The Boston Globe
Can Phil Eng really flip the dumpster hearth of a transit company round? “Individuals suppose I’m loopy, however I’m pleased I’m right here,” he stated.
It was a superb day to date. No trains had derailed. No station ceilings had collapsed. No hearth had stuffed a station with smoke — but.
However as new MBTA common supervisor Phillip Eng toured Wonderland Station final month, he zeroed in on an issue. The countdown clocks that inform riders how lengthy they’ll be ready for the subsequent Blue Line practice had been off. By lots.
With the identical urgency one would possibly show in a graver disaster, Eng introduced his cellphone to his ear. The indicators had been incorrect, he defined. Trains had been coming each six minutes, he stated, not each 9 to 13. May somebody please repair that, and rapidly?
He had different to-dos for his staff: Close by stairs wanted help beams earlier than they could possibly be reopened; practice operators needs to be promoting that the Blue Line would quickly be free to experience.
The state company most identified for its epic failures now has a pacesetter attacking even the smallest ones. If the countdown clocks are incorrect, Eng reasoned, how can the general public anticipate us to do anything proper?
“It’s the little issues that may add as much as the massive issues,” he stated.
The 61-year-old engineer is simply three months in to what’s extensively thought-about one of the vital inconceivable high-profile jobs in state authorities. And he desires you to know he can flip the system round.
As an alternative of pushing riders away, he imagines, public transit right here would be the quickest, most dependable, most interesting journey choice, liberating tens of millions of individuals from vehicles’ fumes and fatalities, and liberating the area, as soon as and for all, from its notoriously rage-inducing gridlock.
Sure, he is aware of simply preserving right now’s subpar bus, subway, commuter rail, ferry, and paratransit service operating will quickly require an enormous inflow of cash, by no means thoughts the billions wanted to restore the T’s crumbling infrastructure and ship on its many damaged guarantees of expansions and upgrades. Sure, he is aware of he should rewire a lot of the T’s damaged security tradition. Sure, there are a whole lot of challenges within the system — greater than he knew about when he began.
However, no joke, the longtime New Yorker insists, he’s pleased to be right here.
Welcome to Boston
It might be truthful for somebody who took over the T within the spring of 2023 to consider the company had hit all-time low. As a result of in most locations, that is what backside appears like: Final 12 months, an outdated Purple Line automobile that was supposed to get replaced within the Nineteen Nineties malfunctioned, dragging a person to his demise. A part of a rusted outdated Orange Line automobile fell off, forcing passengers to make a harmful escape from the flaming practice atop a bridge. Inexperienced Line trains saved colliding, sending folks to the hospital, after the T delayed the set up of a brand new anti-crash know-how. And unbearably lengthy waits for buses and trains grew longer because the company failed to rent and retain sufficient employees.
And but, a gradual collection of recent fiascos has greeted Eng, a former high official at New York Metropolis’s public transit authority and Lengthy Island Railroad, the busiest commuter railroad in North America. He began in Boston on April 10.
Trains right here have come dangerously near hitting employees, prompting harsh intervention from federal regulators already scrutinizing the T. Elements of ceilings at crumbling subway stations preserve falling, imperiling riders ready under. The common drumbeat of service cuts, derailments, and new sluggish zones hasn’t let up. And lots of long-awaited tasks like the brand new Purple and Orange Line vehicles, a trendy fare assortment system, and electrical bus garages stay seemingly caught in limbo.
Eng says he isn’t right here to simply repair these lengthy festering issues. He envisions a future the place taking the T is a no brainer, and never only for commuting. He sees throngs of New Englanders fortunately selecting to journey by practice from brewery to brewery (he’s an enormous beer man), as an alternative of driving. Attempting a brand new restaurant, seeing a present, visiting a buddy throughout city? In Eng’s fantasy future, you’ll clearly take the T: It will likely be higher.
In a area of tens of millions of individuals aware of the MBTA’s woes, you’d be hard-pressed to search out anybody extra optimistic in regards to the system’s future.
“As soon as we get it again to the place we’re above water, then we will do issues in a deliberate method,” he stated. “We’re going to reinvent ourselves, that’s the important thing.”
The son of Chinese language immigrants, Eng grew up listening to Mets video games on the radio as his mother and father washed different folks’s garments at a laundry on Lengthy Island. He started amassing laborious hats within the early ‘80s when he began working for the New York State Division of Transportation, fishing his first one out of the water after it tumbled from a bridge he was engaged on. Now that hat sits in his workplace at 10 Park Plaza, subsequent to seven others, marking an extended profession in transportation, together with his most up-to-date one with a T on the entrance.
He’s the proud father of 4 youngsters, whose commencement portraits sit in a neat row subsequent to his standing desk. His lengthy days at work are punctuated by pings from his household group chat the place images of current ramen dishes and fishing journeys are exchanged.
