An MBTA Red Line train at Park Street Station.

AT A CRITICAL moment in Shakespeare’s King Lear, the raging, aging king bellows into the fury of a great storm, defying nature to “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! . . . spout till you have drenched our steeples.”  He goes on a while in this manner, venting his anger against the treachery of his daughters, and finally, all passion spent, he is becalmed, and declares, “I will be the pattern of all patience, I will say nothing.”

Lear’s rage, and his later inclination toward patience and silence, reflect how I have felt these many months, watching the new Healey-Driscoll administration get its transportation sea legs, giving ample time to a new team at the MBTA to get a handle on the organization and develop a strong, actionable plan for the recovery of the T.

I put aside my rage at the conditions left by the prior gubernatorial administration, conditions that certainly have been long in the making and left largely unresolved. I calmed myself, and endured transit conditions that no 21st century urban American should be asked to endure. But patience is not an inexhaustible thing, and silence, which is appropriate at times when people need some leeway as they transition into challenging jobs, can eventually turn into complicity.   

Today, as I write this, I just missed a Red Line train and the next train message board, at 9:09 am on a weekday, said that the next two trains would arrive in 15 and 20 minutes, respectively. This has been the norm on a subway line that serves some of the city’s most important civic, medical, and academic institutions, linking a large and diverse population to jobs, health care, and many other opportunities.

It was, after months of enduring substandard conditions, the inflection point in my thinking. Patience, and silence, will not help solve this.   

I’ve said many times that the many issues plaguing the MBTA have long, bipartisan roots. They can be traced to decisions made, or deliberately not made, by Democratic and Republican governors and legislative leaders since 1991.

You can trace many of the problems back to the pernicious narrative of “taming the beast” that became a rationale for starving the T of resources during much of the Weld-Cellucci years. You can see the framework of a failed operating budget funding system in the misguided decision of Democratic legislators 23 years ago to adopt a “forward funding” approach to the T that was regionally inequitable, based on faulty revenue assumptions, and that carried with it the burden of its own false narrative — that the T was a “budget buster.” You can also trace today’s problems to the persistent, stubborn refusal of the Legislature to properly fund the T, the fatal attraction to soundbites like “reform before revenue” and “fix it first,” which like junk food may taste (or sound) good, but are filled with empty calories. History has shown these alluring sound bites to be proxies for disinvestment.  

The roots of the problem also run deep into a failed state procurement process, which lends itself to procurements of major investments in ways that do not serve the public interest. This is plainly evident in the way the Patrick administration procured new Red and Orange line trains, hinging the decision on a ploy to bring jobs to Springfield rather than provide T riders with best value, and you can see it in the procurement approach that set the Green Line Extension back by years, and had to be unraveled and re-procured by the former Fiscal and Management Control Board.

You can also trace the problems to an overall lack of transparency, where governors from both parties have prevented the T from communicating issues fully and openly, eroding public confidence even further. No one who has been in a leadership position in state government since 1991 is blameless for today’s myriad problems at the T, and I include myself in this. We are all accountable.  

I say all this to be clear that my impatience with progress at the MBTA is not an indictment of current T leadership or T workers. I understand that these are long-developing problems that are not easy or quick to solve. Add on top of that a Federal Transit Administration safety receivership that is tone-deaf to rider concerns, an FTA that issues directives to the T without one iota of consideration for the practical consequences to the T’s already overburdened workforce or its underserved riders, and the challenge before MBTA leaders and workers is daunting.   

As a regular T rider, I care about safety as much as anyone, but we cannot sacrifice ridership on the altar of safety – a perfectly safe system would be one that simply stops moving. The FTA needs to deal with its safety concerns in the realistic context of how their directives impact people, mobility equity, and the regional economy. This is not a video game where actions have no consequences. Here, the consequences are keenly felt by thousands of transit dependent riders every day, and by a city and regional economy whose needs must be taken into account.  

Ultimately, accountability rests with those who hold the power to act. The time has come for MBTA leadership to come clean with T riders about what we should expect over the next 18 months.

What do I mean by this? I would like to see GM Phil Eng hold a press conference in December, where he lays out his plan for 2024, including both means and methods and specific dates when slow zones will be eliminated, when stations will be cleaned, when enough dispatchers and bus drivers and operators will be hired – in short, when and how a variety of visible, transparent performance metrics will be met. This report should also include progress on critical initiatives like connecting the Red and Blue lines (where is the Gantt chart?) and electrifying the Fairmount Line on the commuter rail. Riders – indeed all stakeholders – need to see clear realistic performance goals set to a schedule.   

Eng should use this as both a management tool and as a way to avoid losing the confidence of an advocacy and rider community that, to date, has given him the benefit of the doubt and plenty of leeway. I’m sympathetic to his position and to his reluctance to do this, but this is the role he has cheerfully accepted, and it is his obligation to move from good intentions to action and, finally, results.

If he needs additional resources to accomplish his target goals, he should say openly and clearly what those resources are – personnel, funding, etc. The governor and the Legislature should not keep Eng or his need for more resources under wraps. They should empower him and provide him with what he needs.   

Riders, and the entire regional economy, can no longer accept more of the same, or good intentions without results. This administration cannot avoid the harsh reality that it has inherited decades of neglect, disinvestment and can-kicking at the MBTA.  It may be unfair and unwelcome, but it is an unavoidable fact. The pandemic exacerbated certain problems, but it did not cause them. The current crisis at the T is significantly worse than the 2015 winter meltdown that caused the then-governor to call for a special commission, ask for and receive emergency powers from the Legislature, and create the Fiscal and Management Control Board.

Those efforts did not produce anything close to a high functioning transit system, which reflects both the magnitude of the problems and the prior administration’s persistent proclivity to undermine its own efforts time and again. If 2015 called for extraordinary measures, today’s realities call for even stronger emergency thinking, investment at an unprecedented scale, and action.  

Without a high functioning transit system, Boston and the Metro Boston region cannot build a strong, equitable, and sustainable economy. The Metro Boston economy we were so rightly proud of in 2018, when a report from A Better City revealed that our transit and rail network was powering a highly productive region, cannot withstand much more of the current disfunction of the T’s subway and bus systems. It cannot thrive without a system that offers reliable, frequent, and connected services. Without a high functioning transit and rail system, Massachusetts will not meet any of its climate, public health, or equity goals, because mode shift and transit access are critical elements of those goals.

Boston is blessed with a strong, highly motivated transit advocacy community. This community is willing and eager to roll up its sleeves and support the T, the administration and the Legislature in the effort to redirect resources to fixing, modernizing, and connecting the T. Together we can reverse the current trend, and together, we can change the direction of the T. There isn’t an alternative, and the luxury of kicking the can any further is no longer on offer.  

This is a crisis. We need to treat it accordingly. 

James Aloisi is a former state transportation secretary and a member of the TransitMatters board of directors.