may necessitate additional enforcement actions by FTA, including but not limited to redirecting the use of Federal funds, fund withholding, and imposing further restrictions or prohibitions on MBTA's operations."
The MBTA Board of Directors is scheduled to meet Thursday, where it could newly have a full slate of nine members.
The current iteration of the oversight and management panel had seven members for most of its lifespan. Lawmakers and Healey agreed to add two more seats as part of the fiscal year 2024 budget.
One seat, which Sisitsky will fill, must be held by a municipal official in a community that has MBTA service. The other is selected by the mayor of Boston, and Mayor Michelle Wu on Monday tapped Mary Skelton Roberts to that role.
"I know what it's like to live in a community that relies on the MBTA, and I hope to use that perspective to better support the future of Massachusetts' public transportation," Sisitsky said in a statement.
Since she took office in January, Healey has now named four new MBTA board members including a chair, selected her own transportation secretary and MBTA general manager, and created a new Department of Transportation chief safety officer position. This month's departure of Gina Fiandaca gives the governor a second chance to name a state transportation secretary.
Healey last week called the string of near misses "unacceptable."
"I was proud to sign a budget that created this seat and a designated seat for Boston to better ensure that the communities served by the MBTA have a seat at the table," Healey said in a statement Wednesday about Sisitsky's appointment. "Together with Acting Transportation Secretary Tibbits-Nutt [and] General Manager Eng, we have confidence that the team we've put in place will deliver a more reliable, safe and accessible MBTA for all."
Written By Chris Lisinski/SHNS
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