BOSTON — A state legislative committee has proposed shrinking the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority as one way to address the agency’s widespread safety issues.
Boston.com reports the Massachusett’s legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation has suggested in a report issued earlier this week that the MBTA be relieved of its commuter rail and ferry operations, as well as its responsibility for major capital projects, allowing it to focus on subways and buses.
The 78-page report is the result of three hearings on the MBTA held between July and October of last year, and is intended to provide information for state lawmakers as they consider possible action to address the MBTA’s safety issues.
The suggestion that the commuter rail and ferry responsibilities be shifted elsewhere — to the state Department of Transportation, in the case of commuter rail — would allow the MBTA to focus on its “core mission” of Boston area bus and transit service, writes state Rep. William Straus, a committee co-chairman. He adds “the notion that the MBTA is truly in charge of the selection and supervision of the commuter rail system is something of a fiction,” given past involvement of the governor and state secretary of transportation.
He also notes that neither the commuter rail nor ferry operation are under the safety jurisdiction of the Federal Transit Administration, which issued two sets of directives last year to address MBTA safety issues.
The report noted that the MBTA continues to face a maintenance backlog that was “decades in the making.”
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