Gov. Maura Healey slammed President Donald Trump’s administration Thursday for engaging in “political theater” after a federal transportation official suggested the White House was considering taking over the state-owned South Station to address security.
Healey railed against remarks made by Deputy Director of Transportation Steven Bradbury at an event in South Station Wednesday, the same day the Trump administration announced plans to take management of Union Station in Washington away from Amtrak.
The first-term Democrat from Arlington said what the Trump administration is doing in Washington, “and immediately threatening to do at South Station, is outrageous, wrong, and has nothing to do with transportation or public safety.”
“It’s more political theater, more political power grabs from Donald Trump. We don’t need or want his interference here. We’re not going to let the guy who went bankrupt six times take over our train stations,” Healey said in a statement.
At an event in Boston Wednesday to unveil Amtrak’s new Acela trains, Bradbury pointed at South Station as a potential target of the Trump administration.
“Here in South Boston, we need to address the cleanliness, the crime, the safety, and security of the station for the rail workers, for the passengers, because the people of Boston deserve that,” Bradbury said.
The MBTA, a public state agency, owns and controls South Station, including its governing body, operations, maintenance, and capital improvements, according to the transit agency.
Other Democrats in Boston also blasted back at Bradbury.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said “this is not a game of authoritarian monopoly.”
“This is a government with laws and a constitution that clearly shows who is in control of what. South Station is not the property of the federal government, and there’s no legal way for anything like that to happen,” Wu said at an unrelated event Thursday.
Josh Kraft, a Democrat running for mayor of Boston, said the city should address issues at Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue and homelessness, two areas that “would eradicate some of the issues that are going on in South Station.”
“If I was mayor, I would make sure it wouldn’t happen, because I would make sure that South Station would be a crown jewel for every resident and everybody coming into the city, the way it should be,” Kraft said at an unrelated event Thursday.
Back in Washington, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the takeover of Union Station alongside Amtrak President Roger Harris at Washington’s main transportation hub during the launch of an updated version of the rail service’s Acela train.
Unlike South Station, the federal government owns Union Station.
Duffy said the station has “fallen into disrepair” when it should be a “point of pride” for the District of Columbia. He said the Republican administration’s move would help beautify the landmark in an economical way and was in line with Trump’s vision.
“He wants Union Station to be beautiful again. He wants transit to be safe again. And he wants our nation’s capital to be great again. And today is part of that,” Duffy said.
Materials from the Associated Press were used in this report.
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