Stacy Thompson, executive director of LivableStreets Alliance, said that if the T failed to meet the FTA’s requirements, federal regulators wouldn’t likely make a move that could shut down service. Instead, they would be more apt to increase safety oversight of the state agency.

Transit advocates have long criticized the MBTA's approach to communications. Can a new general manager and a new chief communications officer change the agency's relationship with riders?

Stacy Thompson of Livable Streets, along with State Representative Mike Connolly, join us to discuss.

Smoldering wires in a Red Line station. A no-bid contract awarded to the state secretary of transportation's former brother-in-law. A controversial land buy near South Station. We check in on the MBTA. Congressman Seth Moulton joins us, along with transportation advocates Stacy Thompson and Chris Dempsey.

LivableStreets Alliance Executive Director Stacy Thompson supports the measure. “This is about multiple industries that [DPU officials] oversee and regulate, and making sure that there is a transparent, independent body that can look at all of those issues and make sure that we are regulating them in the most safe way.”

“Maura Healy hired a really good safety officer,” Thompson said. “It’s great that she hired really wonderful DPU commissioners, but it doesn’t solve this core problem of independent oversight that we have models of in the state and that the federal government is encouraging us to do.”

We talk about the current developments with the T and then look ahead to its future. MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Brian Kane joins us in studio, as well as local public transportation advocate Stacy Thompson and WBUR transportation reporter Andrea Perdomo-Hernandez.

The MBTA has released more details about an incident that left one Red Line rider with minor injuries after a utility box fell from a column at the Harvard Square station. The transit agency said Monday’s incident was caused by “corrosion on the support straps that secured the box to the column.”

The mounting nationwide data are quite clear—there are many benefits of eliminating fare collection, especially on buses.

“We want to understand: What did they discover?” Thompson said. “Were there problems that weren’t noted before? What were they tracking?”

"The reality is free transit is working. We are seeing massive transit improvements in Boston, Merrimack Valley, and Worcester— these systems are bucking the trends of downward transit ridership that was happening before the pandemic," Thompson said.