“We are here to build back trust,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance, at the briefing, adding that the coalition needs resources, support, and “governance” in its fight for better public transit.

Stacy Thompson was among the organizers and said changes need to be made. “We need our elected officials to take accountability, safety and funding seriously so that we can get the ‘t’ back on track,” she said. “Most importantly bring trust back, which we had been building with the previous control board.”

Outside the State House, Stacy Thompson, executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance, said she agreed with Baker's assertion that his predecessors should have made bigger investments in the T and showcased 30 reports assembled over the past 20 years that pointed to "chronic disinvestment."

“So, why aren’t we running as much transit service as possible, why aren’t we building as much infrastructure as humanly possible, because we already have the information that we know that people want to use those modes.”

“We have the tools,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets Alliance. “We have the solutions. Now it is the opportunity of our elected officials and the State House and the governor to build back trust and to use the tools they already have in their toolkit to get it done.”

“When we had a control board, every single Monday we heard from leadership, every single week we had a body that was supposed to look into incidents like this,” said Stacy Thompson of LivableStreets Alliance.

Stacy Thompson: A lot in the advocacy community have been saying, look, we’ve told you. So it is never ok when a person is injured or traumatized because of a preventable maintenance issue.

"A huge amount of the workforce depends on the T, and if it's not safe and it's not reliable, our economy is not going to come back out of COVID, and that's going to have a ripple effect across the region and the state," Thompson said.

“[The state legislature is] sitting with a dozen different revenue proposals from advocates that are all well-supported,” Thompson said. “So, to me, it’s just a distraction to ask the trade-offs question when it’s entirely feasible and reasonable to raise the revenue for the needs we have both on maintenance and on new construction.”

“The next time the T derails or lights on fire, I don’t want anyone to be surprised,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets Alliance. “It’s a matter of political will at this point. . . . I hope this is a wake up call.”