Michigander in Mass

Monday's Globe printed an Op-Ed from Luberoff railing against the Green Line extension.

He attacks the project on several fronts, but primarily on the pollution front. First, on any kind of direct impact on auto traffic (and by extension, air pollution), he wrote:

The problem is that building the Green Line will have virtually no impact on automobile traffic. Depending on which MBTA study you believe, it will induce between 3,540 and 14,000 people to switch from cars to transit. Even the higher figure is a miniscule share of the 770,000 people who drive to work in Boston or the 1.8 million people in the region who commute by car.

First off, the higher number is 2% of Boston-bound drivers--perhaps not quite the tipping point for fewer traffic jams, but in the chaotic world of traffic planning, it could have an impact. Secondly, and much more importantly, those aren't folks tooling through the city on the highway at more fuel-efficient speeds. They're starting their cars in our city (resulting in the worst kind of car pollution), idling at lights and generally operating less efficiently and wasting more gas as they drive through their streets. Compounding this, as STEPpers Kristin Blum and Jeff Levine point out:

[H]is analysis ignores the fact that every car you take off the roads reduces not only that car's emissions but the emissions of hundreds of cars that are slowed down by that car (generally, cars going slowly emit far more than cars going at 55 mph.)

Luberoff then gives an example of how much cheaper it would be to just get rid of polluting vehicles, again, assuming air quality is the core argument:

If the state replaced 500 of [older non-conforming high-pollution cars] with Toyota Priuses, it would achieve the same air quality benefits as getting 14,000 people to abandon their cars for the new Green Line. The Prius strategy would cost about $10 million, about 2.5 percent of the Green Line extension's estimated capital cost.

Still doesn't help the traffic problem, thank you very much. Are you seeing the problem with his approach? Attack traffic, ignore pollution, attack pollution, ignore traffic.

He then goes on to attack the well-developed but frankly--at least in regards to the original agreements surrounding the Big Dig, but certainly not to the residents of Somerville--irrelevant argument that the Green Line extension will help businesses and the city:

Defenders of the other Big Dig transit projects have responded such data by claiming a narrow focus on air pollution ignores the transit projects' many other benefits, such as spurring compact development and aiding less affluent communities. State officials should assess such claims before they proceed. There is, for example, no clear data showing that regions with extensive downtown-oriented rail transit systems have more jobs in their urban core than comparable areas without rail transit.

Two words: Davis Square, Davis Square and Davis Square! Has he been paying attention? Has he visited Somerville ever, or does he just drive through?