How has Phil Eng's first year at the T gone? It depends on whom you ask

When Phil Eng became the MBTA’s General Manager, he joined a transit system plagued by problems decades in the making and vowed to “demonstrate that we can turn it around." One year later, some transit advocates and lawmakers say they're encouraged by Eng’s performance, while many riders say they're still waiting for their commutes to improve.

One of those riders, Stephanie Liu of Cambridge, said the Red Line has “gotten worse” over this last year.

“The Red Line's so slow, there's just closures everywhere,” Liu said. “And I just refuse to sit on the Red Line or the Green Line anymore. I moved because I didn't want to take the Red line to school anymore.”

Waiting for the 1 bus to run an errand downtown, Liu said she's given up on the subway completely.

Eng inherited the T while it reduced speeds across the subway system as it investigated track issues. In November, he unveiled a plan that he said should eliminate all slow zones by the end of 2024.

The plan has shut down stations and stretches of track for days and sometimes weeks at a time so there can be repairs. The T has staggered closures and offered alternatives, like shuttle buses, to help riders get around during service disruptions, also known as diversions.

The day Eng started, there were 230 speed restrictions in place across the T’s four subway and trolley lines. On his one-year anniversary, there were 116. MBTA Advisory Board executive director Brian Kane said the T has made notable progress under Eng, and that the general manager has “demonstrated an ability to say what he's going to do, do it and tell people that it's done and have it be real and meaningful. And we haven't had that recently in the last several general managers.”

Katie Calandriello, policy analyst and program manager for the nonprofit TransitMatters, said the group is “really excited” about Eng’s leadership and the initiative he's shown with the track improvement plan.

But she said the T has to do a better job communicating about repair-related service disruptions.

“There's still, like, riders that are showing up and have no idea that the diversion is happening,” Calandriello said.

Dorchester resident and Red Line rider Woody Hayward said he's been frustrated with communication around train arrivals for the better part of the year.

“Sometimes the little signs like gaslight you or they're like, 'the train's going to be here in 10 minutes' and you're like, 'OK, cool,' and then two or three minutes go by and it still says 10 minutes. And you're like, 'now they're just lying,' ” he said.

Hayward and his wife Rebecca said they pad their travel time by 15 minutes or prefer to walk when they need to reach a destination on time. Despite that, Rebecca Hayward said the T is “better than it was at the worst, but it seems like it's slow progress. There's still a lot of issues to work out.”

Eng is making progress on other issues affecting the T, like staffing shortages. The T has reached labor agreements and created incentives that have netted more than 1,000 new hires and promotions.

State lawmakers say they're encouraged by the direction of the T under Eng. The House is considering a budget proposal that would inject $555 million into the T. House speaker Ron Mariano spoke of his confidence in Eng to colleagues earlier this month.

“We have a train man, a man who can walk the tracks and not electrocute himself, so it's a gentleman that we feel is going to make an impact."

For Stephanie Liu in Cambridge, that impact can’t come soon enough. She has a message for Eng.

“Fix the T system," she said. "Like, we live in a city and we pay a lot of taxes and the T system shouldn't be as broken as it is.”