THE MBTA IS experiencing “a monumental comeback story” in the eyes of its leadership, who looked back Thursday at the agency’s 2025 storyline and approved a safety plan and new accessibility metric.
Chief Operating Officer Ryan Coholan said weekend ridership is nearly back to 2019 levels. Overall ridership sits at 77 percent of 2019 levels, and weekday ridership is at 73 percent of 2019 levels, he added.
“It’s a testament to what we’ve been able to produce and the work that we’re doing and the work that we’re going to do,” Coholan said at the board’s final meeting of 2025. “More and more people are returning, it really is a monumental comeback story.”
Coholan said he thought rising weekend ridership could be due to the ease with which people in Boston can get around with improved train service and connection. Weekday ridership figures are “reflective of just how work patterns have evolved” since the pandemic, he said.
In a lookback video played Thursday, T General Manager and interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng — donning a T-inspired holiday sweater — called 2025 a year of “bold goals, complex challenges and meaningful progress.”
Eng was not in-person at the Thursday meeting because he was attending funeral services out of state, according to T Chair Tom McGee.
Eng said that the number of scheduled weekday trips on the Red, Orange and Blue lines have increased 55 percent, 50 percent and 16 percent, respectively, since the spring of 2024. The T is providing nearly one million trips each day, which he called the highest ridership since the pandemic.
Service in the core tunnel and all four Green Line branches has been suspended since December 8 and is set to reopen December 22. Coholan said that workers have been able to “tackle” all 13,000 feet of an aging, 130-year-old wooden trough with new composite fixtures. During the diversion, steel work was done at Boylston station, concrete and lighting work was done at Copley station, and work began on a radio replacement program, he said. They also began to install new messenger wire and cabling for upcoming signal upgrades.
The T is looking ahead to its role in major events in 2026, including FIFA World Cup, Massachusetts’ 250th anniversary and the return of tall ships to Boston Harbor.
“We installed a temporary platform, and are advancing the construction of permanent level boarding platform at Foxboro Station, positioning us to serve over 20,000 spectators for each FIFA Men’s World Cup game,” Eng said.
Later in the meeting, MBTA Transit Police Chief Kenneth Green said that there are 10 trains available to help transport the influx of people during the World Cup stint next summer. They’re still trying to figure out how the “queueing” of trains will work during that period, he said.
Following discussion about the recent Daniels-Finegoldsettlement, the board voted to update its service delivery policy to incorporate an accessibility metric. The board voted to add a “station staffing” metric to the service delivery policy, which would designate locations in stations for dedicated customer service staff. Each location would be assigned a “tier,” which would dictate the minimum staffing standards.
“This is about codifying a minimum standard that we have been meeting for the last few years,” Assistant General Manager of System-Wide Accessibility Laura Brelsbord told the board. The T established station staffing standards and a staffing plan to fulfill it in 2021, and the standard has largely been met since fiscal year 2024, when in-station staffing was increased, according to her report.
The board also voted to approve an updated 2026 transit safety plan.
The board approved the initial plan at an August 12 meeting, though Department of Public Utilities comments required a resubmittal of the plan in December. The board voted on DPU adjustments, which included updates to safety performance targets and the risk reduction program. After some confusion among a couple of board members about how the targets would be calculated, McGee suggested the board approve the updates but requested there be briefings or explanations about the plan shared in “layman’s terms.”
T Chief Safety Officer Tim Lesniak pointed to improved safety rates year-over-year with regard to events reportable to the Federal Transit Administration and DPU.
“As you look at the FTA reportable events, we’re actually down approximately 25 percent from 2024 to 2025. And for DPU, we’re down approximately 15 percent from 2024 to 2025,” Lesniak said.
A Transit Police update showed that year-to-date “Part I” crimes — which include crimes such as aggravated assault, larceny and burglary — are down 14 percent. Offenses between January 1 and December 15 in 2024 totaled 798, while that same time period in 2025 saw 687 offenses.
Green also noted hiring process changes in a 2024 economic development law that enable a new “hybrid” civil service model. The transit police will now be able to hire more officers outside of the civil service hiring process, he explained, which “taps into a much bigger applicant pool.”
“We can get college students now,” Green said. “You can get women, you can get minorities in the greater Boston area that know the system. It gives us the chance to diversify.”