Climate Health, with Derek Nichols Artwork

Buffalo HealthCast

The official health equity podcast of the University at Buffalo’s School of Public Health and Health Professions.

Buffalo HealthCast

Climate Health, with Derek Nichols

June 16, 2022 • University at Buffalo Public Health and Health Professions • Season 1 • Episode 17

The winning team for the Office of Global Health Initiatives Climate-Health Innovation Sprint (Dr. Saad Alasil, Tiffany Mai, Kayla Giglia) interviews Derek Nichols about the connection between climate change and health.
Derek Nichols is the Associate Director of Sustainability at the University at Buffalo where he works to change the culture and operations of campus to become better for the people and environment of our region. He is also an adjunct professor in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning where he teaches the Food Systems Planning class for graduate students. Prior to his time at UB, Derek spent four years working at Grassroots Gardens WNY helping communities steward vacant and underutilized spaces into community gardens. He is a Buffalo transplant from Vestal, NY, and loves every block of this city.

Resources:

Credits:
Host/Writer: Saad Alasil, PhD, MS, MPH | Tiffany Mai, MPH | Kayla Giglia
Guest: Derek Nichols, MA
Production Assistant: Sarah Robinson
Video/Audio Editor: Omar Brown

Saad Alasil 0:00
Hello and welcome to Buffalo HealthCast, a podcast by students, faculty and staff of the University at Buffalo's School of Public Health and Health Professions, covering topics related to health equity here in Buffalo, around the US, and globally. We are your cohosts for this episode, Saad Alasil.

Kayla Giglia 0:22
I'm Kayla Giglia.

Tiffany Mai 0:23
I'm Tiffany Mai.

Saad Alasil 0:24
This podcast comes following our participation at the Climate-Health Innovation Sprint, organized by the University at Buffalo's Office of Global Health Initiatives, for which our team won first place. The pitch that we did was to expand access and routes of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, or NFTA, to lower levels of environmental pollution, and ensure equal access to transportation for all residents of Buffalo. Our guest today is Derek Nichols. He's the Associate Director for Sustainability, Division of Finance, and Administration at the University of Buffalo Sustainability. Thank you, Derek, for taking the time to be with us.

Derek Nichols 1:10
Hey, it's a pleasure to be here everybody. Just a little bit about myself and my background. I am a University at Buffalo alum from the Masters of Urban Planning program. So I focused on community development and food systems there. And then right after school, I started working at Grassroots Gardens Western New York for about four years, helping neighborhoods build and steward community gardens and spaces in their neighborhoods. Then I've most recently started working at the University for - my six year anniversary is coming up in a couple of weeks here -where I focus on trying to change the culture of our campus to be more sustainable. It's not just an academic program, not just a student facing program, not an operational program. It's all of that. So I work in a very small office with just four people. So to work with 40,000 people in our community, campus community, it's a lot of work to try to change that culture. So we really rely on our connections and relationships that we have built across campus.

Saad Alasil 2:08
Well, thank you, Derek, for that introduction, you guys do a great job. My first question to you; according to the 2020 census data, 67.5% of Buffalonians, who are 16 years of age and above commute to work by driving alone using their own cars, whereas only 11.3% of those workers use public transportation. Now, that's a lot of cars on the road. And I can only imagine what are the recent levels of air pollution in the city. So my question to you is what makes only a small percentage of people use public transportation here in Buffalo?

