The 24 subway lines that traverse NYC are often personified as “veins” and “arteries,” so it is apt that Environmental Defense Fund, in a recent ad, describes transit as the “life-blood of New York City.”

It’s not an exaggeration. On its website, EDF outlines five reasons transit and transit investment are important:

• They create green jobs,
• They provide affordable commutes,
• They lessen traffic congestion,
• They reduce air pollution, help solve global warming, and
• They keep the New York economy globally competitive.

The website also offers some suggestions on how the MTA, employers and government can avoid the dreadful consequences that lay ahead if transit doesn’t get the funding it, and New Yorkers, desperately need.

Using the image of a hospital transfusion bag, the group is sending a dire message in dire times. As news from the MTA worsens daily and service cuts, job layoffs, stalled projects, and subway line eliminations loom, EDF and many other groups are targeting elected officials in an effort to provoke massive system-wide investment in the transit system, which is on the brink of a crisis not seen since the 1970s and 80s.