WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Kelly Crossley. This is the Cali Crossley Show. Today we're looking at how the MBT A's proposed fare hikes and service cuts could affect our health. Facing a multimillion dollar deficit the MBT has approved fare hikes across the board and service cuts across the commonwealth. The immediate effect is that thousands of commuters will be inconvenienced. The long term consequences could come in the form of a public health predicament. A new health assessment finds that fare hikes and service cuts will force many more people onto the road. And with that comes more traffic more congestion less physical activity. This means obesity rates air pollution and automobile accidents will only go up. From there we talk to one man who says the automobile is getting a bad rap to him. Nothing beats the freedom of cruising the Commonwealth by car. Up next car culture. From public health to personal happiness. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying new accounts of

artillery fire emerging from Hama Syria today in spite of promises to observe a cease fire monitoring developments from Beirut NPR's Kelly McEvers says anti-government activists are reporting more than 30 deaths today the shelling started in the morning in the Hama neighborhood of a buy in. Residents there say security forces then entered the area and shot people in the street. They say in addition to those who have died so far scores more are injured and still more could be trapped under collapsed buildings. The Syrian government had agreed to a UN monitored cease fire to begin 11 days ago. U.N. observers visited Hama just yesterday. The U.N. Security Council has authorized more observers to enter Syria but it's unclear what the consequences would be for the Syrian government should it continue to break the cease fire. Kelly McEvers NPR News Beirut. The White House is attempting to prevent the Syrian government from using technology to crackdown on political dissent. At the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. today

President Obama announced sanctions against foreign individuals and groups that help block social networking sites or jam cell phones to better enable authoritarian regimes. These technologies should be in place to empower citizens not to repress them. And it's one more step. That we can take toward the day that we know will come the end of the Assad regime that has brutalized the Syrian people and allow the Syrian people to chart their own destiny. President Obama's also targeting Iran which the U.S. accuses of providing technological help in the Syrian government's offensive. His comments were part of a broader message to remain vigilant against governments guilty of mass atrocities but his administration is also criticized for not organizing global military intervention in Syria where the U.N. estimates more than 9000 people have died since the uprising began a year ago. The pursuit of human rights around the globe is the centerpiece of a three day summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners this afternoon in Chicago. Nearly a dozen Nobel laureates are

expected to attend including former President Jimmy Carter former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama. NPR's Greg Wyndham reports a theme of the gathering is speak up speak out for freedom and rights. This is the first time the World Summit of Nobel Peace laureates is being held in North America. They'll be touring more than a dozen Chicago public schools today. The city's mayor Rahm Emanuel says the leaders will discuss their crusade for Human Rights and Peace which he says will both inspire students and give them something to aspire to. This evening the Nobel laureates will attend a dinner with former President Bill Clinton. The gathering comes just weeks before Chicago hosts a NATO's summit to be attended by President Obama and other world leaders. Craig Wyndham NPR News. Dow was down more than 1 percent to twelve thousand eight hundred eighty eight. This is NPR News. From the WGBH radio newsroom in Boston I'm Judy you will with these local stories we're following. A South Boston man accused of killing a 67 year old grandmother in her self Boston home was ordered held without bail today after pleading not guilty to murder.

Timothy cascode was arraigned today in South Boston District Court for the stabbing death of Barbara Coyne. Prosecutors allege the 26 year old Casca broke into corns home on April 16th intent on stealing valuable fishing gear. He was charged with corns murder Sunday after being arrested for an unrelated burglary. State lawmakers in the House have begun taking up hundreds of proposed amendments to the thirty two point three billion dollar spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1st. The budget's chief architect House Ways and Means Committee chairman Brian Dempsey told state lawmakers at the outset of today's debate that the plan takes a balanced approach by continuing essential services while maintaining fiscal austerity. Dempsey defended the decision by House leaders to reject Governor Patrick's call for about two hundred sixty million dollars in new revenues including a hike in tobacco taxes. The U.S. Justice Department has settled a firefighter's dispute with the city of Pittsfield in favor of the firefighter. The Justice Department says the city violated Jeffrey Rawson's rights by passing him over for promotion to lieutenant because of

his military duty and then retaliated against him when he filed a complaint. Support for NPR comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. A foundation created to do what Andrew Carnegie called real and permanent good celebrating 100 years of philanthropy in sports the showdown between the Bruins in the Washington Capitals will be at the T.D. Garden on Wednesday. The Bruins force the deciding game in the first round Eastern Conference playoff series by defeating the Capitals yesterday four to three. And we'll have rain ending later today highs in the 60s. Clouds overnight a chance of showers lows in the 50s. Cloudy again tomorrow highs only in the 50s right now it's 63 in Boston. I'm Judy you will. You'll find more news at WGBH news dot org. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley this week WGBH is kicking off a week long coverage focusing on the end BTA this hour we're looking at how the proposed service cuts and fare hikes could affect our health.

