MBTA chief Eng prioritizes repair over expansion in 2025 transit plans

From time to time, a public transit enthusiast posts a map online showing a hypothetical expansion of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Discussion ensues.

Green Line service out to Watertown and Waltham? A Blue Line that stretches to Lynn? A new train line looping a ring around Boston and connecting the MBTA to communities such as Chelsea? Imagine the possibilities.

Perhaps someday, portions of those designs will become reality. But for immediately, there are more immediate challenges, Phillip Eng, MBTA General Manager and interim Massachusetts Transportation Secretary, told MassLive.

The T completed a momentous volume of repairs over the last two years, including replacing dozens of miles of tracks and lifting more than 200 speed restrictions in a particularly aggressive maintenance surge that ended last December.

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Yet a “tremendous” amount of work still needs to be done to bring the network into a “state of good repair,” Eng said in an interview last week.

“The expansion I want to do is within our existing infrastructure, build up more resiliency in our system to make sure that what we’ve done today is sustainable long term,” he said.

To Eng, that means renovating stations to be fully accessible, upgrading to modern trains, increasing the frequency of each route and building out the network of tracks so if a train breaks down, others can get around it without causing delays.

“If a train encounters an issue and is delayed today, we might need to go right to alternative bus service because there’s no way to move trains around it because of the way the infrastructure does not allow us to cross over tracks,” Eng said.

With better “redundancy” and flexibility to move trains around, that could be avoided, preventing the type of lengthy delays that leave riders grinding their teeth and possibly finding another way home.

MBTA General Manager and Interim Secretary of Transportation Phil Eng, shown here on Tuesday, looks to streamline the state’s transportation agencies while continuing to “build up more resiliency in our [MBTA] system to make sure that what we’ve done today is sustainable long term.” (Sebastian Restrepo/MassLive)

While the T is working to install new signals on the Red and Orange Lines — a key system that controls how trains move down the tracks — Eng knows the Blue Line will also need similar upgrades “in the near future.”

“It’s important that I stay focused on that and I don’t just jump to something else and start to ignore these needs,” he said.

As for T riders’ wish lists for an expanded train network?

Eng appreciates their passion.

“I never want to use excuses for why we can’t,” he said.

“Some of these things could be on the table,” he added. “But you just can’t jump to the end conclusion of this, right?”

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If money were no object for the T

He knows people complain about the MBTA, the same way he complained about the traffic on Long Island, where he spent much of his life. But he said he has spoken with people elsewhere in the country who wish they had a transit system with the T’s level of service and multiple modes of travel.

“You may say, you know, all these things that you don’t like about something, but it’s your home system and you take pride in it,” he said.

But if money weren’t a factor, what would he consider adding to the T?

His answer wasn’t a new line or link between North Station and South Station, as some — including U.S. Rep. (and Senate candidate) Seth Moulton — have hoped for.

“If money is not a factor,” Eng said, pausing to consider before adding, he would address the $24.5 billion estimated cost tag to bring the entire T system into a “state of good repair.”

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Eng took the general manager’s job in 2023 with a five-year contract and a mission to right a troubled ship.

Two and a half years into his tenure, state officials laud the T’s progress under his movie, pointing enthusiastically to the miles of track replaced and the number of slow zones removed. To riders, the change is simpler: trains are running faster.

Yet in keeping with his insistence that the work remains unfinished, Eng said he has no plans to step away from the T before his contract is up, even after Gov. Maura Healey named him interim Transportation Secretary last month.

“I’m so excited to finish those five years, and I’m not even looking at an endpoint,” Eng said.

As one sign of his continued commitment to the region, Eng and his wife, Carole, closed on a condominium in East Boston last month.

They had previously rented while maintaining their home on Long Island, according to prior news reports.

Streamlining Mass. transportation agencies

Eng has achieved folk hero status since arriving in the Boston area from New York two and a half years ago.

In Boston, riders know Eng’s name and stop him for selfies mid-commute, a treatment most transportation administrators don’t enjoy.

Over a four-decade career in the Empire State, he rose to the leading ranks of the state transportation department, New York City’s public transit and the Long Island Rail Road before moving to the private sector as a consultant.

Phillip Eng, then newly appointed general manager of the MBTA, addresses the media at Riverside Station in Newton after being introduced by Gov. Maura Healey and her team on March 27, 2023. (Chris Lisinski/State House News Service)

Given his popular stewardship of the T, some riders worried Eng’s focus on the network would suffer when he took on a second job as MassDOT’s leader last month. The move came after Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt stepped down. Reporters questioned whether Eng could effectively split his time between two demanding, high-stakes jobs.

Eng maintained that he could do both effectively and would not have taken the new job if he doubted he could meet the challenge.

When introduced as interim transportation secretary, Eng said he was open to remaining in the role “as long as it’s needed,” and “open to supporting the public and the commonwealth in any way.”

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Eng did not say during the interview whether he and Healey had since discussed the long-term plans for MassDOT’s leadership.

Instead, he said he was excited by the governor’s more than $750 million investment in transportation projects, part of an $8 billion plan she described earlier this year to upgrade roads, bridges and public transportation.

Nearly $550 million went to the MBTA, with other funding supporting MassDOT, local road repairs and other Regional Transit Authorities across the state.

Lowering housing costs, growing the state economy and supporting businesses “are all reliant on sound transportation,” Eng said. “And it has to be a balanced transportation network.”

“There’s definitely a fantastic opportunity for me to streamline how transportation agencies work together in this dual role,” he said. “And I look forward to doing more of that.”

MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng chats with a Blue Line driver in Revere on June 28, 2023. Photo by Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Eng is also quick to heap praise on his staff at both MassDOT and the MBTA.

“I know so many times I get the accolades for what’s happening, but really it is the folks behind me,” he said last month.

Barbecue and homebrewed beer

Given the demands of his two jobs, Eng said his mind is always on work, even when he’s away from the office. His nearly 40 years of transportation work in New York culminated in a high-level position at a private consulting firm in the summer of 2022. By the spring of 2023, he had accepted Healey’s offer to lead the MBTA.

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“I would not have come back to public service if I didn’t enjoy it,” Eng said.

But when he truly is off the job, Eng, immediately approaching his mid-60s, said he decompresses by cooking, barbecuing, homebrewing beer and spending time with his family. He has four children, all grown.

And the longtime New Yorker still pulls hard for his beloved Mets and Jets, as much as they break his heart.

His philosophy on the Mets may be just as appropriate for public transit: “Anything on paper looks great, but it’s what you deliver.”