The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), a vital artery for millions in Greater Boston, is undergoing a significant transformation, blending its rich historical legacy with a forward-thinking embrace of innovation. This evolution is significantly propelled by a trio of MIT alumni: Katie Choe, Melissa Dullea, and Karti Subramanian, who are collectively redefining what progress looks like for one of the nation’s oldest transit systems.

The MBTA, responsible for moving hundreds of thousands of people daily through its extensive network of buses, trains, and ferries, operates within a system steeped in history. The Green Line, for instance, still traverses subway tunnels dating back to the late 19th century beneath the Boston Common. Yet, this venerable institution is demonstrating a remarkable openness to new approaches, a shift largely influenced by the strategic insights and drive of these MIT-educated leaders.

Katie Choe, who served as the MBTA’s Chief of Staff from 2023 until her recent appointment as CEO of Virginia Railway Express in January, has been a central figure in this cultural revitalization. In her role, Choe spearheaded efforts to revamp the agency’s organizational culture, describing her position as one of "owning everything and nothing at the same time," focused on identifying and resolving organizational bottlenecks. Her tenure at the MBTA laid crucial groundwork for fostering a more dynamic and results-oriented environment.

Melissa Dullea, the MBTA’s Senior Director of Service Planning, leads the team responsible for the intricate task of planning and scheduling every bus route and the operations of the Red, Orange, Green, and Blue Lines. Her department is instrumental in determining bus route deployment and adapting service patterns to meet the evolving needs of the Greater Boston region.

Karti Subramanian, as the MBTA’s Senior Director of Rider Tools, directs the management of the agency’s digital infrastructure. This includes the MBTA website, real-time digital signage, and the MBTA Go app, which provides riders with critical live information, such as arrival times, vehicle tracking, and service alerts for all transit modes.

Choe views innovation not as a luxury but as a necessity for a system grappling with infrastructure dating back to 1897, while simultaneously needing to meet modern rider expectations within the constraints of public funding. She observed that for years, the agency’s approach was characterized by extensive, often paralyzing, planning that rarely translated into tangible progress, consuming resources in process rather than achievement.

The breakthrough from this cycle, according to Choe, involved a fundamental re-evaluation of project delivery methodologies, contract structures, and a greater reliance on in-house expertise to streamline operations. This has cultivated a more proactive, "can-do" culture focused on delivering results, a critical shift for maintaining service reliability and supporting the region’s economic mobility. Despite ongoing challenges, such as the performance of aging Red Line cars in extreme cold and planned service disruptions for essential repairs, overall service has seen marked improvements. Since spring 2024, significant track repairs, new operational protocols, and the addition of more railcars have led to a steady increase in scheduled weekday trips on the Red, Orange, and Blue Lines. This new mindset, emphasizing accelerated and efficient project delivery and interdepartmental collaboration, is poised to shape the MBTA’s future for years to come.

Choe’s career has been dedicated to public service, a path she attributes in part to the sense of responsibility instilled at MIT. "The big differentiator at MIT is that when you graduate, you graduate with an expectation that you are going to change the world," she remarked. After a substantial period as Chief Engineer and Director of Construction Management at Boston’s Department of Public Works, Choe joined the MBTA in early 2020. In 2023, she launched the Innovation Hub, an initiative designed to highlight and champion internal improvements as part of the agency’s mission to provide optimal service within a public agency’s budgetary limitations. "We need to constantly be thinking about how we can do that better," she stated. "How do we do it more efficiently? How do we actually keep our costs low, find new ways of doing things so that we can provide that service better for all of our riders?"

She further emphasized her commitment to fostering innovation by stating, "When people come to me with an idea, I try really hard to support them with moving it forward. That’s the innovative culture that we’re trying to instill." The Innovation Hub provides a platform for employees to voice challenges and propose solutions, connecting them with the necessary resources and support to transform concepts into actionable projects. It also celebrates employee ingenuity through an annual Innovation Expo, a showcase akin to a science fair, highlighting completed projects across the agency.

The palpable energy at the first Innovation Expo in the summer of 2024, which featured 34 completed projects ranging from maintenance upgrades and process redesigns to data tools that optimized field operations, underscored the initiative’s success. These projects have contributed to faster hiring, enhanced safety protocols, and more agile disruption planning, improving both employee and rider experiences, which Choe views as intrinsically linked. "The better our employees can perform, the more we take care of them, the better the service to our riders is," she asserted.

