Trump Administration demanding MBTA address crime or lose federal funding

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 of late threatened to take over Duffy pointing to contemporary 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 fresh 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 training healthcare and other critical services need to feel secure and passage in a safe setting 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 context to provide transportation services Eng says he loos forward to showing the feds the progress the T has made saying in a message Investments in modernization apparatus accessibility infrastructure and more are showing real tangible results as ridership returns to the system During a contemporary sit-down with NEWS Eng addressed the administration s concerns with South Station stressing that the station is super safe It really is safe he stated 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