An Orange Line train sits in a Wellington Station workshop on Aug. 3, 2022, the day Gov. Charlie Baker and MBTA officials announced plans to shut down Orange Line service for 30 days. Photo by Chris Lisinski | State House News Service

When the Federal Transit Administration concluded last year that the Department of Public Utilities fell short in its safety oversight of the MBTA, the department’s then-chair told lawmakers that it was working to roughly double the number of employees in its Transportation Oversight Division. More than six months and a new chair later, DPU is still trying to bulk up its safety staff.

“DPU is actively seeking to hire more people. I think we’re gonna hear that over and over — everyone’s actively trying to hire more people — and it’s hard to hire more people, particularly in a safety job where somebody could work at the MBTA and make a lot more money than they could at the DPU,” Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said Monday at a Joint Committee on Ways and Means hearing in Dartmouth.

The discussion of DPU’s oversight of MBTA safety was sparked by a question from Rep. Natalie Blais, who wanted to know how DPU planned to use additional resources to address safety issues at the T. Gov. Maura Healey’s $55.5 billion fiscal 2024 budget recommends about $22.8 million for the DPU, an increase of almost $1.8 million over the current year’s budget. Under Healey’s budget, the DPU budget line item specifically for its Transportation Oversight Division would increase from its current $356,384 to $633,385.

In September, then-chair Matthew Nelson said DPU’s Transportation Oversight Division had six field staff, an assistant director and a division director who focuses on the MBTA and on common carriers. He said at the time that DPU was working to add a new director of rail safety and to roughly double the size of its staff.

DPU Acting Chair Cecile Fraser told Blais on Monday that the DPU now has a rail transit safety chief, and is still trying to hire people to fill nine other positions.

“The department remains committed to fulfilling its safety oversight obligations, working collaboratively with the FTA and the MBTA,” Fraser said. “The department recently hired a director of rail transit safety and is trying to fill in any other positions to increase its capabilities with respect to safety.”

DPU’s addition of a rail transit safety director, Robert Hanson, appears to have already had a significant impact. After DPU inspectors visited a stretch of Red Line track on March 6, Hanson ordered corrective actions and the T then realized that it could not verify that its tracks were safe, leading to a global slowdown and now persistent slow zones limiting the speed of trains on more than a quarter of the T’s subway system.