USA: On January 3 2023, Steve Poftak is to step down after four years serving as General Manager of Boston transit agency MBTA.
In a resignation letter to staff released on November 2, he highlighted the results of the company’s $8bn, five-year investment programme called ‘Building a Better T’, which covered a range of enhancements to Boston’s metro, light rail and commuter rail networks.
Key elements of the package were capacity enhancement works on the Green and Red light rail lines, procurement of 24 LRVs from CAF, delivery of 152 CRRC metro cars for the Orange Line and 80 double-deck coaches from Hyundai Rotem for the commuter rail network. Extensive track replacement, infrastructure renewals and station improvements have also been undertaken across the network, including improvements to better manage the impact of severe winter weather.
MBTA also added a further 7 route-km to its network in March with the opening of the Green Line light rail extension to Union Square in Somerville under a project that had been in planning since the early 1990s.
However, MBTA has also been facing criticism on social and local media in recent months over service disruption and a number of significant safety incidents, including fires and derailments.
These problems prompted a formal investigation by the Federal Transit Administration, which concluded in a report issued on August 31 that MBTA needed to improve its safety management systems and culture in a number of areas, including managing day-to-day operations safely when also delivering major capital investment programmes.