Derek Nichols 2:43
It's a really interesting question. I think there are many different reasons. Some of them are institutional and foundational, and some of them are just personal. I think that when we look at Buffalo, when you look at its history, because of practices like urban renewal and creating highways, and creating city layouts that are meant for the car, it makes people - just an easier way to get around. It's convenient. We have low commute times to get across long distances from in our region. So having a car makes that easy. The public transportation system here isn't the best, and it takes a lot more time to use either a bus that connects to the metro rail to get to another bus. And sometimes the routes are not not very straightforward for commuters. So ease is one reason. Another reason is, I think, safety is a concern. So especially thinking about the winter, and this past winter, there was a lot of news stories about how plows were just plowing a bunch of snow and ice into bus shelters and people would have to wait in the streets for buses. And that's difficult for people, especially that have accessibility issues. And then just any commuter, waiting in the street is not an ideal place to be. So I think there's a lot of conditions that have - make it ideal or more optimal for people to use a car. There's a stigma about public transportation, there's a negative view on public transportation in general, from a lot of people. And the other thing is, too, that car ownership - there's about 30% of our city that doesn't own a car. So that's the other flip side of this is there's a lot of barriers for those people that don't have a car to where they have to go.

Kayla Giglia 4:20
Okay, so obviously being public health, we definitely are interested in the health effects of air pollution, which certainly impacts everyone, but it definitely does impact those who live in the cities and who drive in and out every day. So some of the issues, the health issues that come up according to NIH, is different respiratory diseases like asthma, emphysema, COPD, chronic bronchitis, various different cancers, like breast cancer, lung cancer, leukemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, the list goes on. And children who live near these highways are at even greater risk of developing these diseases, like asthma, at such a young age. So the health effects aren't even the only issue, there's also issues with sleep and increased noise congestion because they live so close to these highways. There are going to be cities near these roads. So who in the City of Buffalo is suffering the brunt of these health effects, and why?

Derek Nichols 5:07
Buffalo being where it is, and being - literally I can see Canada from my neighborhood, when I'm taking a walk in my neighborhood. It's a huge international border with tons of transportation. So the Clean Air Coalition was an amazing organization here in Buffalo that does a lot of advocacy work on this topic. And they did a health study in the West Side of Buffalo where the Peace Bridge kind of lands in our city. And the Peace Bridge has about 5,000 trucks that cross across the bridge, pre-pandemic, every day, and then about 20,000 cars, so that's a lot of traffic, and there's a lot of diesel gas. And they found that there's 44 different chemicals in diesel gas exhaust fumes. So what that all has led to, is that they have found that about 45% of houses in the West Side neighborhood have at least one case of asthma. So that's, right there, the clear - pretty clear connection to traffic and health in one area of Buffalo. Back when I worked with Grassroots Gardens, when we started, when neighborhoods were finding vacant land to plant gardens on, we were always very concerned about high traffic areas for the pollution. People are out there gardening, they're right next to a busier street, or a busier highway even, that cuts through the city - that would be something we'd kind of help. We'd try to find a more optimal place for a neighborhood to start a garden on, just because we didn't want the gardeners are at risk for air pollution because of the traffic. And that's, you know, a lot of that was on the East Side too, when the Kensington Expressway was built, and the NY 33, of course, through that. So those are really two big areas of where you'll see the effects of air pollution. And of course, those neighborhoods - it's a huge environmental justice concern, because there are neighborhoods of black and brown people, and New Americans to our city. So typically, people who have been traditionally marginalized in our city in general, and a lot of times the answer is "just move." And people do not understand that's a very privileged answer to the problem. Because either if you own a house in that neighborhood, it's hard to sell it to somebody else, because they're gonna be facing the same burdens. Then you see that environmental cases throughout history, people are trapped in the homes that they own. And then the housing is just cheaper in a lot of these neighborhoods as well, because of these reasons.

Kayla Giglia 7:26
And you mentioned organizations like the Clean Air Coalition and Grassroots Garden. What are these groups doing to address this issue?

Derek Nichols 7:33
So the Clean Air Coalition, this is like one of their main missions, is to quantify and find areas of air pollution. So they do studies, they work very closely with the people who live in their neighborhoods rather than doing an external scientific study, which is really great. So it's a neighborhood empowerment model there. With Grassroots Gardens, their focus is on building neighborhood capacity and community work through gardening. So the environmental impacts of clean air is tangential to their work, but it's something that we were concerned about. GOBike Buffalo is another great organization that helps steward and build capacity on biking infrastructure, so to wean people off of cars, make our streets safer if you want to bike or walk or any sort of non-motorized vehicle. So those are really - GOBike Buffalo and Clean Air Coalition are the two organizations that are doing really great work on this issue specifically.

