By Dan Hausle,Owen Boss
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BOSTON (WHDH) – The Trump Administration is demanding the MBTA make its transportation system safer, saying its policies toward crime on the system are endangering passengers and workers alike.
In a two-page letter to the T, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened to pull federal funding if the agency doesn’t clean up its system, especially South Station, which the administration recently threatened to take over.
Duffy pointing to recent incidents, including a woman who was injured when she was shoved off a bus in Roxbury and bus riders assaulted last month by a man who took off his belt and started swinging int.
Duffy even invoked the recent brutal murder of Iryna Zarutska — a Ukranian refugee on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, saying he’s “not waiting for the next Iryna.”
In a letter to MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng, Duffy wrote, “People traveling on the MBTA system to reach their jobs, education, healthcare, and other critical services need to feel secure and travel in a safe environment free from crime and threatening encounters with drug addicts or the mentally ill, and workers who operate the system need to be assured of a safe operating environment to provide transportation services.”
Eng says he loos forward to showing the feds the progress the T has made, saying in a statement, “Investments in modernization, technology, accessibility, infrastructure, and more are showing real, tangible results as ridership returns to the system”
During a recent sit-down with 7NEWS, Eng addressed the administration’s concerns with South Station, stressing that the station is “super safe.”
“It really is safe,” he said. “I give a lot of credit through our transit police and Amtrak police for really patrolling that well with regard to homelessness. That is a society issue.”
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