I'm joined by Eric Barrasso director of transportation planning for the metropolitan area Planning Council and Mariana Archaia manager of public health at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. She's also a doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health the metropolitan area Planning Council recently released a health impact assessment based on the proposed MBT a fare hikes and service cuts. Thank you both for joining us. It's great to be here. Mario let me start with you. What did your assessment determine. Well our assessment looked at the ways in which the fare hikes and the service cuts would impact two groups of people. First we looked at the ways in which these these changes would impact all of us regardless of whether or not people drive take the t walk. However they happen to get around so we looked at things like air pollution air quality. We looked at things like noise we looked at carbon emissions. And we looked at the risk of automobile crashes and those are those are things that will affect

us regionally if the BTA cuts fares I mean cuts service or raises fares. And what we found is that there are a number of impacts around congestion related costs every everyone on the roads going slower spending more time in traffic. Air pollution will get worse with related health impacts. We expect the number of car crashes to go up and fatalities associated with that. And then there's another set of impacts we looked at the ways in which people who are currently taking the T but under the proposed scenarios would would switch to driving. That's a that's a special set of impacts that we looked at the loss of regular physical activity that that group of 30 to 40 thousand people would incur. And we looked at the loss of access to health care so we really looked at seven broad areas and found that the costs of cutting service and raising fares would cost the region a whole lot more than we'd save in terms of the actual deficit.

So that's the bottom line that the actual health costs that. Could come from as a result of having these other impacts would end up being more expensive then the savings of cutting back on services and cutting raising fare hikes. Exactly right on the order of you know almost twice as much. So we'd be losing almost twice as much as we would like to quote unquote gain by by making those cuts. All right we're going to delve into the specificity around each of those areas that you looked at in the health assessment but I want to ask you why does your group even do the assessment I mean why does the end BTA requested. Well actually the T didn't request this we wanted to do this work. You know the metropolitan area Planning Council we work with 101 cities and towns in Greater Boston around different planning issues and transportation planning is a big part of that. And increasingly within the field of transportation planning there is a recognition that the kind of infrastructure we build whether it be roads or bike lanes or sidewalks has an impact

on public health. And so more and more we are incorporating health impact assessments into our work to try to understand what are the implications of transportation projects and policies and we're not just talking about the pollution it's emitted from tailpipes but like Marianna is talked about. Physical activity so if we build sidewalks on where there currently aren't any what does that mean in terms of getting people out in and being more active. So when the TSA announced in January that the two scenarios we decided to play to to work off of the initial analysis that they did and really hone in on what are the public health implications and impacts of the two fare increase. Of the two proposals to raise fares and cut service. Now you look at the two scenarios that the T at that time had proposed which were one would have been a 43 percent increase in fares and service reductions would affect between 34 and 48 million trips a year and under the second one it would have been 35 percent fare increase and service

reductions would effect between 53 and 64 million trips each year. They in fact went to a third scenario. Right. Which ended up with 23 percent fare service cuts and 5 percent. Ridership and cut in the ridership. So what does that mean and in light of what you have assessed on the first two scenarios are you able to extrapolate what you gathered from the first two and determine what this will mean. Well we didn't do a full health impact an assessment for the third scenario that the team has put out. And I think the interesting thing you know certainly it's better because it has fewer cuts and the fare increase is not as high and there is a direct relationship between the cost the fare increase and the amount of people who end up switching from taking the teeth to driving instead. But the scenario three that the T has proposed is really dependent on the legislature taking action. There's about 50 million

dollars of Registry of Motor Vehicle fees that are on use that they're proposing to take and use and give that to the T just for one year to plug help plug this deficit so if the legislature doesn't take action then we're really going to fall back on to the scenario one or two which we really think is would have drastic impacts. That's my guess Eric Barrasso He's director of transportation planning for the metropolitan area Planning Council. And we should say that that's not a guarantee of the way that the legislature is going to sign off on this. And even if the legislature does sign off on it it's a one year scenario. That's right. So we really in essence have to deal with the other more significant cuts that you have you have costed out and looked at in a more thorough way. Yeah yeah absolutely. I mean we you know we're called we're really calling on the legislature to take action on this but you know there's a lot of pushback from I think you know folks around the state who are saying hey these are you know registry fees that are there