Kayla Giglia 8:32
Thank you, that was really useful to know.

Tiffany Mai 8:33
We heard in the recent news by the WGRZ television station that the NFTA has been cutting 8 of its 12 express routes starting in mid-February, and that means longer waits at night and on weekends. As Fillmore District Common Council Member, Mitch Nowakowski stated, as well as you, 30% of Buffalo residents do not own a vehicle, and they rely heavily on public transportation each day for their commute. The NFTA has made these temporary cuts because of staffing shortages, as well as low retention rates due to low wages. Now these service cuts have a lot of people who do not have cars and rely on buses to go to work, schoo,l doctor's appointments, and also meeting their daily necessities, leading to most communities unserved to get around. One Buffalo Council Member even said that NFTA has downplayed the severity of these changes by being vague about the longer wait times. How do you think that the political system around the NFTA is being addressed within Buffalo? What I'm trying to say is, with the NFTA being so incorporated with how the City of Buffalo interacts on a day to day basis, how does the politics get around to advocating for a better public transportation system?

Derek Nichols 10:03
When I look at public transit and who, especially with that, with the example of the NFTA cutting some of those lines, the late night and weekend routes, the second shift, third shift workers who utilize that, and those are usually lower paying jobs. So the fact that they're cutting routes, that for individuals who might even be more strapped, maybe have more pressure to use as an issue. When I look at transportation as a whole, and I'm gonna connect these two dots in a second, but when I look at transportation as a whole, it's one piece of the city's fabric and one piece of how we all function in our lives. When we look at public transit, a lot of that is public transportation needs to be accessible to everybody. And by cutting routes, and streamlining, or slimming down services, it's a big issue for a lot of the residents in our city. So the thing is, urban policy and urban planning can't be siloed. So it's more of a holistic, and needs to be looked at holistically. So my thought is that, yeah, public transportation is a tool to help alleviate poverty by getting people to where they need to go. And it's quick time to their jobs, so they're not spending time waiting, commuting to go to doctor's appointments or waiting to go to school even. So I feel, my thoughts on transportation planning in general and how the NFTA operates, that needs to be collaborative, and it needs to take into account other essential services like food systems, like energy, like housing, and it needs to be thought of completely and in an appropriate way for the city. That means that poverty is not a naturally occurring thing, right? It's the system that we are all living in has created poverty. It's for reasons that one individual can buy Twitter, while other people are waiting for a bus for three hours to get to work. So I think there's bigger systemic and structural changes that need to happen to alleviate, to kind of help fix priorities of our city.

Kayla Giglia 12:15
That actually kind of ties into one of the other questions we had - just like static issues that tie into all these other issues, like energy resources. One policy that has been pretty bad is redlining. How has that impacted - you talked about neighborhoods like the West Side and the East Side - how does that impact where these highways are built, and the people who live in these neighborhoods?

Derek Nichols 12:34
Yeah, well, redlining is very racist. And that has a huge, big history of that in the City of Buffalo. So, the East Side neighborhood in the Kensington-Humboldt Parkway was destroyed because of redlining, so an urban renewal. The combination of keeping people away from certain neighborhoods, and keeping people in certain neighborhoods, as well as demolishing neighborhoods and destroying urban fabric, and the urban fabric has basically allowed for things like highways to be built through neighborhoods, that have allowed for wealthier individuals and white individuals to leave the city, creating more of a concentration of disinvestment. So, did I answer some of your questions about redlining?

Kayla Giglia 13:18
Yes.

Tiffany Mai 13:18
So I'll ask a question. Do you think that restoring these routes and increasing staffing will solve the transportation problems in Buffalo?

