The MBTA has to hand over safety reports to the federal government by Thursday, or the agency could lose $200M in funding.
The MBTA said they are planning to comply and will make the reports public when they do.
After the request was made on Sept. 18, T-Riders had a very clear message about how they felt.
“The feds need to stay in Washington, and stay out of Boston,” Jerome Lucas said.
“They should leave it well alone,” Trudi Frost said.
“I think they should stay out of Boston,” Andrea Burns added.
At last week’s board meeting, MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng said the department is preparing a response and will be sharing all the work they’ve been doing, as well as the areas they feel need improvement.
“The letter also referenced the unfortunate incident on a bus where one of our riders was pushed off the bus by another rider," Eng said.
The video that circulated online brought concerns of safety into the spotlight, and Eng addressed those concerns in front of the board.
“Our employees, the bus driver, transit police, they did respond as they were trained, they did respond timely and accordingly,” Eng said.
While the MBTA works to respond to the Federal Transit Agency’s request, Transit riders think this should be a local matter, and said threatening funding isn’t the way to go about it.
“I think it’s petty and they’re just looking for things to hurt Boston,” Andrea Burns said.
“Transportation is such an important factor into what makes Boston prosperous and reducing funding in any way is not productive,” Trudi Frost said.
“We definitely don’t need any cuts, they need as much help as they can get, the MBTA,” Jerome Lucas said.
The deadline comes just a day after the Trump Administration said it would withhold $18B in funding from New York City-area transit projects.
Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/7QOJU3BNCJERBNKJC5LWTBYFLU.png)
