Members of the media tour a then-new Orange Line train at the MBTA's Wellington maintenance facility in August 2019. State House News Service photo / File
he new head of state transportation safety wants the MBTA to bulk up its data-collection efforts, personally recommended another round of subway inspections, and sees the T “in a better place” than a peer agency that faced similar federal scrutiny.
In a presentation about his recommendations and approach to the job Thursday, new MassDOT Chief Safety Officer Patrick Lavin told MBTA overseers the agency’s existing method of tracking fire and smoke event performance indicators fails to record specific locations, totals for each type of event, three-year trends and goals or targets.
Lavin chose that specific example, he said, because when he began a three-year tenure in 2016 as chief safety officer at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, “the place was literally and figuratively on fire.”
“They were getting cable fires, insulator fires, trash fires. We then created heat maps of where they were occurring in the system,” Lavin said. “If you look at the Red Line at WMATA, it’s shaped like a horseshoe. The left side of that map was literally ablaze. Based on taking that information, we knew where to target the resources.”
“I think over a two-year period, we reduced fires by something like 75 percent,” he added. “This is kind of where I want to get with this organization, where we’re using that data in a meaningful way, strategically targeting resources, and more importantly, setting goals and targets and then tracking that over time to see if we’re actually having the desired effect.”
Gov. Maura Healey tapped Lavin, who also worked on a 2019 independent report highlighting safety problems at the T, in April to serve as the first chief safety officer for MassDOT.
Lavin said he presented MBTA General Manager Phil Eng with eight recommendations after a June 12 Green Line derailment, including an inspection of all track areas subject to speed restrictions of 10 miles per hour or less, like the area where the trolley derailed.
It wasn’t clear from his remarks at the board meeting how those additional inspections — which have wrapped up on the Green and Blue Lines and are ongoing on the Red and Orange Lines — would differ from a systemwide examination the MBTA undertook this spring.
That effort, which involved a $70,000 contract with third-party engineer Charles O’Reilly of Carlson Transport Consulting, found large stretches of tracks are so damaged that trains cannot safely run at maximum speeds in those areas.
The share of MBTA tracks subject to speed restrictions has grown since the Green Line derailment and the subsequent probes that Lavin described.
On June 11, the day before the derailment, about 20.6 percent of MBTA tracks were under slow zones. That share stood at 21.8 percent on Thursday. Slow zones on the Green Line alone grew from about 9.6 miles to 12.1 miles in that span, according to MBTA data.
The severity of the slow zones that remain has decreased in some areas. According to data tracked by TransitMatters, the total round-trip delay attributable to slow zones has dropped by nearly half an hour on the Red Line, four minutes on the Orange Line and about 15 minutes on the Blue Line compared to peaks earlier this spring.
Lavin said he wants to see a “collaborative review of the track inspection records,” adding that he is “concerned with the process, the documentation and the accountability.” He also expressed worry about an MBTA policy offering “tolerance” for exceeding speed limits, which effectively allowed train operators to travel 5 mph above posted speed limits before they faced disciplinary action.
“When that tolerance was contemplated, it was done under the parameters of discipline, not really safety,” he said. “There are areas of the system where you have a 3 mile an hour speed restriction, so if you allow a 5 mile an hour tolerance, you’re [at] almost three times what that speed restriction should be before there’s some consequence.”
Deputy General Manager Jeff Gonneville recently notified operators they need to comply with speed restrictions as posted, Lavin said.
Warning of gaps in the MBTA’s accident investigation capability, Lavin said he asked a retired National Transportation Safety Board investigator to draft a curriculum and present it as additional training for MBTA staff.
Both the 2019 report he worked on and the Federal Transit Administration’s safety inspection last year flagged that area as one needing improvement, according to Lavin.
While the FTA’s investigation thrust the MBTA into a harsh spotlight, Lavin said the federal oversight agency’s involvement has not been as dramatic as it was at WMATA the only other time it launched such a probe.
“From an FTA [safety management inspection] perspective, you’re better situated than Washington was because in the situation in Washington, the FTA came in and they completely displaced the state safety oversight function,” Lavin said. “Here, you’re not at that level of gravity.”
He praised MBTA staff for their attitude despite the widespread safety problems flagged by both the independent safety panel and the FTA several years later.
“Speaking anecdotally, from what I saw in 2019 versus today, I think you have a much more engaged workforce,” Lavin said. “I think the FTA gets a lot of credit for that. The people who are here, they’re extremely hardworking, they’re extremely engaged. I just think you need more senior management to help them along. You’re in a better place than what I’ve seen at other agencies.”
