Taken for a ride

The MBTA has shortchanged minority communities for years

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger. Her defiance led to the Montgomery bus boycotts and the modern civil-rights movement. It's ironic that 45 years after that simple but courageous act, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority engages in what can be described as "transit racism."

When the state was given permits to begin work on the Central Artery Tunnel Project 10 years ago, it was on the condition that the MBTA's transit system be substantially improved. The public agency was given an ambitious to-do list: replace the old Orange Line that ran down Washington Street in Roxbury with an underground electric bus line; increase the Blue Line's capacity by 50 percent; restore trolley service to Jamaica Plain; extend commuter-rail service along the South Shore down to Scituate; replace 200 of the city's diesel buses with clean-fuel buses; add an additional 200 clean-fuel buses to enhance capacity; and add thousands of suburban park-and-ride lots.

Today, the T can cross off a couple of items on that list: South Shore commuter-rail improvements and the addition of suburban lots. The agency spent $1.38 billion on those improvements -- which serve primarily white suburban communities. As for the improvements that were supposed to have been made to bus and subway lines serving the city and many of its lower-income communities of color? Well, everyone's still waiting.

"How and why does the MBTA have these priorities?" asks Jodi Sugerman-Brozan, of the advocacy group Alternatives for Community and Environment. "One cannot help but think about racism as part of it," she says.

We agree.

So does Mindy S. Lubber, the regional administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, who pointedly noted last spring in a letter to federal and state transportation officials: "It is especially unfortunate that many of these transit-project delays involved the projects that serve the Boston urban core, which disproportionately impacts disadvantaged communities."

Two years ago, in an attempt to spur the state to fix the problem, the Conservation Law Foundation sued the MBTA, the state's Executive Office of Transportation and Construction, the Massachusetts Highway Department, and the Turnpike Authority for failing to meet their
commitments to urban-based public-transportation improvements as required by the permits granted for the Central Artery Tunnel Project.

Last week, the EOTC and the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs agreed to a settlement: they would complete $2 billion worth of transit improvements in the next decade -- essentially all those improvements that were supposed to have been completed during the past decade. What's left out in this settlement, however, is mitigation and restitution for lost opportunity.

Consider the often-cited case of the Washington Street Orange Line. The Silver Line, an underground electric bus, was supposed to have been installed by 1994. Instead, residents who could once get into downtown Boston from Roxbury in about eight minutes are still making do with the "temporary" #49 bus -- which takes considerably longer, if for no other reason than that it gets stuck in traffic. It's impossible to measure the impact this diminished form of transportation has had on economic development in the neighborhood. But there's no question that it's hurt. Good public transit is vital to any lively urban hub: it brings in residents and businesses. But pockets of Roxbury have had to get by with less for 13 years.

And as these residents wait for a real replacement to the old Orange Line, they have to breathe the hazardous byproducts of MBTA buses -- many of which are diesel-spewing relics that were supposed to have been replaced with clean-fuel buses years ago. Not only does Roxbury absorb the effects of diesel-fuel pollution in the course of regular bus service, but every night 400 out-of-service buses come through the neighborhood so they can park overnight -- three of the MBTA's bus barns are located within about a mile and a half of Dudley Square. That may help explain why the neighborhood has asthma-hospitalization rates six times the state average.

None of this is fair. None of this is right. And it must change. With the agreement announced last week, the state has at least shown that it will start moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction. This time around, let's hope transportation officials don't try to take us for another ride.

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