Feeling better about taking the T? Thank Phillip Eng for that.

Gov. Maura Healey appointed Eng as General Manager of the MBTA back in the spring of 2023. He came with nearly 40 years of experience in transportation and a track record of improving troubled systems, but how many can say their hopes were high?

T riders have been down this path before: massive problems, scathing reports, promises to improve, new GMs and then back to square one.

Eng hit the ground running, and it shows.

As the Herald reported, the T’s year-long effort to eliminate backlogged maintenance and remove speed restrictions across the subway system has returned millions of minutes of travel time to riders, Eng told the Board of Directors last week.

His plan of closing lengths of track for repairs on a 24-hour schedule instead of doing maintenance at night and running trains throughout the day, as was the norm, has eliminated slow zones.

Slow zones T riders have put up with for decades.

“When we take a look at the work we’ve done to date, and the ridership looking at origin/destination and all the work we’ve done across the system — the team has shared with me — 2.4 million minutes a day being saved to all our riders on a weekday,” Eng said.

“That’s an incredible number that we’re giving back to the public,” he added.

What the T under Eng is giving back is increased assurance that riders won’t be late for work or appointments or have to get out at the next station and call an Uber because there’s no way they’ll get to where they need to be on time.

MBTA Chief Engineer Sam Zhou said the transit service has managed to accomplish about 40 years of outstanding work over 14 months.

Trips across all subway lines are up significantly and wait times for individual trains are down, Zhou said.

Anyone who’s ever waited — and waited — for an above-ground train in a Massachusetts winter knows how significant that is. Or watched the passenger line grow and grow as the wait time stretched, only to see a train finally pull in already packed to the gills because of backups down the line. It could have been due to a slow zone, or something much worse.

Back in 2019, a safety review panel comprised of former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, former acting administrator of the Federal Transit Administration Carolyn Flowers and former New York City Transit President Carmen Bianco tore into the T after that year’s Red Line derailment disaster.

According to a report summary, investigators found  “the T’s approach to safety is questionable, which results in safety culture concerns.”

An 2022 FTA safety management inspection was conducted “in response to the pattern of safety incidents at the MBTA, including safety issues such as derailments, train collisions, grade crossing fatalities, and other incidents involving both MBTA employees and passengers.”

Derailments, collisions, fires and fatalities made headlines with disturbing regularity.

That was then. As of Dec. 8 the MBTA has cleared 89% of the more than 600 safety concerns identified by the FTA, according to their FTA Safety Management Inspection Response dashboard.

Eng has shown Bay Staters what effective and efficient MBTA leadership looks like. He knows taxpaying T riders deserve results, and produced them in record speed.

We may not agree with all of Gov. Healey’s moves, but hiring Phillip Eng was a home run.

Editorial cartoon by Chip Bok (Creators Syndicate)