Improving public transit makes it easier for people to stay healthy

A new study found improving public transportation makes it easier for people to make it to their doctor appointments.

A group of researchers from the Urban Institute, Harvard Medical School, Mass General, and the University of Minnesota studied what happened to no-show outpatient appointments at a major health system when the Green Line opened in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in 2014, connecting those two cities’ downtowns. The new Metro line was more reliable — less susceptible to traffic jams or bad weather — and ran more frequently than the buses that had previously covered the same route.