Eng is in contrast to his current predecessors; he’s the primary T common supervisor since 2015 who had earlier expertise main a US transit company. He labored at New York’s state transportation division for greater than 30 years, ending there as chief engineer, earlier than turning into chief working officer on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, after which president of Lengthy Island Railroad till his retirement and transfer into the non-public sector final 12 months.
He swears he wasn’t searching for a job when the search committee of Governor Maura Healey, who took workplace in January, got here knocking. In reality, he was rising fairly accustomed to the extra snug marketing consultant life the place holidays might actually, actually be day off and dinner plans could possibly be saved. He’d grown fairly good at brewing and bottling his personal beer.
However Eng prefers to be within the heart of the motion, not on the sidelines, he stated, and so the prospect to be an insider once more, somebody calling the photographs, piqued his curiosity.
A colleague on the consulting agency stated, “You’re nuts.” when Eng introduced he was leaving to take over the T, he recounted, smiling.
“Individuals suppose I’m loopy, however I’m pleased I’m right here,” he stated.
Now, he figures the one holidays he’ll be taking are to the seaside. In spite of everything, lately, it’s acceptable to look endlessly at your cellphone there.
How do you un-T the T’s tradition?
Most of Eng’s days begin at Lechmere Station in Cambridge round 7:30 a.m., a brief stroll from the brand new house he shares along with his spouse the place he can see Inexperienced Line, Orange Line, and Commuter Rail trains operating from his window.
He exchanges pleasantries with riders who’ve grown accustomed to sharing a morning commute with the system’s new boss. Most say they’re pulling for him.
“They’re rooting for the house staff even after they don’t do nicely, just like the Mets,” he stated.
After he arrives at work, his days are filled with crises, public occasions, and conferences, numerous conferences. A Globe reporter adopted him from early morning till evening for 2 days final month and watched him in conferences about a few of the company’s most urgent points: How can observe restore crews get extra work accomplished in a single day, lifting painful sluggish zones sooner than they’re placing them in place? How can the T rent and practice sufficient drivers to enhance subway service?
In each assembly, most held within the boardroom connected to his workplace dealing with the W Resort, Eng appeared to be searching for methods to un-T the T, always difficult higher administration to provide extra tangible outcomes for riders sooner. He’s aiming to alter the tradition, he says, from one the place worry of failure and stagnation typically reign to 1 the place managers are empowered to behave and to think about totally different and faster methods of fixing issues.
What if the T had been to purchase new subway vehicles every year, as an alternative of ready till its outdated vehicles had been breaking down to put orders, he mused. What if as an alternative of shutting down a stretch of subway for repairs in each instructions, one aspect of the tracks might run a shuttle practice backwards and forwards whereas the opposite aspect will get labored on? What if an indication telling riders a station might be closed for “observe work” as an alternative instructed riders what the payoff might be for them? What if the T employed dispatchers and operators from different transit companies?
Generally, when he hears how lengthy it’s going to take the T to complete one thing (he sees you, Lynn commuter rail station, and thinks seven years is just too lengthy), his eyes open broad and he interjects.
Loads of the time, his interruptions embrace a story from his days in New York, the place he was capable of end tasks “nobody believed could possibly be accomplished on time,” seemingly in an effort to get his employees to suppose exterior the T field.
“It’s loopy that instruments exist in different states that we don’t have,” he griped. He’s seeking to rent some trusted colleagues from New York quickly, maybe together with a brand new head of stations he hopes will preserve the falling particles at bay.
Sometimes, a employees member enthusiastically agreed with Eng. “Lowest bidder is a loser for us,” a T worker stated after Eng proposed “spending extra now to avoid wasting later.”
However typically, he’s instructed that issues are sometimes accomplished a sure method on the T or in Massachusetts, a response to which he appears profoundly allergic.
“We wrote these insurance policies, we will rewrite these insurance policies,” he stated at one assembly. “Let’s not dismiss it as a result of we’ve by no means accomplished it earlier than.”
To outsiders, he’s always reassuring them he’s bought this.
At a ribbon chopping for the brand new neighborhood path alongside the Inexperienced Line Extension, former US consultant and former Somerville mayor Michael Capuano stated, “Deepest sympathies to Phil Eng. I don’t know why he took this job.”
Behind him, Eng grinned.
‘Don’t have the luxurious of time’
Eng’s cellphone lights up with textual content alerts each time one thing goes incorrect. Generally, it’s a turtle crossing the tracks.
This time, on the day that had been good to date, it was a fireplace, spurring a name from deputy common supervisor Jeff Gonneville. A 3rd rail hearth stuffed Tufts Medical Heart Station with smoke, requiring the T to evacuate the station and shut a part of the Orange Line.
