Two years appear to have made a world of difference for the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities.
At this point in 2022, the DPU was in a harsh spotlight due to its work — or lack thereof — overseeing safety at the MBTA. Federal investigators concluded the DPU had been falling short on its responsibilities as the state agency responsible for transit safety oversight, and top Massachusetts lawmakers were weighing whether the department should even retain that job.
But since then, DPU officials say, T safety oversight has improved to a point where the same federal agency that once offered sharp criticism now finds little to fault.
The Federal Transit Administration this fall completed a triennial audit of the DPU, finding no areas of noncompliance and no corrective action needed, officials said Thursday.
"This has been a very, very big leap in a very short period of time," Transportation Secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt said in response to a presentation from Robert Hanson, who started in January 2023 as the DPU's first-ever rail transit safety director.
DPU officials took a victory lap about their progress Thursday, touting the FTA's audit as a sign of improvement.
"Day in and day out, the team that comprises the Rail Transit Safety Division works tirelessly to make sure safety protocols are in place for the MBTA's operations," Cecile Fraser, one of the DPU's three commissioners, said. "It is reassuring to know the FTA approves of our team and their dedication. Their hard work has not gone unnoticed."
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Federal law requires every public transit system to receive safety oversight from a state-level agency. The DPU has been certified to fulfill that role for the MBTA since 2018.
As part of a sweeping investigation that identified a slew of safety problems at the T, the FTA in 2022 said the DPU had not been "adequately" fulfilling its oversight duties.
The DPU has reshaped its transit safety work since then, adding Hanson and about 20 other full-time employees focused on the MBTA.
Hanson told the MBTA's Board of Directors on Thursday that the DPU has gotten much more involved on the ground since he started, from 608 "field activities" — which include walking along tracks, checking power, auditing Green Line speeds and more — in 2023 to 1,444 through the first 11 months of 2024.
"The backbone of every day, outside of responding to a scene, is the DPU team being out in the field … every single day, overseeing operations and overseeing compliance with the agency safety plan," he said. "We're unique among most of the other states across the country because of the amount of field work that we do."
The shift could affect how lawmakers think about the constellation of oversight.
Top House and Senate Democrats on the Transportation Committee conducted their own review after the FTA's 2022 report. They said in January 2023 that the Legislature should think critically about whether DPU should remain the designated state-level safety oversight agency.
A few months later, the panel gave its formal recommendation to legislation (H 4002) that would reassign safety oversight away from the DPU to a proposed Office of Transit Safety. Rep. William Straus, the panel's outgoing co-chair, said at the time he is concerned the existing structure assigns one division in the executive branch with overseeing another.
That bill has sat idle in the House Ways and Means Committee since July 2023.
