I don’t think the GM is necessarily the issue here. The interim guy has been there for 20 years and my recollection is he’s worked his way up to that position. He knows his stuff. I mean sure, they could maybe use some higher level direction but as the article states a lot of their constraints are hiring practices, financial incentives, and increasingly rolling stock.

The whole dispatcher thing for example is a really tough tightrope because right now the MBTA can only do internal hires and would need to renegotiate its agreements with several unions to go external, while FTA would have to make sure the system for taking on external hires still requires some familiarity with the system and ops.

This gets to a real issue. Would you want to work for the MBTA as a bus driver working weekends and early mornings for 5 years just to go full time? Who wants a 14 hour dispatcher shift? Also, lets not forget that working for the MBTA is a perfect career for people into public humiliation given how many “experts” think the solution is to gut the agency.