Equity
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Report: To Make Transit Safe, Rethink Transit Cops
Transit agencies need to do more to make sure their networks are comprehensively safe — and that may include reforming, defunding, or outright removing police from these critical public spaces, a new report argues.
July 13, 2021
Environmental Justice Advocates Want More From Transportation and Climate Plan
July 6, 2021
Advocacy Works: MassDOT Re-Prioritizes Basic Safety Upgrades For Somerville
On Wednesday evening, a follow-up public hearing on MassDOT's proposed I-93 viaduct rehabilitation project found a significantly warmer reception from neighbors and elected officials after the state agency promised to prioritize sidewalk and crosswalk upgrades this year, before a major highway viaduct rehabilitation project begins in earnest.
July 1, 2021
Stats Show Black and Indigenous People Suffer Disproportionate Road Deaths
The U.S. is still failing to make meaningful progress to end the decades-long racial disparity in fatal car crash rates across modes, a new study finds — and things got worse during the pandemic.
June 23, 2021
Does A Fare-Free 28 Also Need to Pay For A Free RIDE?
“Giving primarily white and wealthy transit riders a free trip, while forcing primarily Black and low income riders to jump through hoops to access similar fare-free service, is exactly what structural racism looks like," says Stacy Thompson, executive director of the LivableStreets Alliance.
June 16, 2021
MassDOT Ghosts Somerville Critics At I-93 Virtual Public Meeting
"People started to realize they’re not hear to hear us," says Somerville resident Melissa McCue-McGrath. "They’re here to say they had a meeting, but they’re not going to do anything for the people who live here and are dying here... It wasn’t that they didn’t hear us; they were just choosing not to."
June 10, 2021
WRTA Board Votes to Extend Worcester’s Zero-Fare Buses ‘Til 2022
“If we suspend fares, it’s just not true that we couldn’t expand service,” Etel Haxhiaj, Zero-Fare Coalition member and Worcester city council candidate, told StreetsblogMASS. “They don’t need to be mutually exclusive.”
May 20, 2021
The WRTA’s Fare-Free Bus Experiment Was Popular, But Won’t Last Without Funding
The WRTA's higher levels of transit ridership, relative to other peer cities, suggest that its fare-free policies may be especially helpful to frontline workers whose travel decisions are more sensitive to fare costs.
May 7, 2021
Talking Headways Podcast: A New Conversation about Development Finance
April 29, 2021
Advocates Pan Proposed Expansion of Policing in Baker ‘Safety’ Bill
Advocates remain in the dark about what's being proposed, and are concerned about the administration's focus on policing instead of preventing crashes.
April 26, 2021