not just from the Boston region but are coming from other places too. So you know part of this is trying to tell the story of the benefit that the tea brings not just in terms of moving people around but also from a public health perspective from an economic perspective. But we really wanted to focus on public health because that's such an important area right now. Well how has when you first came out with your report what kind of response did you get first of all from those who might be voting on one way or the other. Did you hear anything from legislators. Well we've had. Positive feedback from the report because I think this is not an angle that necessarily comes out right away when people think about transportation is not that it comes out at all. Yeah yeah yeah. So I think people said oh this is really interesting and really that was that's what we've tried to do. We want to bring another perspective through which to view the tea and really tell the story of how the tea makes our region healthy. And I think that it's information that policy makers are going to use as they as they weigh you know these decisions so from that you know

from that standpoint people have been very supportive of this. But you know from the from the teas perspective their hands are tied so they can't really do that much. It's really up to the legislature at this point. And I'm hoping you know that they will they'll be able to act on this. Mary on it let's go and march through a couple of the factors that you identified that are. We'll have whatever happens here scenario one two or three goes into place. It's going to have an impact. So the first is obesity which I have to say you know right off the bat that's not something you think about you think as Eric just said about the bottom line cost. You know do a can I afford to take the TV but I don't think a lot of people are thinking about obesity tied with less service right. Well you know just to step back a second I think the main thing to understand about why this is potentially a surprise for some people is that

we when when the T. You know the fare goes up or the service gets cut. The fundamental driver of the health impact is that there's going to be a shift and a some group of people some number of people who currently take the TV are going to either for access or price reasons they're going to switch from being to riders to drivers and. Master actually commissioned an impact study that looked at how many additional miles would be driven in the region how many hours would it take for drivers to cover that mileage. What would the tailpipe emissions be and what percentage of the ridership would be lost and so when mast came out with that impact report that provided a basis for us to then go out and say what does this mean for health can we translate this into health outcomes and for the for the obesity findings. You know that was really calculated based on the number of people massed projected would be going from what we consider an active mode of transportation which is taking the T to a sedentary mode which is driving.

And how is the TV active just to be clear. Right of course. So when when you take the TV there is physical activity woven into your daily life you have to leave your house and you walk or you buy generally. Some people are dropped off. But you know. Many people are taking active modes of transportation to the bus stop or the earth at the T-stop. If you change modes you have to walk up to your platform you have to switch lines and then on the other end of the trip you walk from your stop to your final destination maybe your office and then you repeat this process in the afternoon and people who are dependent on the TV are doing this in the cold in the hot in the snow in the rain. It is regular physical activity in the sense that we don't have to go put on a special outfit we don't have to take time away from our jobs or our families. It's just something that you do and so it's an amazingly reliable source of physical activity. That people don't even think of as exercise and so some you know in terms of feedback on the report we have gotten questions saying well if

people were to switch from the TV to driving wouldn't they just make up this exercise and you know one answer to that is they don't. We don't think of this as exercise we just think of it as our commute. And so it would be a it would be a difficult task to say make up something you don't even realize you're losing and then and then the second side of it is that. We know from behavioral studies that about 50 percent of people who start a planned exercise regimen will quit that within six months and so is much as we might like for people to carve that special time out and do their exercise. We know that people don't follow through with that in the long term. And what works is just having regular physical activity woven into your daily life in a way that it's it's not an option you don't think about it you don't say should I do this today you just do it. And I would actually expand you know obesity is one of the outcomes that we looked at as related to this physical activity loss. But I think it is a it's a really important point to say that this is about the loss of physical activity which has a whole host of health impacts. Aside from obesity

you know regular physical activity it's protective against falls it increases strength and flexibility in seniors it helps control blood pressure it helps control blood sugar it improves your bone health it improves improves your heart health in addition to helping with weight loss. And there's a whole host of health conditions that are either controlled or prevented through small doses of regular physical activity that are occurring and you don't even see a weight loss you don't see a change in your body but you're doing something good for yourself. Right well there are some other factors to also be examined and we're going to do that in just a minute. We're talking about the MBT in the public health problems that could be created by the proposed fare hikes and service cuts. Even though it's less than what was once thought it might be. I'm speaking with Eric Barrasso and Mariana Archaia and they're with the metropolitan area Planning Council which recently released a health impact assessment based on the proposed fair and service changes. You're listening to the Calla Crossley Show one eighty

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few minutes and a dollar a day. As a member of the WGBH leadership circle the world is getting smaller. See how far a dollar can take you. Visit WGBH dot org slash leadership. When you're curious about technology. Knowing what miniaturization means. I saw that we were all going to be wearing the wind explore a world of ideas at the WGBH forum network WGBH dot org slash forum. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in we're talking about the M BTA focusing on how the proposed fare hikes and service cuts could affect our health from obesity to air pollution. I'm joined by Eric Brewer us a director of transportation planning for the metropolitan area Planning Council and Mariana Archaia manager of public health at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. She's also a doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Mariana before the break we were saying that there's a loss of obesity is on the on the chart is one of the increased risk but it's really a loss of physical activity. Exam are mirrored in day to day walking to and from the T up and down those steps. I know there from going up and down the steps I go at least I use it at least once a week. And those steps will really get you. And I can tell you. So the next thing is the increased congestion and air pollution so you if you're so used at a number people will just go to their cars. Right now we know that there are some number of people who can't afford they don't have a car they can't that will be happening but for others who have an option that's exactly what they're going to do. Right. And the result is going to be this congestion and then air pollution. Exactly and so and one point difference a point out here but between the group of people who would be impacted by the loss of physical activity and the people who would be impacted by the increased congestion in air quality is that that group of people who are going to me losing a

