Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker acknowledged in a radio interview Monday that he was "more timid than I should have been" when it came to fixing the troubled MBTA during the early years of his administration.
Baker, who took office in 2015, said during an appearance on GBH News' "Boston Public Radio" program that he could have pushed harder for shutdowns and diversions in lieu of night and weekend work earlier instead of waiting until such extreme action was absolutely necessary.
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"What I would say is that the friction between full service and work on the tracks, we were... I was timid. More timid than I should have been early. We started doing a lot of this work pretty early -- a lot at night and some of it on weekends -- and it was nowhere near as intense as it became the longer I was in office and the more I realized how much needed to get done. But I do believe that a lot of work we did was necessary and appropriate, and we started it early and at one point or another we just realized."
Baker said the turning point for him was when he went and looked at the signal boxes at JFK/UMass Station after a collision there several years ago.
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"That was when we made the big decision to make major diversions," he said. "I think the friction was between how much disruption do you want to cause for riders at the expense of the ability to actually get on the tracks and do stuff."
But Baker also said shutdowns are nothing new, just not on the same scale as the recent month-long closure of the Orange Line. And he expects that to be the case going forward.
"The Orange Line was obviously the biggest and longest of these shutdowns that involve diversions that have been going on," he said. "We've had shutdowns on various lines every single summer since I've been governor. The bottom line is this is the price we pay for not doing this for years and decades. We've done a ton of work, but I'd be the first to admit there's a ton more that needs to be done."
Responding to a question about complaints that the Orange Line is moving too slowly since it reopened, Baker said that will improve once all of the slow zones are lifted, which could happen as soon as this week.
"Several have already been lifted, and there are a couple more in process," he said. "I think based on the conversations we've had with them, by the end of the week all of those slow zones should be running at what we would call appropriate speed."
