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Healey appoints state transportation safety czar; he'll consider highways but mostly deal with the T
By adamg on Mon, 04/24/2023 - 9:44am
Gov. Healey announced today she's appointed Patrick Lavin, who has 40 years of experience in subway-safety oversight everywhere from New York to Washington, DC, as MassDOT chief safety officer.
Although Lavin will oversee safety on all the state's transportation modes, including highways, his background is on safety on subway systems, such as the T, which is currently under close scrutiny by federal transit officials for safety problems.
We created this position to ensure we had a senior official coordinating efforts across all modes of transportation and driving strategies across the system to improve safety for riders and workers. I’m confident he will work closely with Secretary Fiandaca and General Manager Eng to deliver the service that the people of Massachusetts deserve.
Healey did not say if Lavin will be moving to Massachusetts.
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Comments
State road deaign has killed
State road deaign has killed way more people than transit in this state.
Glad to see the focus on the glaring issues. /s
Care to elaborate
I remember that there was that issue in the O'Neill tunnels that were a fatal risk to motorcyclists were anything to go wrong, but the highways are overall pretty well designed.
oh god.
if the T is safe and reliable, it will take drivers off the road and will lessen any impacts of roadway construction in the future.
without a functioning public transit system, Boston flounders. If the economy of Boston - the economic engine of New England -- stagnates or shrinks, we have no revenue to fix the roads.
its easy to be glib and whine when the state's focus doesn't align with your priorities (looking at you, Western MA), but it is short sighted. this administration's primary goal should be with getting public mass transit fixed, once and for all.
I'm a life-long transit rider
I'm a life-long transit rider, and I want safe subways and buses.
Sure, fix the roads too, but we've had too many years when almost all the money and attention went to cars and trucks, not mass transit of any sort.
Just curious
Will he be commuting in from NY or DC?
/s
0-over 400
No one has died due to the fault of the T since the man who was dragged last year, meanwhile over 400 people died on roadways in MA. Yet here we are creating a position that seems specifically designed to facilitate slowing down the safer mode of travel even further while doing little to nothing about roadways. All we are doing with this safety theater is encouraging more people to take a more dangerous mode of travel, driving. It is incredibly self defeating.
Uhhh
Where on earth did you get that?
Not hard to get the point
Every step taken in the name of safety on the T over the past few years has been to slow it down. And the record has unfortunately been that it's not slow, repair, and return to previous speed. Slow zones seem to be permanent. So yes, safety efforts for the T does indeed seem to mean facilitating slowing down even further. And the safety data is quite clear. 400 automobile related deaths in one year > 0 transit related deaths.
the T is a mess
But the slow zones are not entirely their fault. it is hard to address the problems which slow zones aim to mitigate (in the short term) when the state, particularly under Charlie Baker, has hamstrung the MBTA at every opportunity.
Not really
If I an driving a passenger vehicle anywhere in the Commonwealth the speed limit while paying attention to the road on a dry day, I should not cause any crash. The problem isn't the roads but the people who are driving on them (noting that some of those 400 fatalities could be condition related, but for the sake of argument, let's assume none are.)
Close orders on rail lines are akin to weigh restrictions on vehicular bridges, or speed limits overall. If going over 10 MPH on a section of rail brings with it a chance of a derailment, safety experts will limit the speed to 10 MPH, just like how driving a 2 ton truck over a bridge that can only handle a ton might cause a failure of the bridge. It's also the same reason why you are only allowed to go 25 MPH on offramps, because higher speeds will cause you to leave the road.
At the end of the day, what happens on the road is unrelated to what happens on the rails. If the T went back to the old "safety fourth" mindset, we'd probably see more derailments, and you'd probably be griping about them.
I wish him the best
That said, he is coming from several transit agencies (BART, NYCTA, and especially WMATA) that had a safety track record about as bad as the recent streak that T has been on, so is he the guy who came in after things went off the rails so to speak or was he there when things turned bad then left?
Also, no vote of confidence if the guy isn't at least moving to the state.
We have had good luck with New York people before.
Jean Ratelle and Brad Park never won The Cup, but they kept the Bruins in contention for the second half of the 70's.
I think the new Guv and these
I think the new Guv and these so called czars and other public transit ‘executives’ should be contractually required to reside in Massachusetts. AND take public transit to work every day rather than oinky-escorted limousines and helicopters (hi swifty!). Perhaps if a-holes like baker et al had seen and experienced first hand the results of their own catastrophic failures in (in)action we might actually have a half-way decent transit system here. Does anyone really think Healy (I voted for her) has any real plans to improve the T, or is it all just gonna be bizness as usual? Please don’t answer that.
Magoo sez
Magoo is icky and exhausted of czars and czarinas being appointed. Magoo lives in a democratic republic where czars and czarinas should not exist. Magoo.