Fund the MBTA or People Will Die!

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 death per year.

Digging further into the report — 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.

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.