BOSTON — Lynn is among the areas that would see major increases in Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) bus service under a preliminary bus network redesign that officials rolled out Monday, but funding and staffing uncertainty continue to pose obstacles.
The T released the draft version of a new constellation of bus routes across the Greater Boston region, calling for boosting service 25 percent across the board over a five-year period and giving 275,000 more Bay Staters access to trips every 15 minutes or faster.
Proposed changes would impact dozens of communities, many of which have significant populations of color or high proportions of low-income households. MBTA officials project the changes would require $90 million in added spending, a significant new cost at a time when the agency expects it will face a budget deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars starting next year that grows wider in subsequent years.
According to an MBTA summary, the bus network changes would introduce two new “high-frequency corridors” with service every 15 minutes or better.
Central Square-to-Wonderland along the Lynnway would be one corridor and the other would run from West Lynn to Central Square with the route including Summer Street, Market Square, and Lynn Common.
The routes translate, according to the MBTA, into increased midday, evening, and weekend service, with better service and connections to MarketStreet Lynnfield, Saugus Center, Melrose, and Wonderland for bus riders.
It’s unclear whether the plan will require service cuts or fare increases elsewhere. The agency would need more drivers to provide the increase in service, and officials are already struggling to attract enough employees to run the existing bus schedule.
In a briefing with reporters ahead of an afternoon event to release the proposed bus map, MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak said his team views the boost in bus service as “an important initiative to put forward” despite the challenges it will face.
“There’s been some public discussion with concerns about service cuts and fare increases, and this is our statement that we intend to expand service,” Poftak said. “We will work on solutions for those out years, but we will work on them with this service level embedded in it.”
MBTA officials released the bus plan even as they expect a federal safety probe of the transit system to continue for at least “the next few weeks” and have their eyes on “late summer” for the Federal Transit Administration to announce its findings.
The FTA’s “safety management inspection,” launched in response to a string of incidents, including fatalities at the T, is already underway, MBTA Chief Safety Officer Ronald Ester said Monday.
“Last week was the formal kickoff and meetings began,” Ester told the MBTA board’s safety, health and environment subcommittee. “The inspection will continue over the next few weeks. As always, safety is the number one priority, as you just mentioned, and we will fully support the SMI review and we will cooperate with the FTA during this inspection.”
In an April 14 letter, FTA Associate Administrator for Transit Safety and Oversight Joe DeLorenzo said the agency is “extremely concerned with the ongoing safety issues” and would “immediately assume an increased safety oversight role of the MBTA system.”
Neither the FTA nor the MBTA publicly acknowledged the federal intervention for several weeks.
After the news emerged, the FTA published a copy of DeLorenzo’s letter on its “frequently requested records” page. Asked Monday when the MBTA expects to receive a report from the FTA, Ester replied, “I would say late summer for a possible report coming from the FTA, but that’s tentative.”
Ester also briefed the safety subcommittee about a different federal investigation the National Transportation Safety Board is conducting into an April 10 incident, where rider Robinson Lalin was dragged to his death after his arm became trapped in a Red Line train while attempting to exit the vehicle.
His presentation on Monday essentially recapped the preliminary report NTSB published May 2 in which investigators said they found a “fault” in the train door control system that allowed it to move with the door obstructed.
MBTA crews inspected other railcars and did not find any additional instances of the malfunction, officials said. Ester said the MBTA’s maintenance department has “changed their inspection cycle and the way inspections are being done” to more regularly check for that kind of malfunction.
