MBTA GM Eng says shutdowns will allow T to deal with maintenance backlog

A man in a suit sits in front of a podium, looking up at an off-camera group of people — New MBTA General Manager Phil Eng looks on at his first Board of Directors meeting Wednesday, April 19, 2023, the first meeting held in-person in several months.

Jeremy Siegel is co-host of Morning Edition at GBH News.

Gal Tziperman Lotan is a digital producer for GBH’s Morning Edition.

November 10, 2023

Jeremy Siegel: You're listening to GBH's Morning Edition. It's going to take some time. But the T now has a plan for getting rid of all speed restrictions on its subway lines. The agency says by the end of 2024, it'll fix all of the slow zones that have been a thorn in the side of riders for more than a year at this point. For more on this effort, I'm joined now by the head of the MBTA, general manager Phillip Eng. Phillip, and good morning. Thanks for joining us.

Phillip Eng: Morning, Jeremy. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you and your listeners.

Siegel: So what exactly is the plan here for the slow zones?

Eng: Well, what we've been experiencing over the last six months since I've been here is that the age of our track, the amount of maintenance that has been deferred and the years and years of the lack of investment in our infrastructure has resulted in conditions that really essentially have forced us to implement speed restrictions to ensure safe travel. The amount of the work that needs to be done has continued to grow as we continue to do the work on the overnights, on early access, on the weekend outages. And what we really experienced is over the last diversion Ashmont and Mattapan, the opportunity to get in in the 16-day window and essentially do what we probably would have taken six months to do in just 16 days. And we did that in a manner that not only addressed speed restrictions, it addressed additional state of good repair work, it addressed area along our power, and it address area in our stations. And what we're looking to do now moving forward is use that same model, lessons learned from the Red Line work, lessons learned from what we did back in 2022 on the Orange Line, and make improvements on that. And now we're going to tackle our system one by one, section by section, allowing the riders and the communities that we serve to find period of time when we anticipate to come in and do this work so they can plan around it. Then when we're done, Jeremy, the intent is to lift all the speed restrictions, give the system back to the public in a manner that they deserve. And then this allows us to then at some point begin to ensure that cyclical preventive, corrective maintenance that allows us to keep the system in a good state for our riders, tackling things as they arise, but nothing like we're seeing right now.

Siegel: So you mentioned the Orange Line shutdown that happened in 2022. Riders have experienced shutdowns and maintenance work like that in the past and big goals like you have of getting rid of all of these slow zones. But they've been disappointed before. I mean, the Orange Line shutdown was obviously a big problem with slow zones afterwards. The launch of the Green Line extension, now riddled with problems. Why should riders trust you that come 2024 service is going to be back on track?

Eng: Well, 2022 was before the new leadership team that I have in place now. There are lessons that we took from that: That better scoping, better planning, better coordination during construction and a plan with regards to how do we ensure that the work that was scheduled gets completed. And what we did during the Red Line Ashmont/Mattapan in 16 days was exactly that. I believe I talked about it when we completed it. Doug Connett, my new chief of infrastructure; Ryan Coholan, the chief operating officer; Sam Zhou, chief engineer, and even Dennis Varley, chief of stations. All of those senior leadership were out there on a regular basis. Doug was out there all 16 days, probably 16 hours a day. And what we were doing was making real decisions on the ground, transferring knowledge to our supervisors. And it is a new way of doing business for the T. And what we demonstrated is using best practices, using tools of the trade, using tools that we've never used, we accomplished the work that we set out on the Red Line, and we delivered exactly what we committed to, not only lifting all the speed restrictions. People are now experiencing the ride that they should be. We've given them back time of their day and no longer is this train speeding up, slowing down. It is running at full speed in those corridors. And that's what we're going to do with the rest of the system, one by one, section by section. And those sections, we've intentionally set them up in a way that allows us to minimize the impacts on the riders, and the time that they have to be on alternative service.

Siegel: Well, let me ask about that general manager, because it is a staggered plan that you have of shutdowns across the system. And when I look at that calendar, I can see that, you know, only one portion of one line is shut down at a time. So you can imagine that that won't hurt service across the system. But at the same time, a year of staggered shutdowns is a lot. How can you ensure that this doesn't create transportation chaos with thousands of people late for work?

