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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
How Boston Fast Tracked Rebuilding Trust
America's oldest subway system is experiencing a renaissance. After facing system-wide speed restrictions and a severe deficit of public trust in early 2023, Boston's MBTA has engineered a remarkable turnaround that's transforming how people move throughout the city and beyond.
Andrew Cassidy, MBTA’s Senior Director of Digital Strategy, joins us to share how transparency, leadership changes, and creative rider engagement (including their podcast Spilling the Tea) are driving a remarkable turnaround. From new tap-to-pay fares to expanded commuter rail and ferry service, MBTA is rewriting the playbook on how legacy transit systems can modernize.
Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at Boston’s transit—and what it means for the future of American public transportation.
Subscribe to Transit Tangents and support us on Patreon for early access and exclusive content.
This week, on Transit Tangents, we'll talk to Andrew Cassidy, the Senior Director of Digital Strategy for the MBTA. We'll discuss how the MBTA is regaining the trust of transit riders, how improvements to previous issues with slow zones is impacting the system, as well as the importance of communication for the agency. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, Andrew, for being with us today. It's a beautiful day in Boston. We're here on the Commons to talk to you about MBTA and all of the wonderful things that MBTA is doing right now.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's an honor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, excited for you to be here. One of the things that we wanted to talk about that I know people who've listened to our show have been interested in we've brought this up a couple times in previous episodes is that MBTA has been working on this sort of modernization effort and looking to improve rail service. One of those big initiatives was eliminating slow zones in the city. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Speaker 3:Sure, a little bit of a history lesson, I suppose. To start. So, back in 2022, we were undergoing all sorts of maintenance across our system, including an entire line shutdown of our Orange line, which runs generally north to south of Boston, and following all of that, we thought we had done a lot of great work, a lot of good. Lo and behold, fast forward to March of 2023, and we discover that certain documentation isn't available and certain work hadn't been performed, leading us to implement a global speed restriction across the entire MBTA system. I believe we were running at maybe 5 to 10 miles per hour on every single system until we were able to go out there, do the scans of the rails and really be able to verify that our track was indeed safe. It was a very defeating moment, I think, for a lot of us, because we thought we had been doing a lot of work. You know the MBTA, like many transit systems, had been played with a lack of true investment to keep it going and unfortunately, this was, you know, the chickens coming home to roost. It was, you know, that lack of investment for so long really is what led to, unfortunately, just that global state of disrepair Shortly thereafter.
Speaker 3:This is March, we welcome a new administration at our statehouse Governor Healy and her administration, and she appoints Phil Eng as our new general manager, and to say he hit the ground running would be a complete understatement, because he starts in April of that same year. So he's walking in. He knew what he was signing up for, but he's walking into, truthfully, just kind of the probably the worst we have ever been, and didn't shy away from that challenge, brought with him a phenomenal team that he had collected over his career, many of whom he had worked with in New York, whether that be with the MTA, long Island Railroad, and slowly they started preparing to plan for what we call the track improvement program, which was to remove all slow zones across all lines, which was, you know, we're at a credibility deficit at this time, and that's, I think, what was so difficult too. It was not only is there work to be done, but you had to be able to convince the riding public that we had really turned the ship.
Speaker 1:Right, because it had just happened where you had gone out and done this work and then come to find out there were issues with it, of course.
Speaker 3:What's going to be different now? Okay, new general manager, so what? New team, so what? And it became this piece, and this is partially where we started launching our podcast Spilling the Tea, which was we realized. You know, we move forward transparency across all of our communications, primarily on social media, but you can only say so much. Even you have a 30 tweet Twitter thread, you can only say so much. So the podcast allowed us to get the actual individuals, like general manager Aang and others, and ask them real questions, not script, not edited to make them sound good or take out the bad parts and just have them do a deep dive on where we are and what we're doing to address things, and slowly started again, concurrently between the work that was being done and the communications that were taking place. We slowly started to earn back that trust.