Derek Nichols 13:26
I think it will solve the problem for those individuals who rely on those routes. But I think it goes back to my earlier comments about looking at poverty and disinvestment as a whole, and changing how we distribute resources, how we build city policy, and build our neighborhoods here in Buffalo, and regionally too, because there's a job spatial mismatch. A lot of the people who work in our city go outside of our city to work. So they are really a cause for a collaborative effort network. And the Greater Buffalo Regional Transit Coalition is doing a lot of good work trying to make those connections too. So again, yes, those routes are very important for the livelihoods of the people who use them. There's a bigger picture to look at that we need to keep sight of as well.

Tiffany Mai 14:19
Now, the transit sector is responsible for 1/4 of global greenhouse gas emissions. And as our population continues to grow, public transportation helps us solve our social, economic, and environmental challenges. The benefits of public transportation are immense, with decreased congestion emitting to better air and noise quality, transportation, reliability, and building a social ecosystem for our communities. Most recently, the NFTA was granted $4.8 million to replace their older buses for new lithium battery-operated electric vehicles. And they also introduced, just recently, their first electric bus. Now these buses will help eliminate up to 85 to 175 tons of greenhouse gases each year. We also see wages saved by taking public transportation with the fare of $2 for buses and trains, compared to the cost of vehicles and the increase in gas prices we see today. For example, just last year, gas prices were only $2.77 a gallon, and now it has doubled to $4.28 in November 2022. However, New Yorkers will have a chance to vote in a public referendum that will enact a billion dollars and more to electrify all buses, and install charging stations by 2035 through the Bond Act. Now, there's a lot of funding going around, so I will mention a few. With $31 million in federal funding, how do we improve and market public transportation in a car-cultured community? Improvements in bus routes, new bus mappings, and timing blocks for riders to easily visualize how to commute to areas they've never been before, additional bus shelters, in-app ticket purchases, and turnstiles, and electric buses and repairs, increased wages for all employees to improve retention rates, are just some of the few improvements made by the NFTA. The NFTA also serves up to 24 million people each year, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, many riders were reluctant or even discouraged to take public transportation because of the virus. However, the NFTA has worked hard to keep their riders safe by following COVID-19 protocols to disinfect and protect everyone, and reduce the spread of COVID-19. In addition to the recent shooting in Brooklyn, New York, the NFTA police ran a sweep to investigate all buses, trains and stations, and even installed 24-hour running cameras to protect our riders and employees, increasing the safety for the public of Buffalo. And one of the biggest services that the NFTA offers is their PAL, or paratransit services that serves all able-bodied in addition to the disabled, veterans, and seniors to expand their reach to a three mile radius supported by the $20 million funding request. Bottom line is, if we want the NFTA to expand, we need to start using it more. And with that in mind, we can only hope that the growing riderships can help indicate the growing economy we see in Erie County. My question to you is, what would a better mass transit system do to improve health equity in Buffalo?