About two hours later, service was again up and operating. At one other system, the overall supervisor could have spoken to the press or gotten concerned.
And but on the MBTA, a response from Eng wasn’t actually required. It was nonetheless a superb day, in spite of everything, by T requirements.
Regardless of Eng’s buoyant optimism, a few of his plans have already been thwarted. On his first day as common supervisor, he introduced the T would quickly publish dates of when every velocity restriction on the subway system could be lifted.
Quickly became by no means.
Every shutdown for observe repairs, he stated, requires discussions with elected officers and native enterprise house owners, and compliance with new federal directives to maintain T employees secure, which implies his authentic imaginative and prescient for radical transparency on sluggish zones is inconceivable. New sluggish zones at the moment are cropping up sooner than the T is eliminating them, and typically crews are discovering extra work is required than initially anticipated.
At a gathering on velocity restrictions with senior employees final month, Eng was on the sting of his seat asking questions.
Somebody defined that due to an tools drawback throughout current weekend and early night observe repairs on the Inexperienced Line, a big swath of the road should be shut down early for an additional month simply so {that a} 10 mile per hour velocity restriction may be lifted.
Eng interrupted. “Can we do yet another weekend and get it accomplished?” he requested. “We get in, get out, declare victory.”
The staff glanced at one another. A beat. Lastly somebody stated they’d come again with a plan.
At a gathering about hiring and retaining subway employees, Eng’s concepts for overcoming the staffing scarcity (hiring again retirees, utilizing veteran drivers as an alternative of instructors to coach rookies) roused opposition: Usually the unions don’t prefer it.
He urged the staff to make use of contract language from different transit companies.
“Let’s simply steal their settlement if it really works there,” he stated.
“We don’t have the luxurious of time,” he added.
These Blue Line indicators
It might be too early to inform whether or not Eng will have the ability to flip the T round. However riders’ endurance has worn skinny, and the metrics are grim, grim, grim.
Almost a 12 months after riders endured a 30-day shutdown of the Orange Line to repair sluggish zones, common journey time on the road is round 17 p.c longer than earlier than the overhaul, the T’s journey time knowledge present, and velocity restrictions persist in no less than three of the areas the place the T claimed it had “eradicated” sluggish zones, based on the T’s velocity restriction dashboard.
A median journey on the Purple Line’s Ashmont department now takes round 29 p.c longer than it did a 12 months in the past, and a visit on the Braintree department takes round 35 p.c longer, based on the T’s journey time knowledge.
Ridership on the T’s hottest modes, its subway and bus programs, has largely plateaued, the T’s most up-to-date ridership knowledge present, whereas automobile visitors, conversely, is now heavier at occasions than it was earlier than the pandemic, based on the state freeway administrator.
The T now predicts that it will likely be quick as a lot as $139 million come subsequent July and $475 million the next 12 months on simply the funds wanted to pay for fundamentals like salaries, provides, its commuter rail contract, and its money owed.
The dismal ridership could have one thing to do with the dismal service.
Public transit is taken into account dependable when it doesn’t require coordination; you’ll be able to present as much as a bus or practice cease and wait no quite a lot of minutes earlier than your experience arrives. That’s not the case on many T subway and bus routes, the place the company has slashed service repeatedly over the past 12 months and a half. There are round 20 p.c fewer weekday bus and subway journeys scheduled this summer season in comparison with the summer season of 2019, based on figures supplied by T spokesperson Joe Pesaturo.
Already, outsiders are questioning whether or not Eng has the political muscle to advocate for the type of mega funding from the Legislature and governor that it’s going to take to not solely pay for fundamental operations and repair what’s damaged, but in addition enhance service and develop the system with a imaginative and prescient for the area. And whether or not he has the braveness to carry longtime T employees accountable for failures.
Up to now, the T doesn’t have any targets for when it is going to restore pre-pandemic bus and subway service. And its plan for investments over the subsequent 5 years has drawn criticism from advocates for largely sustaining the established order.
Govt director of the MBTA Advisory Board Brian Kane stated Eng was the appropriate rent.
“The most important challenges lie forward although,” Kane stated, as a result of the T’s monetary wants far outweigh its accessible sources.
“No quantity of reform or any of the stuff that has been tried over the past 20 years has labored,” he stated. “That is the place GMs can get actually jammed up, get caught between what’s good for the governor and what’s good for the system.”
Nonetheless, Eng stays satisfied that he’s laying the groundwork for a reinvention. Each little bit counts.
And but . . .
The morning after he implored employees to repair the countdown clocks alongside the Blue Line so they’d inform riders trains got here each six minutes, the one at State Station as soon as once more learn: 9 to 13 minutes.
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