regular source of physical activity as on the order of 30 to 40000. But everyone in the region will be impacted by the slower rate of travel the congestion and the air quality impacts and so. We looked at how much slower the average car would go. Once these additional drivers that shifted from the T to cars would be added to the road and what we found is that a very small reduction in speed on the order of point 2 miles per hour was expected for all cars and that when you apply this sort of congestion penalty to everybody who's travelling every day you know we're looking at hundreds of millions of dollars of costs in terms of extra time spent in cars and in terms of fuel burned. And so you know we looked at we looked at that congestion cost and then we also looked at air pollution. So what we did is we said if we know this many additional miles will be traveled by cars and we can estimate what the tailpipe emissions are. We said given what we know about the climate the wind the topography What is that going to

translate into in terms of concentrations of these pollutants in the air. And then what are the resulting health impacts from those air quality impacts. And you know we found that. We would be having about it's a hard hard metric to understand but that point two additional deaths per year under one of the scenarios so you know over the course of a decade two deaths under the less severe under the less severe proposed cuts and then point to six additional deaths a year under the Morris. And this is because a car accident this is because of air pollution pollution OK under our accidents we looked at that also and we found about an additional expected death every year from car crashes alone. But we also have increases in hospitalizations due to cardiovascular events and so air pollution is not just about asthma and respiratory impacts as we usually think well you breathe it in and you know it's to make sense that it would cause trouble with your lungs. But the small particles that are in tailpipe emissions once they get into your

body they are also can increase the risk of cardiovascular events so heart attacks and stroke inflammation in the in the blood system. So Eric you know if you start talking about car pollution and congestion what comes to mind is Los Angeles where you have a scenario that you know literally that has to be part of the news every day to alert people who are at highest risk that they just cannot go outside. But here we're not talking about that yet but you know what we have in mind is as you hear this could you see how fast it can increase is how long will it take us to go from A. And we're not at zero but you know what I mean to to where Los Angeles is if I'm going to posit it at 100 It can happen pretty quickly. Well I think that you know one thing we need to recognize is that our region in terms of the amount of people who take transit and we're one of the best regions in the in the country. And that's primarily because we have such a robust public transit system here. But certainly we need to be aware

of the air quality impacts of transportation and as we plan new transportation projects and you know new roadway expansions we need to be thinking about that and we do that it's an important part of our transportation planning process. I think that. A really important thing that we've tried to do with this report is make the point that the T benefits everybody even if you don't use it benefiting you when more people take the TV that means there are less cars on the road and that's good because you're not stuck in traffic if you're a motorist. And that's good because the air quality is improved and that's good because there's more people using you know taking physical activity and you know in the grand scheme of things that's going to mean our health care costs are all down and that's kind of the picture that we've tried to paint with this report is that that taking the T and having a robust public transit system is good for everyone in the region. Now how do you make that case though to the folks beyond the obvious Yeah beyond the tea service area who I mean it's no secret number of people have said

these are the people holding the cards on whether or not this one year budget thing is going to happen or not because they're looking at their constituents that we don't write it. Maybe we use a computer commuter rail every now and then there are some service cuts to that and some increase fares that are going to happen as a result of that but hey not affecting us not our problem. So. You know make the case to them. You've said it affects everybody from both of you have said. But you know it's hard from somebody sitting way out in space field how does it run what is the benefit for me. You know I mean I think that's when it becomes more challenging. And I think when you go out there and talk to folks and they they say geez you know I'm already paying you know a piece of the sales tax that goes to the T and that doesn't benefit me here and you know Western Massachusetts you know we do try to talk about well the economy of Boston and you know helps the whole state as a whole but that's still I think a difficult argument for some people you know out there. But I think that you know when we look at you know the benefits of

you know the benefits of the tea it really is. But but. It is a statewide benefit. And if I may what Mary Marion has been talking about is that you know how asthma is not just asthma but its all these other things if theres going to Justin and air pollution. But what you have done is quantify what service reduction and fare hikes mean. So in other words there is a bottom line to the risk if you add up how many more deaths and I have to say. Marion So you say you know two deaths six deaths to some people listening meseems like Oh not really okay. I don't want to be those two or six but thats not a huge number were you talking about in the aggregate amount added to the other risk that you name. There is actually a number attached to it which you did attach to the two scenarios that the t had put out at first so that there is a number it costs a lot of money to incur these higher risks. So if you could speak to that thats something I think is important.

