“Whether you drive, whether you take the T, whether you bike – we are all in this together for the next month,” said Thompson.

"I think that the T should consider suspending fares for the entire month of the Green Line and Orange Line shutdowns," said Stacy Thompson, Executive Director of Livable Streets Alliance.

Stacy Thompson, executive director of the Livable Streets Alliance, agrees the 30-day shutdown will speed along repairs, but she too is concerned about the bus shuttles.

Catherine Gleason, program and policy coordinator at transit advocacy group LivableStreets Alliance, said riders would be “paying the price” for the “long-overdue” nature of the repairs being performed during the shutdown. 

“I wouldn’t call this bold, ambitious, or strategic,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets Alliance, a public transportation advocacy group. 

“I disagree with Rep. Straus about restructuring the MBTA,” Thompson said. “Obviously, we all want to have a good transit system, but it’s very much putting the cart before the horse, and frankly, I think it’s potentially an attempt to distract from the core issue, which is deep underinvestment in the system.”

“The T should be spending much, much more on communications. Compared to other transit authorities, the T spends significantly less on marketing,” Thompson said. “That’s probably why the public feels like they aren’t getting the information they need.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said in an interview with MassLive. “This sort of like ‘we’ll have someone else take it over, we’ll restructure as the solution’ is definitely something that we’ve seen in many conversations previously, and it doesn’t work.”

State Rep. William Straus, chairperson of the joint committee on transportation; Stacy Thompson, executive director of the LiveableStreets Alliance; and Jarred Johnson, executive director of TransitMatters, join us to make sense of how recent events might affect the agency and riders' experience moving forward.

In the meantime, Catherine Gleason, Public Policy Manager at LivableStreets Alliance, wants the T to offer fare-free days or discounted fares to riders who have to endure the longer wait times and safety concerns.