With the massive transportation agency merger that will fold the formerly independent and self-financed Massachusetts Turnpike Authority into the state Highway Department set to begin next week, the governor today appointed the five-member board that will oversee the super transportation agency.
The board, which will include a former Turnpike board member, a geotechnical engineer, the head of a Boston transportation and environmental consulting company and two former MBTA board members, will be sworn in and hold its first meeting Monday.
The governor said today he expects the new MassDOT as it is being called, to achieve significant costs savings for taxpayers, while improving customer service and safety across all of the state’s transportation networks.
The board will also be advised by a 20-member advisory council that will be led by Alan MacDonald, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable.
The council’s members will be named Monday.
The MassDOT will be headed up by its new CEO Jeffrey Mullan, who is also set to become the state’s new Secretary of Transportation, replacing outgoing secretary James Aloisi, who is leaving state government after a short tenure in charge of the state’s transportation system and the pending merger.
The governor also today named the heads of the four new divisions.
Luisa Paiewonsky, who has served several years as Highway Department Commissioner will serve as administrator for the new Highway Division, with William Mitchell serving as acting administrator of the Rail and Transit Division. Christopher Willenborg will be the administrator of the aeronautics Division, and RMV Commissioner and former state Rep. Rachel Kaprelian will become the administrator of the Registry division.
The MassDOT board will be chaired by John R. Jenkins of Natick, who has served on the Turnpike board as a director for several years. It will also include Andrew Whittle of Boxboro, the head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Elizabeth Levin of Boston, president of Liz Kevin and Co., a management consulting firm; Ferdinand Alvaro of Marblehead, a former MBTA board member and co-chairman of the National Business Law Group; and Janice Loux of Williamstown, president of Local 26 of the Boston area hotel and food service workers union, who also is a former member of the MBTA board.
“I am proud of my 12 years of service to the MBTA,” she said.
State Transportation officials said as of Nov. 1, the Turnpike Authority and its 4,000 employees will be absorbed by the DOT, which is expected to achieve numerous efficiencies with shared administrative services for all of the agency’s divisions, a new central traffic monitoring operation and other operational efficiencies.
State Secretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez said it took years for the problems facing the state’s transportation system to develop and “they will take some time to fix.” But, he said, the merger and naming of the new boards and administrators marks “a critical first step” that will put the state on its way to what he called “real reform” in the coming weeks and years.