I think what's interesting is that our single highest financial cost was this. Cost to people who already drive their cars. That's associated with going slower simply because of congestion and so we assess this number we said we're not even going to look at the additional hours that the people who are now taking the T will spend potentially next year in their car we're just going to look at those veteran commuters the people who have been going about their daily lives driving to work every day. And what's the impact to those people. And you know we found that where that that cost alone is you know hundred thirty seven million dollars under one of the scenarios one hundred eighty five million dollars under the more severe scenario. And this is this is a rate for you know trucks were paying people 92 dollars an hour. The cost of that truck driver the cost of the for the passenger vehicle for people to just sit in traffic and so. That was that was almost a surprise for us because we thought these are costs that are not. These are

costs that are not impacting TV writers These are costs that are impacting drivers and they're not just impacting drivers around the city of Boston. This is a regional This is a regional impact and so our executive director I mean he likes to say that even if when you're in your car what's getting you to work on time is that he was getting you to work on time and quickly is the team. So I think we need to start thinking of it that way and we need to start thinking about the t as not just about it moving people around but it's an economic resource as a health resource. And you know honestly it's an equity issue as well. We looked at people who would be essentially cut off from the health care system if the proposed service cuts went into effect and that we found we're talking about hundreds if not thousands of households who don't have cars that would be isolated from basic medical services that would they would need to rent a car or take a taxi or skip or do without. Yes.

Right and you know with with that was one of the only aspects of her report that looked at equity and sort of who's disproportionately affected because so many of the impacts we found. Really were you know statewide region wide kind of hurting all of us just a little bit but there but there also are also groups of people that are disproportionately affected and in terms of the access to the health care system I think one of the big concerns we have is that you know in a medical emergency you can call an ambulance and somebody will come take you to the hospital but when we're talking about health care costs and Prevention in bringing down costs and increasing it improving outcomes for everybody to make those preventative visits primary care visits maintenance visits harder or less convenient more expensive to get to that's the wrong direction. And so we need to be thinking both about the sort of state wide regional impact we also need to be thinking about which groups of people are being impacted here more so than others. You're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH an online at WGBH dot org. I'm Kelly Crossley. We're looking at how the proposed service cuts and fare hikes could

affect our health. I'm joined by Eric Bourassa director of transportation planning for the metropolitan area Planning Council and Maryann Archaia manager of public health at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. Now Eric you mentioned before that this is these kinds of studies you've done for other cities or have been done for other cities. Is there any place where after having done the study somebody heard it could make some decisions. And implemented something based on what you were able to prove from a bottom line way was going to be harmful. Are you talking specifically about health impact. Yes and it says in terms of how that's being applied to a transportation plan and yes. Yeah I mean there's there's a number of examples you know from around the country but even more particularly here in Massachusetts. This is a you know like I said this is sort of a growing field. And the state actually has made more of an emphasis to try to incorporate this in a couple years ago they created what's called the Healthy transportation

compact and it's actually the combination of the secretary of transportation Health and Human Services and energy and the environment get together and they've created a series of really goals to try to look at health from the trip from the transportation perspective. One area where this is being done right now is looking at the D elevation of the McGrath Highway Route 28 is from goes through Somerville and into Boston. And there's a study being done to look at actually turning that more into an urban Boulevard than a lane you know that separated highway and what does that mean for health if we have more walking and there's more biking in that corridor than than just car travel. That's one area another area where we've really looked at health is through. A number of the improvements to the to the bridges over the Charles River so the Longfellow Bridge when that was originally designed redesigned it's getting a 200 million dollar improvement but when it was originally designed to be improved a couple of years ago

it basically was the same bridge it is just the same lanes and there was a big movement to say hey let's really look really look at this in terms of trying to get more people using that bridge than just just motorists. And now the design is actually to reduce a lane on the outbound from Boston into Cambridge so that we can make the sidewalk wider and we can add a much wider bike lane and the same sort of being done in the on the other side of the two lanes are being kept there. But those are some of the things that are being woven into transportation planning and actually you know making decisions a lot of times it comes down to tradeoffs. Do we take parking to add bike lane or make a sidewalk wider. And those become very controversial very local issues but. We're more and more we're looking at it through the perspective of Public Health. Obviously it's you know Pedestrian Safety and Motor safety is a big part of this but what does that mean for encouraging people to get out and just walk more. I mean Marianna and the work that that she's done

