Jim Aloisi and Stacy Thompson talked about the state of the MBTA: recent derailments, budget concerns and sources of political inaction, as well as Boston’s upcoming open street days and bike lane controversy. Aloisi is the former Massachusetts transportation secretary, a member of the Transit Matters board and contributor to Commonwealth Magazine. Thompson is executive director of Livable Streets.

“This is good,” Thompson said, “but it’s not nearly enough to meet the demands of people who increasingly can’t afford to ride a system that is also experiencing service cuts right now.”

“He didn’t in 2015 blame the weather, he said the weather illuminated a longstanding problem I’m going to fix,” she said. “Now he’s blaming the pandemic [for staffing shortages]. If he cared about this transit system, he would be rolling up his sleeves and doing everything he could to fix the problem before the next governor comes in.”

Stacy Thompson, with LivableStreets Alliance, says the T is being overly cautious in this case, taking all of the new Orange and Red line trains off the tracks due to a battery issue.

“The FTA actually called out explicitly in their preliminary reports that there has been an over-focus on capital and there has been a lack of focus on operating,” Thompson told MassLive. “And so there is nothing wrong with the $400 million, it’s a good investment, but it is not actually meaningfully or directly addressing any of the four recommendations that the FTA laid out. That is an operating question.”

“This is binding set of recommendations. If the T doesn’t follow through then we lose federal funding that over time could be hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets Alliance.

The T says the switch to a Saturday schedule during the work week will help alleviate a dispatcher shortage. Stacy Thompson, executive director of the transportation advocacy group LivableStreets, tells WBUR's Weekend Edition host Sharon Brody the move isn't surprising.

“This is a really big deal especially as we’re trying to bring back our downtowns, get folks back into our spaces in the metro Boston region as we’re coming out of the pandemic, this is a huge blow,” Thompson added.

“For those who have been paying attention, we’ve seen this coming for a long time. We’ve been screaming into the void that you must invest to operations in order for the system to run,” she said.

“This is really a make or break moment for the T,” she said. “If we don’t get it right, that’s how you end up with service cuts.”