The federal government has stopped directly overseeing safety at the MBTA. The Federal Transit Administration closed its final special directive on September 11 and returned oversight to the Department of Public Utilities, ending an extraordinary four-year intervention that began after a rider was dragged to death by a Red Line train in 2022.
Governor Healey’s office announced it Friday. “Today, the T is safer, more reliable, and more affordable for the riders who use it every day,” Healey said. Interim Transportation Secretary and MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng pointed to investment “in our workforce, tracks, vehicles, and infrastructure.”
What ended is unusual enough to be worth explaining, because federal transit law does not ordinarily give Washington a role in the day-to-day safety of a subway system. It gives that job to the state, and it takes a specific kind of failure for the federal government to step in. This piece explains the structure, what the FTA found in 2022, what had to change, and what accountability looks like now that the intervention is over.
How rail transit safety oversight normally works
Subways and light rail are not regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration the way freight and Amtrak are. Congress instead built a system of state oversight in 49 U.S.C. § 5329.
A state with a rail transit system must establish a State Safety Oversight Agency and have its program certified by the FTA in order to receive federal transit money. The statute sets requirements for that agency that are worth reading closely, because they are the ones that failed here. The oversight agency must be “financially and legally independent” from the transit agency it oversees. It may not itself provide public transportation. It may not employ anyone who is also responsible for administering the transit programs it regulates. It must have authority to review, approve, oversee and enforce the transit agency’s safety plan. And the state must determine, in consultation with the Secretary, a staffing level “commensurate with the number, size, and complexity” of the systems it oversees, with personnel qualified through required training.
In Massachusetts that agency is the Department of Public Utilities.
The statute also gives the FTA leverage. If a state’s program is not certified, the Secretary may withhold funds, withhold up to 5 percent of the state’s urbanized area formula money, or require that federal assistance be spent only on safety improvements. And under the federal safety management provision, the FTA can step in and take over direct safety oversight itself.
What happened in 2022
In April 2022 a man was killed when he was dragged by a Red Line train. The FTA opened a Safety Management Inspection, a rare step, and issued a report in August 2022 running about 90 pages.
The findings covered both the transit agency and its regulator. On the MBTA, the FTA found that a focus on long-term capital projects had come at the expense of day-to-day operations and safety, producing too few workers, inadequate training and weak safeguards.
On the DPU, the finding was more fundamental: the state oversight agency was under-resourced and unable to provide the oversight the statute requires. That is a finding that the structure Congress built had stopped functioning in Massachusetts, and it is why the FTA issued directives to both agencies and threatened federal funds.
Those directives drove much of what the T has done since, including eliminating slow zones caused by track defects, hiring, and equipment upgrades.
What had to change at the regulator
This is the part that gets less attention than the trains and matters more for what comes next.
The DPU created a Rail Transit Safety Division. State officials say it now employs investigators, engineers, data analysts and lawyers, and conducts independent inspections of MBTA trains and facilities. That is the staffing level the statute demands and that the FTA found missing in 2022.
Closing the final special directive is the FTA’s determination that the state can now do the job the law assigns it. It is a judgment about the regulator as much as about the railroad.
What this does and does not mean
It does not mean federal oversight has ended. The FTA still certifies the state program, still receives safety data, and retains every tool in § 5329, including the authority to intervene again. What ended is the extraordinary posture of direct federal management through special directives.
It does not mean the system is fixed. It means a federal agency concluded the state agency is capable of supervising it. Those are different findings, and the second one is about capacity rather than outcomes.
And it does not resolve the structural tension the statute is built around. The DPU must be financially and legally independent of the MBTA, but both sit within a state government whose executive branch has a strong institutional interest in the T performing well. Independence on paper is not the same as independence in practice, which is precisely what the 2022 finding was about.
What accountability looks like now
Three things a rider or a legislator can actually use.
The DPU’s Rail Transit Safety Division is a state agency, and its inspection reports and correspondence are public records subject to G.L. c. 66, § 10. The volume and content of those inspections is the measure of whether the new division is doing the work, and it is requestable.
The MBTA’s public transportation agency safety plan is required by § 5329(d) and must be approved by the oversight agency. It is a public document with measurable safety performance targets in it.
And the Legislature retains oversight of both agencies through hearings and appropriations. The division that satisfied the FTA exists because it was funded. It continues to exist on the same terms.
The federal intervention lasted four years and ended because a state agency was rebuilt. Whether it stays rebuilt is now a question for Massachusetts alone, which is how Congress designed it and why it failed the first time.
Common questions
Who oversees MBTA safety now?
The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, through its Rail Transit Safety Division, as the State Safety Oversight Agency required by 49 U.S.C. § 5329. The FTA closed its final special directive on September 11, 2026.
Why did the FTA take over in 2022?
After a rider was dragged to death by a Red Line train, the FTA conducted a Safety Management Inspection and found in August 2022 that the MBTA had sacrificed daily operations and safety for long-term projects, and that the DPU was under-resourced and unable to provide oversight.
Does federal oversight end completely?
No. The FTA still certifies the state program and retains authority under § 5329, including the ability to withhold funds or intervene again. The direct special directives have ended.
What does the law require of a state oversight agency?
That it be financially and legally independent of the transit agency, not provide transit service, not employ anyone administering the programs it regulates, have authority to enforce the safety plan, and be staffed at a level commensurate with the systems it oversees.
Can the public see the safety inspections?
DPU inspection records are state agency records subject to the public records law, G.L. c. 66, § 10, and the MBTA’s agency safety plan is a public document required by federal law.
The September 11, 2026 closure of the final special directive, the announcement from the Governor’s office, and quotations from Governor Healey and Interim Secretary Phillip Eng as reported by WCVB, NBC10 Boston and WHDH, September 18 and 19, 2026. Findings of the August 2022 FTA Safety Management Inspection as reported. 49 U.S.C. § 5329, including the State Safety Oversight Program provisions in subsection (e), read at the Cornell Legal Information Institute and quoted from the statutory text. General information, not legal advice.