The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is modernizing one of the country’s oldest transit systems by pairing cultural change with targeted operational improvements. Chief of staff Katie Choe, who served in the role until early 2025 before becoming CEO of Virginia Railway Express, pushed a shift from process-heavy planning to faster, results-oriented delivery, restructuring contracts and leaning on in-house expertise to build a “can-do” culture. Even as aging Red Line cars and ongoing repair-related shutdowns continue, service is improving overall, and since spring 2024, the number of scheduled weekday trips on the Red, Orange, and Blue Lines has climbed steadily, supported by extensive track work, new operating procedures, and additional railcars.
Choe grounded innovation in public service, launching an internal Innovation Hub in 2023 to surface staff ideas, connect them with resources, and celebrate workforce creativity through an annual Innovation Expo. At the first Expo in the summer of 2024, it showcased 34 completed projects that delivered improvements in maintenance, safety, hiring speed, and operational data tools, often enhancing the employee experience alongside rider benefits. Choe also helped overhaul a low-income discount program by building a system that verifies eligibility through existing public benefit programs, allowing approvals in about 30 seconds, and devoted significant effort to mentoring, including support programs for women and guidance for early-career staff. Her leadership included rapidly standing up a transformation team in response to a Federal Transit Administration safety inspection, a high-pressure assignment she accepted with only 24 hours to decide.
Route planning leader Melissa Dullea is co-leading a Bus Network Redesign that rethinks where buses run and how often, using anonymized cell-phone data across all modes to generate an estimated 14 million computer-generated corridors before planners narrowed them into a network aligned with current travel and equity goals. The final plan nearly doubled the number of routes where buses run every 15 minutes or less and expanded coverage in communities including Chelsea, Everett, Malden, and Revere, earning a statewide equity award. When pandemic-era driver shortages stalled implementation, Dullea’s team used the pause to improve operator working conditions, including schedule redesigns that reduced unpaid mid-day break time by half through the use of part-time shifts. Throughout, she emphasizes that transit cannot “move fast and break things” and must instead prioritize rider experience.
Senior director of rider tools Karti Subramanian is rebuilding the MBTA’s digital “front door” by embedding technologists in operations groups that manage more than 170 bus routes and four subway lines, producing better dispatching tools and data feeds that power both public APIs and the MBTA Go app. Rather than duplicating private apps like Google Maps, his team focuses on unique operational insight the agency alone can provide, including richer real-time information and features designed with riders with disabilities. Partnering with the System-Wide Accessibility Department, Subramanian launched an Accessible Technology Program that brings riders with mobility devices, elevator dependencies, or low vision directly into the design process through interviews and ride-alongs. He credits a long-standing accessibility office created after a 2006 legal settlement and links his approach to lessons from MIT about the public origins of foundational technologies.
Across these efforts, innovation unfolds within a risk-averse, highly regulated public environment, so most new ideas, from crowding indicators to wayfinding tools for riders with low vision, are rolled out as clearly labeled pilots. Internal collaboration is central, with Subramanian’s team replacing analog tools like clipboards and a single-channel radio for managing nearly a thousand buses with mobile dispatching software, while Choe and Dullea emphasize cross-department coordination to sustain reliability. The MBTA is deepening ties with MIT through past work with the Transit Lab and potential membership in the MIT Transit Research Consortium, seeking to translate research on topics like service evaluation and farecard data into practical upgrades. Looking ahead, the agency is investing in electrification, digital infrastructure, and Artificial Intelligence assisted maintenance, splitting the Innovation Hub into one branch for employee-driven ideas and another to test emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and autonomous systems, all in service of building what leaders describe as a collaborative, aspirational culture that can deliver a modern, equitable transit system for Greater Boston.
