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Innovation Proposals

A Blue Line train passes through Aquarium station

Do you have an idea that could help us innovate at the T?

Whether it would reduce costs, offer a new service, or help us deliver a better experience to our customers, we’re always looking for insights and opportunities from inside and outside our organization. At the T, we believe that innovation is not just about a product—it can also include the improvement of a process. Innovation can be both revolutionary and evolutionary.

If this sounds like you, we encourage you to submit an Innovation Proposal. An Innovation Proposal should champion novel and useful ideas and must be unsolicited (not in response to any current requests for proposals). It must address a specific challenge, leverage existing assets and data, and offer solutions and processes that enhance the T’s service.

What is an Innovation Proposal?

Innovation proposals...

  • Embody creative and practical ideas
  • Identify a problem and provide a solution
  • Have the potential to reduce the MBTA's capital or operating expenses
  • Improve customer experience, flexibility, and/or MBTA’s ability to adapt and evolve
  • Seek to answer the challenges that public transit faces such as financing, climate change, technology, urban sprawl, land use, etc.
  • Are developed and prepared without MBTA supervision or involvement (if an external proposer)

Innovation proposals are NOT...

  • Offers or alternatives to bids that the MBTA currently has open, including Requests for Proposals (RFPs) or Invitations for Bid (IFBs)
  • Ways to bypass MBTA contract procurement procedure
  • Policy or operating procedure recommendations

How It Works

There are two phases to submitting Innovation Proposals: Conceptual Proposals and Detailed Proposals.

Employee Innovators

Road Control Supervisors Dorsey Dugan and Brian Clifford, who helped design Skate, a mobile dispatching app for bus inspectors

Are you an MBTA employee with an innovative idea? We want to hear from you.

Employee Innovators

Road Control Supervisors Dorsey Dugan and Brian Clifford, who helped design Skate, a mobile dispatching app for bus inspectors

Are you an MBTA employee with an innovative idea? We want to hear from you.