Fund the MBTA, or People Will Die!


DavisDaveyKitten1

Got your attention? The Metropolitan Area Planning Council got mine earlier this week with their finding that implementation of the MBTA’s two deficit reduction scenarios would cause “roughly 10 avoidable” to “about 15 avoidable deaths per year”. That’s right, 10-15 deaths per year.

What’s causing most of the deaths? Almost all of them are caused by the possibility that service cutbacks will move people from transit to driving, resulting in a decline of 8.3 minutes per day in average walking per new commuter.

That 8.3-minute decline in daily walking becomes … wait for it … 9-14 deaths per year. (The other death came from all other factors in the study combined.)

So I guess the desired conclusion is that the MBTA should be funded in order to prevent people’s poor choices around physical activity.

As a wise man once said: You can torture numbers until they confess.