If you have a concern about the T, you’ve got plenty of places to take it. From state agencies to grassroots groups, there’s a plethora of boards and organizations whose main activity revolves around the T.

One of these groups is the MBTA Advisory Board. Created by the legislature, the board represents the 176 cities and towns in the MBTA’s district that contribute to the T financially. But it's not the main body overseeing the transit agency, and its powers, including budget oversight, have been diminished in recent years.

Paul Regan, a longtime T watcher and the MBTA Advisory Board's executive director, easily rattles off the names of other groups, some with competing interests.

“There is the Rider Oversight Committee,” he says. “The T Riders Union … There is a very active group looking at the North-South Rail Link,” as well as the Conservation Law Foundation, groups advocating for the Green Line extension to Medford, the Green Line extension to Somerville, and the Blue Line to Lynn.

Seeing and raising him is Mela Miles, the lead organizer for the Greater Four Corners Action Coalition who’s also chairwoman of the Fairmount-Indigo Transit Coalition and a member of the AFC2.0 Working Group. When listing T-focused groups, she also mentions the Conservation Law Foundation and T Riders Union, as well as Access to Equity and “a group in Hyde Park called POHWER,” she says — momentarily forgetting what the acronym stands for.

Chris Dempsey, the director of yet another, Transportation for Massachusetts — abbreviated T4MA — picks up the discussion from there.

“In transportation, we love our acronyms,” he says. “If you’re going to work in transportation, your favorite meal is alphabet soup.”

All three agree the most important — and currently the most powerful — group is the Fiscal & Management Control Board (FMCB). Created by Gov. Charlie Baker following the near collapse of the T in the Snowmageddon of 2015, the Control Board has the final say on everything from fare increases to the Green Line expansion.

Control Board meetings open with a public comment period, but its meetings may not be the best place to take a complaint, says Miles.

“You should come to the public comment period to say something to get it on the record,” she advises, “but they have rules about that. They don’t want you to say anything about anything that’s not on the agenda for that day.”

For that, Miles says you might try a grassroots group more dedicated to getting your issue heard. Or there are bodies like the AFC2.0 Working Group, comprised of both T staffers and public members. This working group concentrates on a single subject — the upcoming fare system.

Or, Dempsey says, you might just join a group for fun.

“A fun one is the T-rock, the T Rider Oversight Committee,” he says. “They are a passionate group of MBTA and transit advocates that generate ideas, some of which the MBTA listens to, some of which they don’t.”

Miles also has participated in creative ways to get the attention of the T and the public.

“I had a lot of fun with the T Riders Union,” she says. “They’re reorganizing right now ... and bringing in some new organizers. We did super heroes. We put on construction workers hats and went to the board meetings.”

Miles says those antics aren’t just fun and games, but effective ways to highlight problems that official bodies can’t or won’t deal with. One reason the Control Board can’t deal with some of these problems is that it only has a five-year life span to get the T back on track, which will expire next year.

Yet before the Control Board was appointed, the T had its own board of directors, which still exists, Regan says. It was absorbed into the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Board, he explains, and there is some overlap between the members of this board and the Control Board.

That means the MBTA Board may come back to resume day-to-day oversight when the Control Board goes away. In the meantime, with groups to advocate every imaginable improvement for the T, Regan says he has one simple priority:

“A lot of the other advocates ... want to expand the system,” he says. “I just want it to work. I just want it to work the way it's designed to every single day.”