and research you know is amazing to see to just the average person walks a little every day. I mean it's something like less than 10 minutes a day. The average American walks. And so if we're going to create the environment that's going to encourage more of that we're going to see benefits from the from from healthy activity. So when you talk about tradeoffs I'm thinking it's good in a city to you know take some parking and have some bike lanes all that's good. But when you have an economic situation where there are cutbacks everywhere and then now people are a certain group of people will be clear not everybody is going to be able to afford to go to their car. But there are people that just have to get some places and they just cannot be accommodated in a timely fashion by the T. If the if the cutbacks go into place people probably more impacted by these service cutbacks as opposed to the fare increase. And so they go they go to their cars and now they can't park anywhere. I mean I'm serious. We do this is this is we got to think about this. When people were thinking about taking away parking for cyclists it was more during a

better economic time and now we're squeezed on all even. How do you see what I'm talking about Oh absolutely and you know certainly when we do planning you know in the in the city in Boston or Cambridge in a dense area I mean that's where you if you literally don't have the space you have to you know you have to make tradeoffs and you have to and you have to be smart about it and recognize where is their parking. You know we as a planning agency when we look at development projects were big proponents of structured parking and and and and shared parking so that you know it might be a parking lot that you know people who live in the area use but then during the day they might be gone and then shoppers in that area can use the parking lot like a bank parking lot at night. Exactly yeah yeah. So we're just being smart about how we use that but you're actually right I mean it is it's about tradeoffs and we have to be cognizant of what's the you know what's the best use of that space but I would argue that in many of our communities we've got a lot of on street parking and I'm not in and I'm not just talking about you know South

Boston where where you know people kill you over their parking spot but I'm I'm talking about some of the communities you know just outside the city in Arlington and Belmont and you know even in areas like need ECC where you know people want to cycle more they want to connect to transit in. People aren't just. T riders or motorists they're both. And you know the thing that's going to make more people take transit is improving a lot of those connections and bike lanes and more sidewalks and improve sidewalks in a way that's going to facilitate that. Do Marianna do you think that we're at a point now where health considerations where the risks that you've outlined here will either rise or be equal to being looked at at the same time. We talk about other bottom line considerations right. Well I'm hopeful that they you know will be elevated and prioritized among policymakers and you know when you asked about the reaction that we've gotten to this report we were really lucky

to have Jason Lewis sponsor a State House briefing to release this report. You know we have the legislature talking about public health a lot now with the public health prevention caucus. You know as we're talking about payment reform these issues are are are coming up and there are a lot of groups called sort of nontraditional allies working together to say we know you're talking about transportation I'm talking about public health you're talking about local economic development. Oh my goodness we're talking about the same thing. You know we're talking about communities that. And courage you know choices in terms of how people get around. If you want to walk by take the T drive that you know people people have options that support you know livability and sustainability and so there's a lot from a lot of different angles. There are different factions from physicians to planners to student groups who are saying we kind of are all looking for the same outcomes and so I think the public health community is really learning how to work with transportation

planners. You know we went to mass DOT hearing to sort of brief people we came out with this report we came out with this health impact assessment and Eric and I had signed up to give a few words. And before we even got to us on the list three different groups had gotten up and said This report was released yesterday showing that there are going to be health impacts if you cut the tea. So it really shocked me at least how quickly the findings got out there and the number of different types of groups that have taken the report and tried to use it for for advocacy purposes everything from health care workers to health justice groups. So it's been it's been really interesting for us and I do think the more that we can work across disciplines and say you know this isn't really about transportation and it isn't just about economy it isn't just about cycling or you know pedestrian activist groups this is about overall well-being and livable communities I mean the more I think health concerns will be elevated. Eric will you all do another report once the final numbers are in

place. Well that's something to consider I think if whatever they find they finally adopt I think we will try to analyze it and really say OK is this you know is this better or is this worse than what was you know originally proposed. We can we can understand. All right. I don't think this is the last word on this subject. Thank you both very much. I'm Kelli Crossley we've been talking about the in BTA and how the proposed service hikes and fare cuts could affect our health. I've been speaking with Eric Barrasso and Mariana Archaia. Eric Barrasso is the director of transportation planning for the metropolitan area Planning Council. Mariana Archaia is manager of public health at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council as well. She's also a doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Public Health. Coming up we continue the conversation with Colum Kingsbury. For all the good things that public transportation has to offer he can't help but sing the praises of cruising the Commonwealth by car. You're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH Boston Public Radio. The.

