Lawmakers Weigh New Approach to MBTA Safety Oversight

WHDH

After he and his colleagues spent several hours grilling current and former DPU officials about their work to ensure the MBTA is safe, Sen. Mike Barrett said the Baker administration agency has not done enough in recent years to demonstrate that it can handle those responsibilities, even if it “means to do well.”

“I’m thinking the sand in the hourglass has probably run out,” Barrett, who co-chairs the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee, told reporters after the panel’s oversight hearing. “Bottom line is, people have used the system at their risk. The current oversight supplied by the Department of Public Utilities is a part of that mass failure, and I think it’s time, probably, to try a different institutional arrangement.”

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