Subramanian, echoing the sentiment of accessible information, stated, "We should consider it normal and necessary for a transit agency to provide really accurate, really accessible, real-time information to its riders."

Choe also played a key role in enhancing the system’s discount program for low-income passengers, streamlining the eligibility verification process to mere seconds, a model now being emulated by other agencies. Her mentorship efforts have been instrumental in supporting women within the agency, guiding new employee cohorts, and advising early-career staff on navigating complex organizational structures. She actively seeks out individuals willing to take calculated risks, viewing such moments as pivotal for career advancement. Her own experience in leading a team to transform the MBTA in response to a Federal Transit Administration safety inspection, a task she had 24 hours to accept, provided invaluable exposure and accelerated learning, paving the way for her subsequent roles.

Rethinking the Bus Network

At the core of the rider experience lies route planning and scheduling, a complex undertaking as described by Dullea. Her team determines route locations, service frequency, and stop placements, while schedulers translate these plans into operational reality, balancing service dependability with labor agreements, rest regulations, and vehicle availability. Dullea likens service planners to architects and schedulers to builders of the transit system.

Dullea’s journey into transit planning began at MIT, where she was introduced to projects like the Orange Line relocation and the proposed Urban Ring, a bus rapid transit system aimed at improving connectivity across Greater Boston. These experiences ignited her passion, leading her to write her undergraduate thesis on the MBTA assessment formula. "I was like, ‘Wow, you can have a career in transit. This is amazing,’" she recalled. Joining the MBTA as a junior planner after graduation, she now co-leads one of the agency’s most significant initiatives: the Bus Network Redesign (BNR), a component of the broader Better Bus Project.

Dullea emphasized the agency’s commitment to customer experience, stating, "We’re not in an industry where you can move fast and break things. We want to have a focus on improving the customer experience."

The BNR commenced with a fundamental question: How can the bus network best serve current travel needs? Her team utilized anonymized cell-phone data to map travel patterns across all modes, prioritizing communities with higher transit dependency. This involved a sophisticated blend of algorithmic modeling and human judgment, refining millions of potential routes into a practical network designed to align with observed travel demand. "We wanted to make sure that the bus network would be relevant for how people travel now, and not just how we’ve always done things," Dullea explained.

This methodology enabled the agency to proactively address equity concerns throughout the planning process, rather than as an afterthought. The resulting plan nearly doubled the frequency of service on many routes, with buses running every 15 minutes or less, and expanded coverage in key areas like Chelsea, Everett, Malden, and Revere, earning the project an equity award from the Commonwealth.

Although the pandemic-induced driver shortage temporarily halted implementation, the pause allowed Dullea’s team and others within the agency to re-evaluate hiring, training, and job quality. "We’ve been working to build back," Dullea stated, highlighting the importance of a positive work environment for attracting and retaining committed drivers. "We’ve been doing a lot of work on just making the experience of being an operator better."

To address the issue of long, unpaid breaks in operator schedules, Dullea’s team helped redesign schedules, incorporating part-time positions for peak periods, which has effectively halved the average unpaid break time. Dullea credits her MIT education with equipping her to analyze complex systems and pursue her intellectual curiosity, stating, "When I was an undergrad, I just realized I loved cities. And I was like, ‘How can I turn that love for the urban environment into a career and solve real-world problems that can help people?’"

Building a Better Digital Front Door

Before his graduate studies at MIT, Subramanian founded a software company serving nonprofits. His transition to government work, and subsequently to the MBTA, was driven by a profound belief in public service and the government’s capacity for positive impact. "I really wanted to serve the public sector in some way," he expressed.

Subramanian prefers to frame his work not as "innovation" but as delivering essential information that riders rightfully expect from a modern transit system. "We should consider it normal and necessary for a transit agency to provide really accurate, really accessible, real-time information to its riders," he stated. "Doing it might be new and different and require new ways of working."

Achieving this goal within a large agency is a complex endeavor. Subramanian embedded team members within operations groups to develop enhanced dispatching tools, generating data feeds that now underpin the MBTA Go app. Crucially, before its development, the team sought to understand the app’s unique value proposition in a landscape populated by Google Maps and third-party applications. The answer lay in operational insight. "We know more about MBTA operations than Google Maps does," Subramanian explained. "So we can publish insight into what’s happening that a third party like the Transit app that’s designing for 200 cities at a time, or Google Maps that’s designing for 200,000 cities at a time, will never think to show."

