State lawmakers are drafting laws to maneuver MBTA security oversight out of the Department of Public Utilities.
“Work on the subject is quite intense,” mentioned state Sen. Mike Barrett. “We have to decide whether all the transportation functions currently organized in the DPU should move over to an independent agency, or whether a new agency should focus only on the MBTA and safety.”
The DPU can be the oversight authority for different regional transit businesses throughout Massachusetts, he mentioned, and the “threshold question” will likely be whether or not any new company offers with simply the T or with the opposite transportation authorities as properly.
“I don’t think you want to leave the DPU with a weak, but still demanding schedule of transportation oversight with regards to other parts of the state,” Barrett mentioned. “The DPU probably would not be very attentive to that reduced mandate and I imagine that users of bus systems in that part of Massachusetts wouldn’t like the result.”
Barrett co-chairs the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities & Energy, which held a listening to in October that centered round whether or not the DPU ought to preserve security oversight of the MBTA.
The listening to adopted a scathing report from the Federal Transit Administration that highlighted administration and operational failures on the MBTA and DPU’s ineffectiveness in its oversight operate.
Barrett mentioned he expects some pushback from the DPU, which has acknowledged that it needs to keep up its function with the MBTA, however the important thing query can be the place of the following governor, Maura Healey.
A spokesperson for Healey declined to touch upon her place, however mentioned in October that as governor, Healey “will instruct her new transportation safety chief to review the Department of Public Utilities’ role in MBTA safety oversight.”
A DPU spokesperson mentioned the company is working diligently to adjust to federal directives, which incorporates beefing up its staffing and conducting extra discipline work and auditing to supply additional oversight.
The DPU has six full-time workers devoted to rail security oversight, the next quantity than prior years, and has created two new positions, a director of rail oversight and assistant director, the spokesperson mentioned.
The division is making weekly unannounced visits to the MBTA operations management heart to make sure workers will not be working extreme hours and there’s acceptable protection, and is making weekly visits to yards and automobile homes to “verify safe working conditions,” the spokesperson mentioned.
“I’m interested in moving transportation safety out of the DPU for two reasons,” Barrett mentioned. “First, the DPU has blown it by way of constantly attending to its oversight accountability however secondly, because the local weather subject looms bigger and bigger, I don’t need to see the DPU distracted by different points.
“In my mind, both the climate question and transportation safety benefit from separating the two.”
The deadline to file laws this session is in January. Other politicians, significantly from the Joint Committee on Transportation, will need to weigh in on laws earlier than it’s finalized. The query of who information it within the House and Senate continues to be unresolved as properly, he mentioned.
“I think whatever we write will then get circulated to a lot of people and I expect the bill to circulate some more,” Barrett mentioned. “This is a lengthy process because you want to be inclusive. You want to strengthen the bill’s chance of passing so you have to listen to a lot of interested parties.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”