MBTA's MIT alumni rebuilt planning, rider tools and culture; service climbing (interview)
Three MIT-alumni leaders tell MIT Technology Review how the MBTA retooled its culture, bus network and rider tools; trips are climbing.
What was changed
In a February 2026 MIT Technology Review feature built on interviews, three MIT-alumni leaders describe how they are changing the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Katie Choe, the agency's chief of staff from 2023 to 2025, describes the old instinct as planning endlessly to please everyone, pleasing no one, and watching resources get consumed by process rather than progress. Her mandate traces to 2022, when she was asked to build and lead a team to transform the MBTA in response to findings from a Federal Transit Administration safety management inspection.
Choe launched the Innovation Hub in 2023 to surface employee ideas and connect them with support to turn concepts into projects, and says the agency rethought project delivery, structured contracts differently and leaned on in-house expertise. The first Innovation Expo, in summer 2024, showcased 34 projects. The low-income discount program now verifies eligibility through existing benefit records in about 30 seconds. The magazine reports scheduled weekday trips on the Red, Orange and Blue Lines have climbed steadily since spring 2024, after track repairs, new procedures and more railcars.
Melissa Dullea, who leads service planning, co-leads the Bus Network Redesign. Her team mapped travel by every mode with anonymized cell-phone data, weighted toward transit-reliant communities, then combined algorithmic modeling with judgment to narrow 14 million candidate corridors into a workable network. The plan nearly doubled routes with buses every 15 minutes or less, expanded coverage in Chelsea, Everett, Malden and Revere, and won a Commonwealth equity award. A driver shortage paused implementation; hiring part-timers for single peaks has since halved average unpaid midday breaks.
Senior director of rider tools Karti Subramanian embedded team members with the operations groups, published the resulting data feeds, and built the MBTA Go app to surface operational insight Google Maps never shows. With the System-Wide Accessibility department he runs an Accessible Technology Program that brings riders with disabilities into the design process, building on a landmark 2006 ADA settlement that created a dedicated accessibility office. Aging Red Line cars and planned repair disruptions remain, but the interviewees expect the faster way of working to shape the agency for years.
Why it worked
A 2022 FTA safety inspection put external pressure on the MBTA and gave reformers a mandate to reorganize how projects get delivered.
Choe says endless planning consumed resources without output; delivery, not documents, became the measure of work.
Anonymized cell-phone data let planners design the bus network around how people actually travel now rather than how routes always ran.
Frontline employees see fixes leadership cannot; the Innovation Hub gave them a path from idea to shipped project.
What can be applied
A legacy agency moves faster when it stops planning to please everyone, builds in-house expertise and lets staff ideas ship; culture change and service gains reinforce each other.
Aftermath
Choe left the MBTA in January 2026 to become CEO of Virginia Railway Express. Aging Red Line cars still perform poorly in extreme cold until replacements arrive, and repair-driven service disruptions continue across all subway lines even as scheduled trips rise. The Commonwealth recognized the bus redesign with an equity award, and other agencies have asked to copy the discount-program eligibility system. Service, redesign and schedule figures are as reported in the MIT Technology Review feature and by the interviewees, so treat them as largely self-reported.