Derek Nichols 17:38
I think about this. This is another great question. I mean, we'd be revolutionary, right? I mean, that would change so much of how our city could function and work that I think the health benefit - there are a lot of health benefits. And I would kind of categorize them in three different ways. So there would be the physical health benefits, so less cars on the road, less air pollution, less, hopefully, less asthma rates, less car crashes, less, you know. Those are the physical benefits of this. And there's the mental benefits of this. So people who have to wait long hours to ride the further bus to come in cold weather, it's mentally taxing. The stress of trying to get to a doctor's appointment on time, getting to work on time, that's also a mental stressor for a lot of individuals that are already trying to balance so many other things, chaotic things in their lives. Not to mention during the pandemic, that's just one other thing that add on to that. And then just, you know, road rage in general, for people who are in cars; something we're all kind of guilty of, right? And then I think there's one of the biggest pictures of this, and I'm not in the health field, so I don't know if I going to use this term correctly, and there's probably a better term for it, but a preventative health measure. So, if we're thinking about the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that we are emitting in our commuting patterns, long term, it's changing our climate, and we know the effects of climate change are gonna have a negative impact on the people who are really 1) not the cause of climate change, and 2) are in the most vulnerable areas that will be hit hardest by climate change. So we've needed to start decreasing emissions for a long time, and right now we're almost at a mitigation level, at this point. So the long term health game here is that, we can prevent a drastically changing climate, and all the health impacts of disease, and heatstroke, and all of that that would be wrapped up in our changing climate too. So I think that's a big thing, in my eyes and sustainability world. So one of the biggest impacts of changing our transportation structure here. There's a PhD candidate in Columbia University, who has studied - he's kind of put a metric on the mortality rate, the correlation to mortality and greenhouse gas emissions. So he's found that if you emit roughly about 4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, 4000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, that's responsible for about one life. And then in the next century of killing somebody, one person in the next century. So I was looking at UB's commuting, I help assess the greenhouse gas impact of UB. So I looked at the student, faculty and staff commuting for 2020. And this is the beginning of - there were couple of weeks of pandemic in there. And we emitted about 22,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in that year, just from our commuting patterns. That has the potential to kill five people over the next century. And that was just one year of commuting patterns. So if you think about historically, what UB has emitted, and in a non-pandemic situation, and what it will emit, there are lives that we are responsible for for our university. So that's just an interesting perspective on how you can communicate the importance of decreasing your greenhouse gas impact, and a metric that I'll continue to use in our conversations with our office to really make it - I think it's much more tangible than like, all the ice caps are melting.

Saad Alasil 17:38
Okay, Derek, well, perhaps is the last question that we have. Now, we're all talking about the greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing them is definitely a good thing to do. But what do you think are the implications of switching to electric vehicles? And for transportation to meet the all-electric fleet by 2035? I mean, will that solve the problem, basically, of air pollution, to switch entirely to electrical vehicles?

Derek Nichols 21:47
No, it's definitely a good start. So it depends on, well, there are a couple of things. So just by switching to electric vehicles, there's a benefit to where the cars or vans or buses are driving, because they're not emitting anything. But still, we're producing electricity, right? And that energy has to come from somewhere. And that depends on where your grid is. And luckily, New York State has a fairly clean grid. It uses a lot of renewable energy, a lot of nuclear in there, there's a lot of hydro from Niagara Falls. So our grid, the electricity use isn't - there's a little bit of coal in there, I think it's about 4% of our energy comes from coal. But if you move to, I always throw South Dakota under the bus, but I feel like I need to do more research into that. But I feel like South Dakota really has a dirty grid. I mean, we should say something like West Virginia, I think that's probably pretty dirty too. Coal territory, where they're burning a lot of fossil fuels to generate electricity; that's still very polluted. So even though you're charging a bus, or charging an EV in West Virginia, the energy that you're getting from that grid is still dirty energy. There's a connection there. So that's some perspective into the power of electric vehicles. So for New York State, and New York State has goals to have our grid completely be renewable. It's definitely helpful.

Saad Alasil 23:09
Absolutely, absolutely. So I mean, the thought here is that we should look beyond just using electrical vehicles, but to the power grid that actually powers these electrical vehicles. I mean, how clean the energy is there. Are there any other questions, guys?

Tiffany Mai 23:27
Yeah, so beyond electric vehicles and better public transportation, what would more equitable cities and neighborhoods look like if we incorporate more bike lanes, downgrade highways, or even look for alternatives to powering our buses or things like that? Because I know the topic about nuclear energy might be in the picture after 2035 perhaps, and we've had a history of closing down nuclear powers because of safety reasons. But there are major implications to electric vehicles that are on a global scale, harming the environment, more so than just diesel because natural extraction of these minerals and products to build these electronic vehicles come at a cost, and it's not at our countries, but moreso in countries where most of our resources come from, like third world countries, where the raw materials are coming from. How, would you say, beyond electric vehicles and better public transportation, would you implement for a more equitable city neighborhood, as well as a global agenda?