Speaker 1:Right, because from afar I mean, people might not understand all of the little intricacies of what's going on and not everybody cares. But for the ones who do care, who are relying on the system and who are frustrated where things are going, they can go in and get that further information. Can you talk about some of the effects that so obviously? Correct me if I'm wrong. It was about December or so when all of those slow zones were officially lifted. Can in the full length from Braintree all the way in.
Speaker 3:an average commuter in a day could save up to 24 minutes or something crazy, yeah, massive massive, and I think this was what was so interesting about the process was it wasn't just hey, we need to fix things. Absolutely, safety is, without question, our first priority, but it was how do we go a step beyond, how do we improve? And that was one of the things we were able to do on the Red Line, which was we got the system to such a state where we were actually able to raise our operating speeds from 40 to 50 miles an hour. But I mean the volume of work based on our old model, it would be it would take 40 years worth of work, and we did it in 14 months, which is just. I mean, I have to double check because I'm like I can't go out with that line if that's not real. It sounds great, but 100% and it was just. You know, it was that aggressive. We have to make these changes and you know we're out there telling the story, they're out there doing the work, but what you really started noticing was we actually ended up creating a campaign of sorts based off of the feedback we started getting from riders. So so, needless to say, people were none too happy with us.
Speaker 3:Uh, march, april of 2023, right? Uh, last summer, we end up or that summer, rather, we end up, um, closing out, uh, part of the red line and during this time we're able to get to those those high speeds, we start getting this volume of tweets where people are saying like, oh my god, it's so fast because we can, we can always tell people, hey, it's faster, here's the data right. But when you get that, yeah, when you get that verification from fellow riders, that means a lot and we had people complaining like, oh my god, I missed my stop because I'm not used to getting there so quickly. So we just started taking the tweets, reddit posts what have you? Putting them up on screens and station, uh, to the point where and this is where we really knew that the trust had had kind of turned that corner, which was the red line, just completed the orange line. Hey, can you please come and do us next. They were asking for a diversion, which you, again, you don't really get in transit. So right, because the diversion.
Speaker 3:I mean there's a lot of short-term pain when you're doing that, Of course of course you have to ride the bus to work every day for three months or whatever it may be and you want to believe that you're going through that short-term pain for a benefit. And when you have that verification from your fellow riders that you're saving time and you can sleep in a little bit later, hit the snooze button and still get to work on time, it's a big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to hear that. I'd love to hear the collaboration between what you're doing and telling the story versus what sort of maintenance crews are doing to fix the zones and then also getting that feedback from the riders, because I think a lot of transit agencies since the pandemic have really struggled to convince riders to come back and it is improving in a lot of systems. We've talked about several systems that are actually showing better ridership than pre-pandemic. But now that you have sort of turned this corner with the trust, have you seen a noticeable impact on the ridership since coming back from the pandemic?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So our commuter rail ridership I think might be the strongest comeback of any commuter rail service in the country. I know it was 90 something percent, with weekends being exceeding, far exceeding a hundred percent. So there's been a, you know, a bit of a shift. There is the reality of work from home environment where instead of seeing that standard 9 to 5 am and pm shift, we're seeing a little bit more of a steady throughout the day. Like many other systems you're seeing Tuesday through Thursday as kind of the primary piece, but we have still seen that increase.
Speaker 3:We've also, you know, in that time added ferry service to communities that previously did not have that. So that's another kind of influx and it's really just trying to find, you know, through all the different modes that the MBTA offers and it being the rarity that it offers commuter rail, subway, light and heavy rail, bus and ferry all under one umbrella versus separate groups. You know we're trying to figure out what cocktail works best to get people on whatever mode works for them, and that maybe that's taking a ferry, that takes maybe a little bit longer, but you really love that commute and seeing potentially some whales on your way into the city. Or if it's, you know, hey, I don't want to have to worry about schedules, I want to get on the subway. Or you know what, maybe I, If it's. You know, hey, I don't want to have to worry about schedules, I want to get on the subway. Or you know what? Maybe I've moved further out of the city, which a lot of people did, and they're the ones now hopping on commuter rail to come in that way.
