In an effort to eliminate greenhouse gases and curb global warming in the city, environmental groups are trying to convince otherwise reluctant Bay Staters to leave their cars at home and ride the T.
Public transportation ridership has declined in the last five years while car ownership rates in Boston continue to rise, contributing to congested roadways and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report distributed by the Environment Massachusetts and Clear Water Fund as the group gave a five-minute presentation yesterday at the Park Street T stop.
“We are not providing the public transportation people want,” said Carrie Russell, staff attorney for the Clean Water Fund. “State legislators and the MBTA need to do more in order to improve transportation, which will lead to climate change to benefit the commonwealth and help people to get around.”
The report released Wednesday morning, titled “Cool Moves — Transit in New England and its Role in Curbing Global Warming Pollution,” states that the vast majority of global warming pollution comes from personal cars and light trucks, and calls for increased spending on New England public transit to encourage car owners to drive less.
Improving MBTA services will pose a challenge to the state’s transportation system that was revealed as under-funded by as much as $19 billion, according to a March report released by the Massachusetts Transportation Finance Commission.
Environmental advocates said their proposal aims to have minimal impact on people’s wallets.
“We are certainly supportive of the proposals by the Transport Finance Commission – among them gas taxes – to generate the revenue we need while setting incentives for people to travel more environmentally,” Russell said.
Russell said she would support a small fare increase. She said raising transit fares by 11.5 cents would only cost the average commuter $66 a year – a price she said was a relatively small cost to provide an enormous amount of much-needed revenue for public transit.
Frank Gorke, director of the Environment Massachusetts Research and Policy Center, said he believes improving public transportation should be made the city’s top priority to tackle global warming and promote economy growth.
“The goal is to reduce emissions by 80 percent from today’s level by 2050,” Gorke said. “We want to get people out of their cars by subsidizing public transportation.”
The current state of public transit ridership in New England is equivalent to taking 310,000 cars off the road and reducing carbon dioxide pollution by more than 1.7 million tons, said environmental advocates from the groups.
Daily commuter Henry Lo said though he’s satisfied with T service, he thought more people will ride the T if it is cleaner and less crowded.
“It gets me from point A to point B, and that’s good enough for me,” Lo said.
Car owner Lauren Greeley, a Wakefield financial advisor, said she will not give up driving even if MBTA builds more stations in the suburbs.
“It is not as convenient to take the T,” Greeley said. “I like the freedom of driving.”
College of Arts and Science senior Theodora Poon said she decided to buy a car two years ago because she was dissatisfied with T service.
“When I was living in Harvard Ave., I was always late to class because the T is late.” Poon said, adding she will not stop driving even if the T becomes more efficient.
“The fare is expensive, and I haven’t seen much significant improvements,” she said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
