From Rebuilding to Delivering: The New Way of Doing Business at the MBTA
By Phillip Eng | 6/30/2026
PHILLIP ENG
Interim Secretary, Massachusetts DOT; General Manager and CEO, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
Boston, MA
In April 2023, when Governor Maura Healey hired me as general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), the conversation was often dominated by what wasn’t working. I heard from riders on platforms, trains, and ferries, and at bus stops, and saw a workforce that felt the weight of decades of disinvestment. But today, thanks to the unwavering support of the Healey-Driscoll Administration, our legislative partners, and our exchange of best practices with peer agencies from around the world, we are no longer just rebuilding. We are delivering.
Transportation is the engine that drives our economy, housing affordability, and quality of life. But that engine only runs because of people. We have strategically hired more than 4,000 employees and equipped our workforce with the training and state-of-the-art tools they need to succeed.
Whether heavy rail drivers or maintenance crews, these men and women are the system’s heroes. Their dedication is why we are now running the best Orange Line service in our history, as measured by reliability, frequency, and trip times.
This is a new way of doing business. We are no longer kicking the can down the road. We continue to tackle complex projects with a sense of urgency, eliminating subway slow zones, upgrading complicated signals on the Red and Orange lines, advancing climate resiliency on the Blue Line, and moving forward on major projects like the North Station Draw One Bridge, a depression-era drawbridge that our commuter rail traverses daily. This work is showing tangible progress as ridership continues to return to the T.
Meanwhile, transformation is also happening behind the scenes in our car houses. We have moved away from antiquated, paper-based processes and embraced a reliability centered maintenance strategy. By using digital tools, our teams diagnose issues in real-time. Downtime for repairs has plummeted from two days to just 34 minutes in some cases. We’re ensuring our trains spend more time in passenger service and less time in the shop.
Our vision is unapologetically multimodal. From the longer Type 10 Green Line trolleys under development to water transportation expansion, we are building a network that offers true freedom of movement.
The MBTA successfully reintroduced the South Coast Rail, a historic restoration of passenger train service that, for the first time in 65 years, connects southeastern Massachusetts directly to Boston. It saw a 54 percent increase in sustained weekday ridership and is a testament to what happens when you provide safe, reliable options. Transit doesn’t just move people; it moves zip codes. We see it in the restaurants opening and the housing being built near our stations.
As we prepare for mega events like the World Cup, we are testing our plans and scaling operations to handle unprecedented surges. We want the world to see and experience a Massachusetts that is safe, reliable, and accessible.
We still have a long way to go, but we remain optimistic about the future because of our progress over the last few years and how undeniable it truly is. We make wise decisions with every taxpayer dollar to deliver the transit system that the Commonwealth and everyone who visits here deserves. The future is bright—we can only go up from here.