Speaker 3:So it's really again just trying to figure that out and making sure that our service remains that level of reliability which is so important, because if you don't have that, then people can very easily shy away. So we've been doing a lot of trying to reintroduce people to a transit system that maybe let them down in the past, but right now is their best option, because Boston has, I think, the fourth worst traffic in the country, and if you've driven at all here, you've experienced that. So you know that's kind of what we're up against. So for us it's an easy sell it. So you know that's kind of what we're up against, so for us it's an easy sell. It's like, don't deal with that, please. Please, let us get behind the wheel, listen to your favorite podcast or whatever, and let us do the driving for you.
Speaker 2:And I'm glad you mentioned all of the transit authorities and sort of the modes under one umbrella, because something that I think is a big deal here, that you don't see necessarily in all cities in the country, is that the fares seem to kind of work across most of the system Um and it. The system has been modernized in that effect too, if you want to speak a little bit to the modernization Sure.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, uh, so I believe that was last summer. Uh, we were able to, to welcome, uh, what we call tap to ride, which is the ability to, you know, use your phone, use your smartwatch, your tappable credit card, to be able to pay, which works really well, especially for more infrequent riders. Maybe people who, again pre-pandemic, might have got that weekly pass, monthly pass, maybe they're coming in the office a little less, so it doesn't quite make the same financial sense. They don't have to deal with a vending machine, they can just use what they have. It's really great for tourists. They don't have to understand new fare media and all different pieces.
Speaker 1:Trying to pay for a bus or a train can be intimidating for people who don't use it all the time, and we've all been there.
Speaker 3:You go to a city you're like is there an app? Is there a fare vending machine? Usually it's a bus. So you're like I don't want to hold everyone up. Or in some cases, unfortunately, it's like do fantastic, because you know it takes work to implement these things. But for I mean, every time I'm going through one of our fare gates there's always somebody tapping. So it's that nice user-friendly experience. You know you can focus on getting to your destination versus you know what button do I tap? What's a link pass? What's a link pass? What's a flex, this? And that way you can just kind of just tap, go ride.
Speaker 1:Nice, I'm curious. So obviously the tap to pay is new. There's also been some in the last few years, extensions to the green line that we've seen and whatnot. Are there any kind of? It doesn't have to necessarily be an extension, but modernization efforts and things that are kind of coming up next that you guys are gearing up for.
Speaker 3:I mean all sorts of stuff. It's a very exciting time and, again, this is where it's like, you know, we went from the we're sorry, we're trying approach to like you got to get on board because there's so much happening. We opened the Green Line extension, welcoming, you know, new cities into our system, which is massive. New cities into our system, which is massive. So just creating all these new travel options for people who lived otherwise might have had to take a bus and then shift onto a different line. We recently opened South Coast Rail, which is an extension of our commuter rail service going down south all the way down to Fall River. So that's welcoming, again, additional communities that can now ditch the car keys and, you know, read a book, whatever, hop on board and be able to get here. Beyond that, a lot of it. I don't know if it's so much system expansion. Biggest thing in that regard would probably be the ferries. Uh, we have added several new ferry lines. We recently also just split one. We used to have to get one between, uh, winthrop, quincy and boston. We split that. So just win's, just Winthrop Boston, quincy, boston, making it a lot more attractive to those riders as well.
Speaker 3:We're working on moving forward with the regional rail. We're trying to get to a point where we implement our battery electric locomotives. We're going to be able to have clean, more frequent service. We're going to be starting that off on one line, but slowly growing service. We're going to be starting that off on one line, but slowly growing. And the nice thing with that is by going with the battery electric option. Initially a lot of people were concerned like, oh, you're not doing catenary, that means that you're not really taking this seriously. Right? This allows us to get electric trains out on those same rails before.
Speaker 3:So basically, if there is existing catenary or where we put existing catenary, it'll'll charge, right, but we don't have to wait to run catenary on all the hundreds of miles of the commuter rail. Instead, people can just hop on and we can start charging and riding, and again, it's clean. It's more frequent 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you brought that up because I immediately was like. I've definitely seen a bunch of people online complaining about that at one point Exactly. And even where. So we live in Austin, texas, and we don't have much as far as rail is concerned at this point.