Eng: Well, right now our system is delaying people, and that, from my perspective, is unacceptable. What we need to do is to get in and take care of the work we committed and get out. And the reason it's staggered is to ensure that we plan these outages around other projects that we need to deliver, but also these outages among all of the activities that we are currently aware of in the city of Boston, because Boston is open for business. We intend to ensure that as we go community, community, we will be having public outreach meetings just as we did in Ashmont and Mattapan, for those 16 days, people were able to ensure that they had bus shuttles that were accessible and appropriate and that successfully carried people from their destinations to their — from their origins to their destinations. And in each one of these cases, we will have a solid bus plan. We will get feedback from the communities, from the businesses, to make sure that we are accommodating those needs during these different windows of diversions. And we will continue to take feedback, even during the diversions, to ensure that if there needs to be any modifications, we will. But the reason they're staggered is to ensure that the rest of our system is still moving. Some of the other things I talked about as we get further into this: There may be opportunities as we start to train and bring in new practices to single-track, meaning we will be able to put people and leave people on the trains and on buses as we do work on the other track, meaning that we could possibly be carrying passengers on trains still, as we work on a closed track to ensure safety of the workers but also safety of the riders by using measures where you shut a signal, do not allow a train in one direction, only allow a train in the other direction. These are things that are done in other properties and those are the things that we will begin to incorporate, so we can not only better serve the public when we need work, but also allow us to continue to have safe work zones and actually get in and do the work in a timely manner.

Siegel: Phillip Eng is the general manager of the MBTA. Thank you so much for your time this morning.

Eng: Jeremy, thank you. And I look forward to having more opportunity to talk with you and your listeners in the future.

Siegel: You're listening to GBH News.

It's going to take some time.

But the T now has a plan for getting rid of all speed restrictions on its subway lines.

By the end of 2024, MBTA officials said, the agency will fix all of the slow zones that have been a thorn in the side of riders for more than a year at this point.

“The amount of the work that needs to be done has continued to grow as we continue to do the work on the overnights, on early access, on the weekend outages,” MBTA general manager Phillip Eng told GBH’s Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel. “The age of our track, the amount of maintenance that has been deferred and the years and years of the lack of investment in our infrastructure has resulted in conditions that really essentially have forced us to implement speed restrictions to ensure safe travel.”

This plan, Eng said, will help the MBTA address its backlog of urgent repairs and be able to move into a cycle of preventative maintenance.

Of course, riders have been promised improvements before — and those promises don’t always come to pass: The 2022 monthlong Orange Line shutdown ended with lingering slow zones, and the launch of the Green Line extension needed a shutdown about a year in because of incorrectly-built tracks.

“Well, 2022 was before the new leadership team that I have in place now,” said Eng, who has been at the agency’s helm since April of 2023. “There are lessons that we took from that: That better scoping, better planning, better coordination during construction and a plan with regards to how do we ensure that the work that was scheduled gets completed.”

He pointed to one success: The 16-day shutdown of the Red Line’s Ashmont branch and the Mattapan trolley, which ended with riders back on track and slow zones removed.

“Senior leadership were out there on a regular basis,” he said. “What we were doing was making real decisions on the ground, transferring knowledge to our supervisors. And it is a new way of doing business for the T. … People are now experiencing the ride that they should be. We've given them back time of their day and no longer is this train speeding up, slowing down. It is running at full speed in those corridors. And that's what we're going to do with the rest of the system, one by one, section by section.”

Planned shutdowns are staggered across lines as an attempt to minimize disruption, Eng said.

There will be some delays as parts of train lines are replaced by shuttle buses. But the status quo is already taking time away from passengers, he said.

“Right now our system is delaying people, and that, from my perspective, is unacceptable,” Eng said. “What we need to do is to get in and take care of the work we committed and get out.”

Before each shut down, he said, local residents and businesses will have opportunities to tell the MBTA how the shut down will affect them and what impact shuttle buses will have.

The MBTA is also considering single-tracking where possible, where trains will still run in one direction, even as riders going the other way board shuttle buses to allow for track work. He did not immediately have a timeline or a concrete list of which diversions might allow for that.

“We will continue to take feedback, even during the diversions, to ensure that if there needs to be any modifications, we will,” he said.