Derek Nichols 24:51
There's so much to respond to there, and such a good question and so many things. You're basically asking me to solve the climate crisis in just that question, so a couple of things. Yes, in our work, one of the biggest tensions that we face and trying to mitigate and combat climate, our changing climate, is how quickly we need to move versus how equitable we need to be. And that goes to what you're saying about, like the extraction of the parts that go into our EVs that, hopefully are part of the solution. But then we know that there's a detriment to the places they are extracted from. The answer, of course, we have to be both, we have to be equitable and fast. And that's hard, and the world we live in does not operate like that at all, in any capacity. It doesn't move fast, and it's not equitable at all. So it's asking for humanity to do a lot. And just that question, we're talking about, I mean, we're ultimately talking about local transportation here, and I'm talking about changing the world. And also, you need to connect it to - I think more people need to be aware of just the decisions that they make on a day to day basis with their commuting patterns, and how much it really boils down to your politics, and how you need to be people in power to change systems that are inequitable and slow moving. And that also seems like a very defeatist - I used to be an idealist - it seems like a very hard thing to do. When that gets overwhelming for an individual who really cares about this, take a step back and think about the things that you can do that you have some control over. So you brought up bike lanes. We've seen some solutions being developed and implemented in the past couple of years. Having the option to do remote work helped; I don't need to travel 15 minutes to UB North Campus to stare at my computer all day, and then travel back and not talk to anybody, you know what I mean? So there are solutions that are right in front of our eyes to help combat some of this, that are very low hanging fruit. And then people have been advocating for better biking infrastructure for years, and it's been happening. If only you guys could see what the bike lane situation was about 10 years, 10-15 years ago, when I was a student here. There was probably one bike lane. So now we have a network that connects and is ideal and perfect, we know what we're getting there. So I'm trying to now spin everything in a more positive light after you saw me dip down into a black hole for a second. But I mean, good work is happening, and th thing about Buffalo is there's a lot of good people doing this good work. It's all very inspiring. So I hope that - I don't really have a solid answer for the most ideal situation for our city and its transportation. But that's kind of the beauty of working in an advocacy and grassroots realm, is that we're all designing it together.

Tiffany Mai 27:53
Yeah, thank you. And I just want to ask one question before Kayla goes. So we had a podcast Innovation Sprint, and one of the underlying questions about expanding public transportation is just the acceptance of it in suburban areas, because of the, you know, it ties into racism, but as well as just that immediate independent culture that goes around in our society - you know, car culture, basically. And so how do we reduce that stigma in suburban areas that are less accepting of public transportation? And I know that with the electric fleet that was introduced just last week, it's going through suburban areas for cleaner energy, attracting more riders within the community and such and so. Do you think that that is one way to go, or are there other ideas that can help expand that public transportation is for everyone, and exposure at a young age helps to bring that to light in our future generation?

Derek Nichols 29:09
Now you're asking me to solve racism, which I don't know if I can't do that, either. But your last comment, it really made me - I had the privilege of being in an urban planning studio with Dr. Samina Raja, and she took our studio over to Germany for a week and a half, and we studied commuting patterns of schoolchildren and how they got to school. And it was very common to see a five year old on a subway pretty much by themselves -pretty self sufficient to get to where they needed to be, and that kind of connects to changing the culture of suburbia views, public transportation, I kind of talked about that a little earlier on without being super eloquent about it. But there's that stigma, like public transportation is unsafe. It's not meant for people like us, or people who are living in suburbia, we should be self-sufficient and have our cars and that's the American dream. I feel like generationally that is changing. So I think more young people want to see the benefits of public transportation. There's more people coming to our city from other areas who have public transportation and are very upset that there's not a good public transportation here. So I think that might have some effect moving forward. There's always been that unicorn or that white whale of extending the metro line to UB North Campus. And we've talked about that since I've been a student, and of course before that, too. So it seems like more and more funding is - there's always a news article saying, oh, funding is going to be dedicated to this, and there's there's studies going on. So I'm hopeful about that as well. And hopefully a metro rail to the airport. UB North Campus and the airport and downtown is now a much different place than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, at this pointa 40 years ago, there's much more going on downtown. I think suburban residents might appreciate a very quick connection to a much more lively and active downtown now. Once people start to see and realize that okay, public transportation isn't terrifying. I think that'd be helpful.

