Boston Herald | By Matt Stout | December 23, 2015

(Boston, MA – 12/22/15) Former Gov. Michael Dukakis talks with the Herald, Tuesday, December 22, 2015. Staff photo by Angela Rowlings.

Michael Dukakis — who as a sweater-clad governor led the state and the MBTA through the historic Blizzard of 1978 — is offering a range of tips to Gov. Charlie Baker on how to cure the ailing transit agency’s woes, from getting strong leadership and unsaddling its debt to even riding the T himself.

“We had a terrible winter this past winter, but no storm was as bad as the storm of ’78. … And that place never shut down in ’78,” Dukakis said yesterday of the T in a wide-ranging interview with Herald reporters and editors.

“I had a great team,” he said. “One of (Baker’s) jobs — and he knows it — is to restore a certain amount of confidence in our ability to do anything. And the collapse of the T 
during the winter was terrible. It’s not going to happen 
overnight.”

Dukakis said basic things helped the local rail lines survive the ’78 blizzard as it dumped 27.1 inches of snow on Boston, including running trains 24 hours a day as the powder fell.

Dukakis, who famously rode the Green Line to the State House while in office, said regularly hopping on a trolley wouldn’t hurt Baker, either.

“There was nothing hokey about it. I’ve been riding the T since I was 5. But it doesn’t hurt to have a chief executive who’s on it,” the Brookline Democrat said. “I learned more about the T and my own administration riding the T than I did in the State House.”

Dukakis recounted one story of being on a train as it broke down. He said he approached the motorman to get an explanation, who complained that the T wasn’t replacing the “pans” on the cars.

“I said, ‘What’s a pan?’ He said it’s a piece of metal that goes under the streetcar and is bolted up there and protects the works from snow and ice,” Dukakis said.

“So I get to the State House and call (then-transportation secretary) Fred Salvucci. And I said, ‘Fred, I have it on good authority that they’re not replacing the pans.’ He said, ‘That couldn’t be. I’ll call you back.’ … He called back and said, ‘The guy’s right.’ ”

Readying the MBTA for another potential winter onslaught has remained at the center of Baker’s plate after the T crumbled amid record-breaking snow earlier this year. He won approval for a Fiscal Management and Control Board to oversee the agency, and the T has poured more than $90 million into winter resiliency efforts, including replacing miles of third rail.

But righting the debt-ridden T will take years of reforms — and Dukakis, who is now actively pushing for the state to pursue an underground rail link between North and South stations, said funding fixes, as of now, shouldn’t start with raising fares.

“There’s a lot of reasons it’s costing so much. One of them is the debt that was loaded on it from the Big Dig. The state has got to assume that,” Dukakis said. “Before you talk about fares, (the debt) is a huge burden which the system should not be carrying. … You gotta show people that you’re seriously turning this thing around.”

The T is paying $109 million a year toward Big Dig debt, according to a report released yesterday by the FMCB. The board itself called the T’s total outstanding debt — it sat at $5.3 billion as of Halloween — an “enormous burden” on the T’s operating budget.

“Which is why sustainable debt management and state assistance to help with Big Dig and legacy debt service should be examined,” the board wrote in its report.