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Mass. State Police warn of traffic delays ahead of Biden’s speech in Boston

President Joe Biden is set to give a speech about his efforts to fight cancer.

By Susannah Sudborough

September 11, 2022

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State Police are warning drivers of delays and detours they may encounter around Boston Monday, likely due to President Joe Biden’s planned appearance at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

“Motorists in and around Boston may experience traffic detours or delays on Monday due to a special event. There may be bus delays as well,” State Police tweeted Saturday.

“Please note there is no threat to public safety, but please plan ahead for potential traffic disruption.”

State Police are likely referencing the speech Biden is scheduled to give about his plans to drastically reduce cancer deaths and boost treatments.

The speech is set to take place on the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s famous speech outlining his vision for putting the first man on the moon, which took place in 1962 at Rice University in Houston.

Biden has long harkened the fight against cancer back to this momentous achievement, recently calling it “this generation’s moonshot,” but he is not the first to do so.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon gave an address on reducing cancer deaths in which he said “the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease.”

Cancer is a close, personal issue for Biden, as his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.

The next year, Biden launched the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative while serving as vice president to Barak Obama.

In February 2022, after going on hiatus during the Trump presidency, Biden relaunched the initiative.

At the relaunch, the president announced new, aggressive goals in the project’s fight against cancer, including cutting the rate of cancer deaths in half in the next 25 years and improving treatments and quality of life for cancer patients and caregivers.

Biden previously spoke about the Cancer Moonshot initiative in Boston in October 2016 at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate, which is next door to the JFK library.