Speaker 3:Hopefully, soon it's coming. Yes, CapNature, yeah, there.
Speaker 2:Project Connect yes.
Speaker 1:Well, hopefully it continues to cross the hurdles that it's going through. But I know there they've been trying to roll out electric buses and it's kind of been delayed a bit and we still have the electric buses, but electric buses. But the issue was with the charging infrastructure not being in in time, being able to maintain the levels of frequencies and service with the electric buses. We need to make sure the frequencies can remain before trying to transfer over, so I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we're similarly switching over to electric buses. We had, I believe, a state mandate. I think we're aiming for 2030. Then we've had some snags here and there. We have already taken delivery of several of them and you know, part of it's also technology. When people were looking to do this, there was a concern, especially in Boston cold weather and batteries. If you're on your cell phone in Boston and it's really cold out, guess what? Your battery will die.
Speaker 3:We don't have that issue, yeah exactly, but you might be drawing more, yeah, you might be drawing more exactly more energy for the air conditioning. So there are all these different hurdles that I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand, but we're definitely progressing and moving forward in that direction, which is great.
Speaker 2:Do you want to? Yeah, no, I was just saying I'd love to hear this about the modernization, because we're sitting in a backdrop of the city that has the first subway.
Speaker 3:Right here, right here 1897.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just the historical context and then hearing about modernization is just very impressive. It's a great story.
Speaker 3:It is a challenge too. You know. It's awesome being first. We're very proud of that.
Speaker 3:But you know, like many realities of the city of Boston, just like our streets were designed for pedestrian traffic and different vehicles, they all have their own dynamic envelope and different length of platforms because, basically, tunnels were dug over 100 years ago and we're still using a lot of that. So we also run single track for the most part, which means that we don't have that redundancy like a newer system, like New York does have. So there are the challenges that come along with it, but, uh, we have a lot of really creative individuals who are being innovative in how we deal with things. So, like single tracking, where before we used to shut down a line, we now go around it. So you're not, you're not having to get on a shuttle when there's a diversion happening, you're just kind of going around it. You might be a little bit delayed, but it makes it at least a one seat ride, which is so important for for people. We just try to, you know, remove any barrier we can during that rider experience.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Um, I wanted to ask you about the podcast that you were also the host of uh MBTA spilling the tea.
Speaker 3:It is a great name. It was right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, how did that, how did that come about, and what is your experience been with with this podcast?
Speaker 3:Sure. So you know, it really started back in 2019 when I first joined the MBTA and again, we were at a deficit of trust. We weren't in great shape then this is even before the global speed restrictions and we knew we had to do a better job of just telling the truth, just letting riders know what's going on, even if it's bad. So we started doing that. We started posting on social media, letting people you know a little bit, you know pulling back the curtain a bit, providing videos proving to people that we're actually doing work at diversions, when we said we were, but we knew we wanted that more long-form content. Originally, we plan, we planned to go out in 2020. Something else happened that year, so we decided to kind of shelve it. And when the global speed restrictions went into place, the new general manager came on board. We're like what if we brought this back? What if we brought this back? So we actually recorded it. I believe that first summer that he was here and we launched, I believe early that fall. And again it we launched, I believe early that fall, uh, and again it was just hey, let's you know, let's start up like get to know Phil, let's uh, understand what the what the real challenges are have those follow-up questions, cause again not scripted um, and be able to get that authenticity. And you know we, we use, you know, our, our social listening. Uh, we use customer feedback forms to know what they want. So obviously we welcome people to email us if they have something they want to hear about in a future episode. But we're not shooting in the dark either. We know we had a lot of diversions.
Speaker 3:How do you plan for a diversion? What's going on behind the scenes? What are you doing to make sure that the shuttles are running and that there's adequate service to get people where they need to go, that the shuttles are running and that there's adequate service to get people where they need to go? And you know there are all these people who are never in the spotlight, who have fascinating jobs and just like absolute mountains of knowledge. The people I call when we're, you know, when we're drafting or creating videos or anything of that nature, and I said, hey, would you come on and would you talk? And I mean people just really value that authenticity. It's like these are our real challenges.