Kayla Giglia 31:21
We talked on a global scale, and now that we're bringing it back to Buffalo, UB is doing a lot of work, like you said, with expanding the bike lanes. I know there's a lot of clubs on campus that are dedicated to sustainability. What else is your office at UB doing to try to solve this issue, specifically in Buffalo, or global, whatever you would like?

Derek Nichols 31:37
Yeah, well, like I said in my introduction, my role is not super academic. It's not student facing, not all operations. But we are collaborators, and we build relationships. So we've, about 2-3 years ago, we updated our Climate Action Plan for our university. We were trying to get to carbon neutrality by 2030, which is about roughly seven years from now. And one of those strategies is electrifying our fleet and creating better ways to green our commutes. Because when we have three campuses: North, South, and then Downtown, so there's a lot of people coming and going constantly. So, you know, we are very fortunate to have buses already. Granted, they're dirty buses right now, but we are working on electrifying those. So just a little pulling back the veil on that. We have a contract with our busing, so it's going to be up soon. So that's why we can't snap our fingers and go right to electric because we are under a contract. So we're working on procuring an electric fleet for, hopefully, for our next contract. Where we can snap our fingers and have electric vehicles are departmental units. And it's been really, really great to see UB Mail, or UBIT, our campus dining and shops reached out to our office and was like, hey, we need a new delivery truck, or, hey, we need a new van, and these are the requirements we're looking for, but we want it to be EV, or we want it to be an EV. And they asked for our guidance and what the standard practices are out there. So people are already in that mindset already, where they want to transition. The university does have a policy for any new vehicle purchase; it does need to be an EV. But we were seeing that mentality beforehand. So we'll transition the vehicles that we do own quickly/slowly over to an electric vehicle. We are always installing new charging stations, so 16 new ones went up on South Campus this past year. More are always being added on North, so that infrastructure will always be updated. And we're going to need to constantly be up on that, because even I've noticed in my short time here (six years) there are more and more electric vehicles on campus and they seem to be always in use. And then we don't want to rely solely on just car transportation and bus transportation, we do want to make sure that biking is safe. And that's more of a regional collaboration, because - I have biked to work from my home in the City of Buffalo to UB North Campus, and it's not a fun time at all. You want to ride your bike and have a good time, but you'd have to go extremely out of your way to not get in any dangerous situations, or you're biking down Main Street and you're crossing your bike over the Kensington Expressway, which is a terrifying intersection, whether you're in a car or not. So there are things that UB doesn't - we don't have control over that intersection. We don't have control of a lot of physical spaces that are barriers for biking in general. But we do work with community groups closely, through our office. Among the 40,000 people who are in our university, a lot of them have connections to these institutions already or advocates in their own way. So that's also one of the great powers of the students here, is something that I've really come to enjoy in my time in sustainability. I've met students that are very vocal about where they think the world should be. And that can be either vocal at our office, and why aren't you doing these things, or just vocal in the community too, trying to make changes because they're really passionate about it and they get in a crisis mode, basically. So those are some things that that UB's doing, and that's my call to all the students who are listening to this, just keep making noise. Because there's me and my three coworkers that are trying to tell administration, Oh, here are the things we need to do. And they're just looking at us saying, Oh, the green team, of course they want that. But if the students are saying it, our faculty and staff are saying it, that's very powerful.

Saad Alasil 35:44
Well, thank you, Derek, for sharing your thoughts and experience with us. It's been wonderful having you. We hope that the future of public transportation in Buffalo is more equitable, more accessible, and more affordable for everyone. Thank you for sharing your experience with us and we hope to see you again.

Derek Nichols 36:05
My pleasure, anytime.

Outro 36:06
This has been another episode of Buffalo HealthCast. Tune in next time to hear more about health equity in Buffalo, the US, and around the globe.