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Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show. We're continuing our conversation about the BTA and what the proposed fare hikes and service cuts could mean for the Commonwealth. I'm joined by Collin Kingsbury. He's a writer and entrepreneur. His recent piece for a Boston Magazine in defense of cars is called Hell yeah I love my car. Cullen Kingsbury thank you for joining us. Thanks Kelly great to be here. We have just heard about the health impacts of a loss of service and fare hikes and what was make clear is that there's a group of people and Europe would be in that group who are really not that impacted in such that you just stop riding the T because you know you can afford it you could afford it if you wanted to but you could make a choice and you did and your choice is to drive your car and you feel very strongly about it. Yes. I want to give people just a little taste of your attitude. In your essay. Hell yeah I love my

car. And here it is. This past January you're right. After three years of going without wheels I was downright giddy to go to a dealer and buy myself a car because here's the secret. The empty auto mafia doesn't want you to know. The only thing better than living without a car in Boston. America's third most walkable city is living here with one. Now why is that. Well I think a lot of people talk about with best transit is dealing with issues around rush hour. And I think as I said in my article that driving to work kind of stinks. And in a dense city like Boston that's not great but once rush hour is over driving around here is wonderful you can get from one side of the city to the other very frequently and 10 minutes all that capacity that's packed during the day is half empty. After 6:30 7:00 at night and it's easy to cover large distances. Having a car opens up a lot of areas of the city

that are not easy to get to by transit. We could make an argument about wouldn't be great to have a transit system that can get you really anywhere they can get you from East Boston to Jamaica Plain in 20 minutes but that's a system we can barely afford the system that we have and that kind of a system is nowhere in sight. So to me in Rich's living in the city and it makes a lot of experiences possible that are just a lot more difficult without it. Now we should be clear that you rode the t for a long time and had a pretty good experience right. Yeah I rode this morning in fact. OK so right now you're doing a kind of a combo thing to riding and driving right. OK so now when you hear the kind of health statistics and many more people are going to be on the road and they are as a result of these fare hikes and service cuts those who can afford to do so many won't be quite as pleasant as you are having as your experience is now even in the off hours they worry about that.

A little I think it's. In general if you look at the I mean but the kind of trends your previous guests were talking about. Point two miles per hour slower that kind of thing. It's it doesn't seem like it's going to change that dramatically. So what inspired you to write the piece there must be many other people like yourself. In fact you note in your piece that 65 percent of Bostonians own cars so why do you feel you needed to put your hub in the ground so to speak. Well it was really driven by personal experience because I think there's been this huge kind of mood lately that getting out of your car is a wonderful thing and going Carlists is great and living without a car is even better than living with one and I was someone who had lived both sides of the experience and for when I had started my company years ago I went on the entrepreneurial Living Plan which is reduce your expenses to nothing. And so I was I lived without a car in the city for three years and the time of living came here to go to college and over that time I've spent some time with a car some time

without it and kind of getting back into it it was like wow this is great. Like all of this talk about it's wonderful getting rid of it I was looking at another side of it. And with the concerns now with you know all the stuff that's going on with the fare hikes and the service cuts are are you hearing from people and did you get response to your piece from people saying yeah that's going to be me back in the car again a little bit within my circle. It's mostly people who live well within Route 128 anyway and if they work in the city they tend to live in the city and if they live in the suburbs they tend to work in the suburbs so I'm not seeing personally a lot of changes in transit choices there. But there is some of that. Are you concerned overall about the kind of health risk that I guess we're speaking about in the earlier in the show not so you say the congestion doesn't bother you because you're not going to be in rush hour. But overall I mean whether or not as they point out we ride the T or not if we're in a car where we're adding to the kind of pollution the kind of other

stuff that's out there that doesn't make for a good health an area for us. I think everyone is concerned about those kind of things and I think we're all reading the same statistics about obesity and about health and and all of these issues so I think everybody whether they're riding the T or driving their car is probably thinking about this to some degree. I. And that's where I think one of the issues is that there's the sort of either or that either we're pro car or we're pro mass transit and I think there's room for both. And I would agree with your previous guests who are saying that a good system reduces the number of cars on the road which means for those of us that need to drive it makes it a better experience and it reduces those kind of things. So I'm I'm not I think sometimes that my position comes across as well I'm opposed to these other things but but I'm not I just think that people who talk down cars sometimes fail to appreciate what they really do break and where they are kind of wonderful. Well I have to say you get a fair amount of pushback from the cyclists and the cyclists particularly but the

walkers in town saying you were just out of it and don't get it. And it's pretty strong. Some of that pushback. Well that tells me that I'm doing my job right I guess. That's how you took it. But it's there. There is a degree of enmity sometimes about this that I think is special and what I found is that I've had a lot of people come to me privately and basically say well I didn't really want to say this publicly but I really agree with everything you said and you know and I do have this and I feel like there's sort of the cyclists are one of those groups that they are extremely vociferous about their side of things. And. And sometimes I think disproportionately to what they represent in terms of their actual size as an example as I have a friend who's an architect who was working on a project I think over in Jamaica Plain and he they were when they were having the community meetings about the plan. A lot of people were asking about well why do you have one

