MBTA GENERAL MANAGER Phillip Eng thinks ridership will bounce back once service improves, but a looming question is how many riders will actually get on board.

Eng is focused on service improvement, aggressively ramping up hiring and moving to eliminate slow zones on all of the subway lines by the end of this year. Significant progress has been made on both fronts, with hiring hitting new levels and employee departures down. Safety-triggered slow zones now cover 14 percent of the subway system, down from 26 percent in September.

“There are some folks who love driving their cars and that’s fine,” Eng said on The Codcast. “But take a look at the traffic and look at the amount of time you spend sitting in traffic. If you know that the system, the mass transportation system, is more reliable, more frequent, and providing the level of service that we’ve promised, I think people will start to try and use it again. There are folks that need to use it right now and we’re focused on making sure they have the best trip that they can. But we also know that as we start to show to the public that the system is going to get them where we promise to take them, I do think that people will come back.”

Eng’s view is reasonable, but it isn’t shared by his budget team. The MBTA’s current five-year budget pro forma doesn’t see a major bump in ridership coming any time soon, raising the question of whether Eng and his team are rebuilding a system capable of taking drivers off the road or whether COVID and the T’s poor service in recent years have changed transportation patterns so much that the transit authority may never fully recover.

The MBTA has developed four fare revenue projections, ranked A (the fastest-rising) through D (the slowest rising). The current forecast uses the C projection, which estimates fare revenue will rise modestly from the current level of 60 percent of pre-COVID levels to 65 percent over the next five years. The most optimistic projection, A, forecasts fare revenue will rise to 75 percent of pre-COVID levels over the next five years.

Eng didn’t go into specifics, declining to quantify the increase in ridership he is expecting or to refute the budget team’s projection.

“I think the pro forma is taking a very honest approach at looking at ridership and ridership patterns. I’m probably taking an optimistic approach that as we rebuild the system and as we make the system more inviting that I want to show that we can bring people back,” he said.

Eng indicated the T’s long-delayed new automated fare-gathering system should be operational this year. He said he’s personally been testing the projected $935 million system since November and it has worked well. The system does away with cash and allows passengers to pay for service on all transit modes using credit cards, mobile phones, or pre-loaded T cards. Bus riders will tap in at all doors, doing away with lines waiting to pay the driver.

“Our plan is to expand it to a larger pool of testers and demonstrate that it can handle the volumes. And then I hope that, in the very near future, to be able to offer this to our riders,” Eng said. “It’s something that I’ve heard from many riders that they want this convenience. Other agencies across the country have it and there’s no reason that our riders shouldn’t have it.”