Important Green Line extension hearing!

Don't let the State weasel out of its commitment!
Monday, March 14, 6:30-8:30 pm
Somerville High School Auditorium
81 Highland Ave (Map)

State agencies will hold a public hearing regarding the Green Line extension and other transit commitments.

Keep the State on track to honor its legal commitment to Somerville. Don’t let them derail an important project promised for almost 15 years.

Please distribute this English flyer (PDF) and/or this 4-language flyer (PDF) far and wide.

In case of snow emergency call 617-625-6600 x 2526

The Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership (STEP), strongly urges you attend the hearing and express your views to State transportation and environmental officials on making the state keep its legal commitment to improve transportation for Somerville residents. 

Send Your Comments!

If you cannot attend the Hearing you can still send written comments to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Executive Office of Transportation (EOT) until 5 PM on Wednesday March 16th. Comments may be submitted in person at the Hearing on March 14th, or sent via regular mail or email to:          

Robert W. Golledge, Commissioner
Department of Environmental Protection
One Winter Street
Boston, MA 02108
robert.golledge@state.ma.us

Daniel A. Grabauskas
Executive Office of Transportation
Ten Park Plaza
Boston, MA 02116
daniel.a.grabauskas@state.ma.us or daniel.grabauskas@mhd.state.ma.us

Key Points for the Meeting

The Green Line extension through Somerville is a binding legal obligation of the State of Massachusetts with a 2011 deadline (Ozone SIP at 310 CMR 7.36). Yet the state is trying to get out of this obligation by substituting inferior service.

The state may only substitute for the Green Line extension if the project “is infeasible due to associated adverse engineering, environmental or economic impacts” AND the Executive Office of Transportation can demonstrate that an alternative “project achieves equal or greater” air quality benefits “in the area where the required project was to have been implemented”.

• The state executive agencies have failed over the last 14 years to deliver the transit commitments that were made to Somerville, or even to find funding for them.  But it is now time for action without further delay.  A clean, convenient Green Line extension will start to correct the environmental injustice done to Somerville residents for over a generation.

Somerville residents bear a huge burden from regional transportation.

• Before completing I-93 in the early 1970s, the State knew that Somerville air quality and noise levels did not meet Federal standards and would worsen with I93’s traffic increases.  Now there are roughly 300,000 vehicles per day on I-93 and local arterial highways alone.


• 200 diesel commuter trains pass through Somerville every weekday and contribute to our health burdens but do not provide service to our residents. They serve 60 other towns.

Transportation related air pollution is serious for both children and adults.

• The Children’s Health Study from California shows that children who play sports year round near heavy traffic are more than 3 times as likely to develop asthma (McConnell, 2002).  A related California study shows that children who grow up in heavily polluted neighborhoods are over 4 times as likely to never achieve full lung capacity (Gauderman, 2004).


• Over 2000 studies funded by US Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and others have shown a linear relationship between fine particulate matter air pollution – soot too small to see - and excess lung cancer and heart attack deaths (Pope, 2002, e.g.).
  
  • Massachusetts public health records from 1996 through 2000 show Somerville having 145 excess lung cancer and heart attack deaths, 29 per year (Mass DPH).  But Somerville residents smoke less than average.  Somerville leads the state’s 351 cities and towns in excess lung cancer and heart attack deaths per square mile.
  
  
  • Cambridge and Brookline have extensive clean transit, pedestrian friendly environments and far less highway and truck traffic.  Their lower than (state) average lung cancer and heart attack deaths demonstrate how communities’ unequal environmental benefits and burdens result in very large local impacts.