The issue seemed, at first, too small to warrant further study.
That, at least was what MBTA officials indicated, in so many words, when, in March, the Federal Transit Administration criticized the T’s Fiscal Management Control Board’s move to cut late-night service without conducting an “equity analysis” to determine whether the change would disproportionately affect minority and/or low-income riders.
The study, required under federal civil rights rules, is required of any “major” change to service. If the impact to minority and/or low-income riders meets certain thresholds, the agency has to restore service or replace it with something else.
But MBTA officials argued back that cutting late-night service wasn’t a “major change” in the first place.
The feds disagreed, and MBTA officials, having already approved the cuts, hastily commissioned an equity analysis.
The results were a little confusing. One analysis, using survey data, did show a disparate or disproportionate impact on minority and low income riders. A second analysis, however, using population data, seemed to show the opposite: no undue impact on minority and low-income riders.
MBTA management chose to take the good news over the bad.
Calling the analysis showing disparate income flawed, the T’s Control Board agreed to “consider” services to mitigate the impact of cutting late-night — but took the position, based on the “good news” report, that they weren’t required to take action to mitigate the cuts. And, so far, they haven’t.
But a complaint to the Federal Transit Agency filed by the Conservation Law Foundation, Alternatives for Community and Environment, and Greater Four Corners Action Coalition yesterday claims that even the “good news” report — the report MBTA has cited as relieving them of the obligation of replacing service — was flawed.
The groups aren't asking for the MBTA to restore late-night service as it existed, but they are insisting that the agency is obligated to make up for the cuts by adding services that benefit minority and low-income riders.
At the heart of the complaint are a few lines of text, buried deep in federal transit guidelines, which note that an impact study using population (rather than rider) data — the kind T officials used when they found no disparate impact — agencies should use:
… the smallest geographic area that reasonably has access to the bus or rail stop or station. For example, passengers will generally walk up to one-quarter mile to a bus stop or one-half mile to a light or heavy rail station. [Emphasis added]
But T officials didn’t use the surrounding quarter mile or half mile to measure surrounding demographics for various train and bus stops — they used the greater municipal area.
“So if you look at one small bus stop in Dorchester, they considered the whole population within Boston to have access to that bus stop,” says Rafael Mares, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation.
Enlisting the research of Salem State University Professor Marcos Luna, the environmental advocates produced its own report, measuring use of transit stops by residents much nearer to the stops themselves. Their finding: the cuts to late night bus and train service do produce a disparate impact on minority populations (and, in the case of late-night bus service, low-income populations).
In an email, MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo declined to comment, citing pending litigation. The Globe reported today that Pesaturo cited approval of the agency’s impact report by the Federal Transit Administration.
The FTA did, indeed, write to MBTA officials in May, finding the impact analysis “properly documented.”
A spokesperson for the FTA did not directly respond to a question of whether or why it had approved the T’s use of all of Boston, and not smaller geographic areas near MBTA stops, for demographic data.