parking space per per unit like why do you have so many parking spaces in the building. And he said well if we don't have at least one space it's not marketable. Then he went on to say here's how much bicycle room make here is how much bicycle parking we're going to have we're designing the stairwells so you can carry a bike through them. But there was still this enormous opposition that it's like well if we don't eliminate these cars then we're never going to get anywhere. We can't allow them to even get in in the first place so even someone who chooses to live in a place like JP where they're going to probably drive that car you know far far less than someone who lives in I don't know Andover even that wasn't kind of good enough that we need to sort of draw this hard line. But tell me describe your scenario without a car getting around your daily scenario and now even though you're not use the car every day what is it like to know that you have it. It's I would say it's about possibility because it's knowing that. Whatever

you want to do you can kind of hop in and go there and obviously look it's not like always perfect sometimes you're going to get on 93 and there's traffic on it and sometimes you get on the T and the train is stopped in the tunnel for 15 minutes a that's life. But the what it is is that there's nothing is really closed off anymore and what used to happen was since I had said this that I have friends who live in South Boston and around Inman Square and Union Square and to get there from my house by train would on a good day take an hour hour and 15 minutes and time with the car on the weekends in the evenings it often takes 20 22 minutes to make that same trip. So I see them a lot more often. When I used zip car for a long time there's a lot of great things to say about I think it's a very well done service in a lot of ways. One of the strange things that it does though because it's priced by the hour. What I noticed myself doing was starting to measure

friendship in terms of the hourly cost of it because it would be like well if I go to dinner it's going to cost me $30 if I rent the car for two hours it's three it's another 50. And so I think well geez I want to spend $45 to go have dinner with so-and-so. If they live in Wellesley too bad right. It was if you started you know people things started so that's why I said New York was that it's like my world started to get smaller. And there's even a thing with this with local merchants and that I would think about do I drive to a store to go look at something and spend 20 30 40 50 dollars on my car rental. Or do I buy it from Amazon and pay $8 for shipping. And so if you're thinking about how do we make local retail and how do we make these local things more vibrant. For me my own experience was that having a car made me more open to a lot of these merchants. Well what about tea culture versus car culture. Yeah any comment about that.

Well if you're talking about like bacteriological culture it was there. But I would suggest that if there is there's things to be said for both I and I say this that like I love having access to the subway system there. There is a vibrance to me a city that doesn't have a large transit system isn't a real city. At the same time I think car culture is a distinctly American and has an element that's distinctly American and I think it gets back to that sense of possibility of freedom of ownership I think the experience of owning a car is different from the experience of renting one. It forces you to deal with lots of things you have to deal with mechanics and you have to deal with insurance companies there's a sense of ownership about and there's responsibility that comes with that I wonder about kids in college and in their 20s who don't own a car until they're you know they get married and you want to move the kid

around it sort of like you're not experiencing this very formative thing. So I don't think of it as better or worse I just think of it as different. Make the case for because you are a supporter of the tea even though you like your car. For those legislators way out past tea service who say I'm not voting for this is doesn't involve me it doesn't have meaning beyond I mean your person has experience both. You're driving but you're still writing that. What would you say. I think it's it's the argument about funding anything in you know inside 495 inside 128 I haven't looked at the exact sort of tax flows throughout the state but we're sort of all agreeing to be part of this thing called Massachusetts and if Massachusetts is anything it's this aggregation of all these parts and what works for transit in Boston and in the surrounding area is different from what works in the Birchers. And if we're all agreeing to be part of

this one thing then we all have to kind of support each other a little bit. I think if you look at the flow of money throughout the state there's probably a lot out there that's being subsidized by people here to have it we're all in it together. Right. Do you see now with the service cuts happening that there will be more people like you driving and probably driving every day. Then in the past I think there may be some I haven't looked. I think limited cutbacks in fare increases are probably one thing when you get into shutting down I mean certainly are going to have more on the weekends if you shut down commuter rail service. So that's going to change that but we also at some level have to live within our means. That's reality. You did a follow up piece and at the end cyclists challenge you to ride with him. I think it was a him to really see from his eyes what it's all about. And you said you would did you do it.

We did it he was afraid to take me on a bike ride when we actually got to it because he was afraid that I was going to get myself killed somewhere around Copley Square or your open. Yeah. OK. All right well wave at you in the car Thank you so much. We've been talking about the NBA and how service cuts and fare hikes could force many Bay Staters to rely on their cars. I've been speaking with Collin Kingsbury He's a writer and entrepreneur. His recent piece for Boston magazine is titled Hell yeah I love my car. For more coverage focusing on the NBA tune into the Emily Rooney show tomorrow. General manager Jonathan Davis will be in the studio to take your calls. You can keep on top of the Kalak Rossley show on WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley. We are a production of WGBH Boston Public Radio.