Round and round
Advocates push for bond bill, free buses
Boston transportation activists are pushing to advance the languishing state transportation bond bill and advance the idea of free MBTA buses, tying the push for cheaper and better transit in with recent calls for racial justice.
“Buses that go up and down through the Black and brown community need to be free,” City Council President Kim Janey said at a press conference in her Roxbury district. “This is a racial-justice issue — this is an economic-justice issue.”
She said the route 26 and 28 buses should be free to ride; she and City Councilor Michelle Wu, who organized the press conference, have pushed for that for the 28 line for more than a year.
Transit advocates at the press conference asked the state Senate to pass Gov. Charlie Baker’s $18 million transportation bond bill before the formal legislative term ends July 31.
The state House already has approved the legislation, which would dole out money for a range of projects over roughly the next five years, including $5.7 billion on the MBTA. The legislation also calls for reforms to speed up projects, reduce greenhouse gases, mitigate traffic problems and outlines a new revenue source that could direct tens or hundreds of millions of dollars every year to public transit.
“If the state Senate does not act, the traffic is coming back” as the economy returns from its pandemic induced slump, insisted Chris Dempsey, chief of the Transportation For Massachusetts advocacy coalition.
Wu, who last year organized demonstrations in favor of making the T farefree — or at least opposing the hike that came in July 2019 — said this is “a new call for action.”
State Rep. Nika Elugardo of Jamaica Plain called the MBTA’s current offerings — particularly for neighborhoods with a lot of people of color — “waiting-forever service, missing-your-job service.”
The T has seen ridership plummet amid COVID-19, but bus ridership has been somewhat more resilient than train ridership.
The press conference took place right next to buses rumbling in and out of the busy Nubian Square bus terminal in Roxbury’s majority minority business district. Three decades ago, the then elevated Orange Line ran through the area, but the T put it underground to the west of the neighborhood.
“Our train station here was stolen from us thirtysomething years ago,” Janey said. “But we can make sure our black and brown residents have access to rapid transit — that they can get to work and that they can get to their doctors appointments.”
She added, “We can’t think of transit as a way to bring in people from the suburbs to the city — we have to take care of the residents in our city.”