MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng speaks with reporters outside Park Street station on his first day on the job on April 10, 2023. Photo by Chris Lisinski | State House News Service
After being released in an apparent mistake two weeks ago, the MBTA’s transparency-touting podcast pulled out of the station again Wednesday morning.
On the first episode of “Spilling the T,” MBTA General Manager Phil Eng talks for almost 30 minutes with Andrew Cassidy of the T’s Customer and Employee Experience Department, going over what attracted him to the job at the T, his take on the T’s challenges and what he’s doing to address them, and his vision for the MBTA’s future vitality. The T announced that it had launched its new podcast “(this time for real)” in a tweet Wednesday morning.
Two weeks ago, the T similarly tweeted an announcement of its new podcast in what it called “a step toward increasing transparency.” But within about 90 minutes, the audio was scrubbed from the internet and the agency said it had been made available by mistake. The episode released Wednesday appears to be unchanged from what had been briefly available two weeks ago.
MBTA critics say the T has not always been up front about its challenges, and the agency made transparency a theme of the interview with Eng, with host Cassidy declaring at one point that “one of the major reasons for this podcast is really just about transparency; it’s about kind of pulling back the curtain for our rider, for stakeholders across the board.” Eng, a Long Island Rail Road veteran who was hired by Gov. Maura Healey to take over the sputtering MBTA in April, said he thinks the T needs to get better about explaining to riders what work is ongoing and how it will benefit them.
“Some of the things that I’m seeing is that we certainly can do better at sharing why we’re doing things, the benefits of those things that we’re doing, and what it means to – whether it’s our employees or the public – what it means to them when it’s done,” Eng said. He added, “I think the transparency part comes to a trust thing as well. The more information we share, the better feedback you get. But at the end of the day, it’s important for them to know what they have supported, or even in some cases objected to. That information is important for them. And sometimes when you’re serving such a diverse and large geographic area such as the whole commonwealth, a decision made on one project may not be easily understood by another geographic area outside of that location. And I think sometimes it’s important to show why there’s benefits to that.”
The general manager talked about his focus on safety at the T, particularly for the workers who are making the repairs that materially improve commutes. Repeated safety lapses at the T have drawn regular attention from federal officials, and the T is still operating with fewer train trips because federal regulators deemed its staffing levels insufficient.
Eng also described his vision for the T on the other side of its current predicament. He said he wants to make sure “this agency is not only putting things back together with Band-Aids,” but is also building the MBTA “for long-term success.”
“The future, though, is about how does the T support quality of life, how does the T support the communities, the businesses, tourism, the whole economy? Because the part about the T is we’re really a vital component to those successes.
And without it – there is not enough room to build highways and bridges that could support the needs to get around, right? All these modes go together,” he said. “The idea is to have one where our system is running really smooth, minimal interruptions with a very high on-time performance, and allowing us to continue to build on those transformative projects.”
