Stacy Thompson, the executive director of LivableStreets Alliance, said the T must balance both near-term safety and maintenance, while also working on expansion.

“Things like expansion and resiliency are not extras, or nice to have. They should be considered core to the viability of the system,” Thompson said.

“We need to hire enough bus operators that, by September, we’re running more service,” Thompson said. “It’s that simple.”

“At this moment, I think riders really want someone who will help make sure the T just moves, just truly shows up on time, gets them to where they need to go,” Thompson said. “And I think that Philip Eng's general skills align with that desire.”

“Whether it’s with the company working on our fare collection system, the company making the new Red and Orange Line trains, if you don’t have enough oversight and consistent management, things like this are more likely to happen. There is an emerging pattern,” she said, though she cautioned that she does not know enough about the Pigsley case to say if lax oversight played a role.

Similarly, raised crosswalks reduce vehicle speeds by functioning as a type of speed bump, said Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets, a transportation advocacy organization. “It’s the ideal condition,” Thompson said. “It forces the car to slow down, otherwise they’ll bottom out.”

“Go with the transparency route, let people know what you’re doing. There’s a real value in marketing to help simplify really complex things,” Stacy Thompson of LiveableStreets Alliance said.

“This is not about flashy announcements and ribbon cuttings. This is about someone who can hire people, build a team, operationalize repairs and literally get the trains back on track. It’s that behind-the-scenes hard work. And he’s got decades of experience.”

“You can go to ribbon cuttings, you can make big announcements, you can talk about innovation. But what makes a system run is the stuff behind the scenes you never want to think about.”

“This is progress,” Livable Streets executive director Stacy Thompson said. The work will be slow and it could be a “bumpy summer,” but she sees Eng as the right pick.

"It's the kind of nuts and bolts experience we want to see in the T," said Thompson. "This isn't about ribbon cuttings, this isn't about announcements, this is about literally getting the trains back on track. You want someone who is going to prioritize that in the weeds, behind the scenes operations work that he seems to have many, many years of work in."