Speaker 3:We have to work with all the different municipalities. So you know, I lived in Miami for a little while. And while you're down there, when you're working with, you're not really dealing with like all the thousands of towns. You're working with a county which is like dozens and dozens of towns in one area here, every single municipality. So it's not just like hey, we're running a diversion, it single municipality.
Speaker 3:So it's not just like hey, we're running a diversion. It's like, okay, we have to call Boston, we have to call Chelsea, we have to call Revere, we have to call all the way up, just to make sure that you know we're being cognizant of what's going on, because they have their own things going on. Actually, we're shutting down the street that you normally use for shuttles today, and it just again. It's really easy to be like, wow, no one's considering me and it's a show. We really are. You know, unfortunately we can't make it pain free, but we can make it. We can reduce as much of that as possible. But we've we've brought in all different types of guests. We've again, we've had the general manager, we have the secretary of transportation general manager, we have the secretary of transportation. But we've also had a local TikTok sensation. His name is Jed, if you have not watched him. I just finished a trip to Connecticut and I came back to.
Speaker 2:Boston for two hours before my flight out to do the one thing that I've missed that sound.
Speaker 3:He was originally a Boston guy. Now he switched over to talking about Caltrans but he became a transit advocate where he would poke fun at us but he would also say, like this is why the MBTA needs support. And we have had, you know, actual nine to five transit advocates on the show as well, and they have their. You know, as I like to tell them, it's like you know, we're two sides of the same transit token. You know, it's like we want the same thing and we got to hold each other accountable to make sure we get there. But it's been a fascinating, fascinating experience.
Speaker 3:You know, we talk about accessibility on the system. We talk about just like historical changes. We talk about ferries, we talk about the future of commuter rail and battery, electric and expansion. So it's really just like anything and everything. But it's to show people there's a lot of really smart, capable people who are working well beyond 5 o'clock to make sure this stuff happens. You know, most of our days start well before and well after and bleed into the weekends. But we all fundamentally believe in what we do. We believe in the good of public transportation and we want to be able to deliver the best public transportation we can, because we know how much the city, the region, really relies on us. So that's really how we've utilized that podcast, you know. Again, if you're interested in Boston transportation, definitely check out.
Speaker 1:Spilling the Tea Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3:But it is a fascinating thing. I thoroughly enjoy doing it because I learn, and that's what's so fun for me. I walk in again. I don't know what the other person is going to say. I hope they know what they're going to say, but I ask those questions and you know I'm like, wow, okay, this makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2:This is why this hasn't been done yet, because these are the issues. I think that's one of the reasons that we really like doing this, because we get to talk to people who are in the middle of it. They're really passionate about it and it's just fun to see that passion come out. I think one of our favorite episodes has been the Casey streetcar, where we got to meet their marketing and operations team and just seeing their passion for their community.
Speaker 2:It was amazing to get that and same for you like listening to you talk about being able to tell those stories.
Speaker 3:That's awesome being able to share that with the public. And we're all riders, like 99%. If you're experiencing an issue, I'm probably experiencing an issue. So we have that firsthand knowledge. We know the pain points. We're not just, like you know, up on high in an ivory tower driving to work. Every day. We go through that process and it's great because the more people you have, the more different routes they take, so the more awareness you get of that system.
Speaker 2:Awesome, andrew. Thank you so much for your insight and playing host to us in this beautiful city, and we really appreciate you being with us today.
Speaker 3:It was my pleasure. Please enjoy Boston.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thanks for watching this episode of Transit Tangents. If you have any questions or want to leave a comment, please consider doing so down below. If you haven't hit the like button already, please do that as well. It helps us out quite a bit If you have not subscribed on Patreon. This episode actually came out a few days early there. We're going to try to continue to keep that up. It's also another great way to support the show. You can also check out our merch store, linked down below, Without further ado. Thank you for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit Tangents Tuesday.