Accessibility is a key area where this operational insight proves invaluable. Subramanian, whose son has cerebral palsy, has partnered with the MBTA’s System-Wide Accessibility Department to establish the Accessible Technology Program, integrating riders with disabilities into the design process. His team conducts extensive user research, engaging directly with individuals who use mobility devices, rely on elevators, or have low vision, to identify barriers within the transit system. This hands-on approach provides direct insight into the everyday challenges riders face and how design choices can either create or alleviate them. "For me, this twin personal/professional journey has been probably the most wonderful part of this job," he shared. "An amazing amount of work and leadership has gone into making the MBTA one of the—if not the—most accessible transit systems in the US." This effort builds upon a landmark 2006 ADA settlement that established a dedicated accessibility office within the MBTA. Subramanian attributes his approach to lessons learned at MIT about the public origins of much modern technology, emphasizing the profound leverage of foundational government initiatives, which he believes are currently undervalued.

Improving Within Constraints

Change at the MBTA operates within a highly regulated and risk-averse environment. "Innovation takes some acceptance of failure, and that’s hard in a public environment," Choe noted. "We’re aspirational but not reckless." Most initiatives, from crowding indicators on the Orange Line to wayfinding tools for riders with low vision, undergo rigorous testing in controlled, clearly defined pilot programs.

Dullea echoed the necessity of a balanced approach to planning, stating, "We’re not in an industry where you can move fast and break things. We’re trying not to break things. We want to have a focus on improving the customer experience."

For Subramanian, internal challenges often present the most significant hurdles. His team collaborates closely with operations groups, embedding technologists in bus garages and rail divisions to understand daily operational realities. This partnership has yielded a mobile dispatching tool that has replaced traditional clipboards and simplified radio communication for managing nearly a thousand buses. It has also fostered deep integration across the agency, creating a more connected, data-driven operational framework. "We’re really proud of the extent to which we have built trust within the organization to bring this product way of thinking to a different set of problems," he said.

Advancing the Economic Engine of Greater Boston

Choe views the MBTA not only as a public service but also as a critical enabler of opportunity across the region. "Many of our riders rely on the MBTA to get to their jobs, to get to their health-care appointments, to get to critical areas of their life," she explained. "If we cannot provide those services, then we’ve really shut them off from that economic mobility." This profound sense of responsibility has guided her leadership. "Every single person is impacted on a daily basis by the work that I do," she stated in October. "Every improvement that I make is making someone’s life better, and that knowledge sits very deeply in my heart."

Despite the inherent challenges, Choe remains optimistic about the MBTA’s future, citing strong support from the governor and legislature, which enables bolder initiatives. "So I think our future is really bright," she concluded.

A decade-long partnership with MIT’s Transit Lab has also significantly benefited the MBTA, providing expertise in data analysis and service evaluation. Transit Lab researchers have assisted the T in interpreting CharlieCard data to understand travel patterns and have contributed analytical frameworks for the agency’s Service Delivery Policy. Choe sees further potential in deepening the MBTA’s connection with MIT, particularly through joining the MIT Transit Research Consortium, which facilitates knowledge exchange between transit agencies and MIT researchers. "There’s an opportunity there to figure out how to bridge the gap between amazing research work that’s happening and the on-the-ground applications of that research," she stated.

Currently, the MBTA is investing in electrification and digital infrastructure, while exploring AI-assisted maintenance. Sustaining a culture of openness to change is paramount. The Innovation Hub is evolving into two branches: one focused on supporting employee-driven ideas and another dedicated to exploring emerging technologies like AI and autonomous systems. "People are already interested in this," Choe observed. "So why are we not harnessing that excitement?" Her work has been dedicated to fostering a collaborative and aspirational workplace where new ideas translate into tangible service improvements. "I want to work in an environment and a culture that is collaborative and aspirational all the time," she said. Her colleagues share this vision of a continuously evolving MBTA, rooted in public service and dedicated to delivering a modern system for Greater Boston. "It’s not just that we have a plan on the shelf that says this is what we want to do," she concluded. "It is what are we doing right now to build toward this best-in-class, amazing, modernized, incredible system that serves the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."