Fred Salvucci, one of the state’s most influential transportation officials, traces the decline of the MBTA to the early years of the administration of former governor William Weld.

Salvucci, who served 12 years as secretary of transportation under former governor Michael Dukakis and now teaches at MIT, said support for transit gained momentum after former governor Frank Sargent in the early 1970s brought a halt to new highway construction inside Route 128. Under Dukakis, Salvucci said, transportation officials turned their focus to extending the Red Line to Alewife, expanding the Orange Line, and burying the expressway through downtown, a project that came to be known as the Big Dig.

Throughout the 1980s, according to Salvucci, the MBTA built complicated transit projects and managed the system well. He said the successes were important. “If we had just succeeded in stopping bad things and not succeeded in getting some good things built, the bad things would have just come back,” Salvucci said during a Codcast hosted by Josh Fairchild and Jim Aloisi of TransitMatters.