Transportation at the Crossroads: To avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis, we must reinvent the ways we travel--but we must do so with justice at the forefront.

• Author: Morales, Adilson Gonzalez

Just before dawn on a frigid morning last December, hundreds of riders crowded together on an MBTA platform. They were there to snag the first train departing from the Medford/Tufts stop--one of seven new stations opening that day on Boston's Green Line. As brassy bells announced the train's arrival, riders whooped and cheered. Cameras by the dozen captured the moment people hopped on board.

It was a ride decades in the making, one that got its start in the late 1980s, when state and city officials were planning how Boston's highways could accommodate more cars and trucks --a massive project soon dubbed "the Big Dig." The project troubled CLF's small band of advocates. More vehicles passing through Boston would only create more toxic air pollution for communities already enduring the harms from highways cutting through their neighborhoods.

CLF filed a lawsuit challenging the project, which brought state leaders to the table to discuss solutions. Central to those discussions was the idea of transportation justice. Offsetting the Big Dig's increased pollution was not good enough. CLF wanted the state to commit to solutions that would benefit the residents most at risk from the project, who were largely people of color and low income. That meant providing more accessible and efficient transportation options for those communities to get to work and school--just as the Big Dig promised for the predominantly white drivers who would pass through the city's new tunnels every day.

After intense negotiations, the Commonwealth committed to significant public transit improvements, from adding more commuter rail stops to building more parking garages at MBTA stations to extending the Green Line service. CLF's vigilance had transformed the state's largest-ever highway project into a groundbreaking win for public transportation.

Transportation justice stands at the center of CLF's transportation advocacy to this day--and it's become even more important in the face of the climate crisis.

Just as Boston was forced to reimagine its transportation matrix 30 years ago, New England as a whole faces its own transportation crossroads today. We cannot address climate change without cutting pollution from cars, trucks, and buses, which accounts for 40% of emissions regionwide. Once again, focusing only on the vehicles on our roads is not enough. We need investments that get people out of their cars and onto public transit. "We also need to direct those investments...