Who's Been Working on the Railroad?
There's a story in Sunday's Dispatch about local stakeholders grumpily muttering about a proposed streetcar line in Columbus. Well, it's Monday morning, and I figure I can be grumpy with the best of them...
Why can we not get some real leadership on mass transit? I get really damned sick of this. Energy is arguably the #1 domestic issue nationally, and increased mass transit is always mentioned in conservation plans. Then we try to implement it locally and/or regionally and nothing happens. Some background:
in 1999, Columbus voters had the opportunity to provide funding to a local commuter rail network. They supposedly were in favor of it when they talked to pollsters. They decidedly were not when they got into the voting booths. Then, when contacted by pollsters again, Ohioans overwhelmingly supported rail.
In 2006, after years of study, the Central Ohio Transportation Authority came up with a modest light-rail proposal, a streetcar proposal, and a hi-speed bus proposal for the north corridor, linking downtown to the Short North, Campus, Clintonville, and Worthington. After a public meeting discussing the alternatives, it was determined that there wasn't enough support for any of them. They approved endorsing a plan to increase regular bus service.
Public support for increased taxes for increased bus service was lukewarm at best, with people telling the Dispatch that they would support light-rail or other new technologies, but never support increased automotive mass transit.
Regardless, the issue of a new tax levy for increased COTA bus service was on the ballot in Franklin County this election, and it passed. We think. The margin is less than 4000 votes with 20000 provisionals outstanding.
Of course, people might be more inclined to support local rail options if they provided convenient connections to regional rail networks. Like the Ohio Hub network, which would connect to the MidWest Regional Railway System. If that system ever gets built. It was proposed in 1996, and made slow progress through at least 2004. The Ohio Hub is still being discussed, but nobody seems to be talking much about MWRRS any more, although it is apparently still a living project.
Despite the efforts of conservatives who believe that passenger rail is too unpopular to ever become a reality, and that studying the issue is just low-grade pork.
So we have multiple local and regional mass transit proposals with extensive background research and support. A major part of the regional proposals involves connecting to air transport. If all were implemented we could have an incredibly convenient and efficient sytem of transport that uses less energy and creates economic opportunities. We see time and again that the public supports alternative transportation options generally.
What do we get? We get communities opposing the individual small pieces of the puzzle, and supporting the one mass transit piece that nobody really likes.
Is this inevitable? Apparently not. When we're talking about freight instead of passenger service, we can bend over backwards to get things done. The Rickenbacker intermodal facility, a partnership between local, state, federal, and private interests is moving forward without a vote by the people of central Ohio. Pushing this project is supposed what earned the three Republican Congressional Reps from Central Ohio the endorsement of the Dispatch in the November elections. It looks to increase the transfer between rail and OTR freight, with one of the benefits being reduced highway usage.
So, although Rail Transport has its advocates in Ohio, where is the coordinated leadership for local/regional/national, public/private integration of mass passenger transit? Because it needs to get done, and without a real vision to sell people, and a grand sense of shared responsibility that doesn't leave one community or neighborhood holding the bag, it won't. Connecting downtown to the Short North is a good start. Mayor Coleman has done a good job making that case. Connecting the streetcar to the Madison/Milwaukee Wisconsin Hi-Speed Rail Corridor is obviously a much tougher, but In my humble opinion, necessary job.
Doesn't anybody else want to see that case made?
2 comments:
I took a city planning class in college and we talked about mass transit quite a bit. I forget the exact number, but for a mass transit system to be financially viable, you have to have so many thousands of people living per square block. Columbus doesn't have that, not even close. What will happen is that you will get a system that is perpetually financed, in large part, by the public. COTA doesn't even make enough to cover its expenses, even with its limited services. Worst case for the public, COTA's tax levy doesn't pass and they close up shop. What happens if the public gets sick of light rail, and it's vastly underused?
Having said all that, I lived in the UK for a year and absolutely loved their mass transit system. You can get around the entire country without a car, and it's not a pain. Of course, a gallon of gas there was about $6.00 at the time (2004). I don't think we'll see any real push for these mass transit systems until oil prices are much higher. I hoped the recent oil price spike would cause people to reevaluate why they drive such huge cars (I never saw 1 full size pickup or SUV in the UK). Alas, that hasn't happened. I recently read an article that said SUV sales were increasing again. Will people never learn?
Openmind,
The thing is, if you take any one piece of the puzzle, like light rail, and look at it by itself, it is going to be of somewhat limited utility, and it will have a low probability of succeeding. The poster child for this is probably Detroit's 'People Mover,' a monorail that ran in a very small ring around the decaying core of downtown. Who did they ever think was going to drive downtown, park their car, and pay to take a monorail four blocks?
Sad to say, but ditto for the streetcar.
Now, if there were fast, fixed-route transportation options from Easton/CMH, Polaris, and Tuttle/Sawmill to Nationwide and Downtown, connected to a hi-speed rail network that could get you to Cleveland, Cincy, or Pittsburgh in 90-120 minutes (i.e., the Western Europe model),I can think of lots and lots of people who might ride.
On the other hand, if we started with a hi-speed link between CMH and Pittsburgh, it would die in less time than it took to have fixed the grade. None of the other links would ever get built.
I do think an integrated network could work, as the whole would be greater than the cliched sum of the parts. The parts themselves don't really add up to much. As long as we rely on federal, regional, state, and local entities to step up by themselves, we're goinfg to see repeated failures that make it that much harder for the next folks to make an attempt.
It won't work, as you said, until cars and planes achieve an even higher cost in terms of money, time, and frustration, but the trends are already there. A bigger, related problem is that my 'network' relies on bringing auto passengers out of their cars, off of their regional flights, and into trains. It does nothing for the majority of people who already rely on an inadequate mass transit system. None of those light rail lines I mentioned would run south of I-70, for instance.
So, anyway, if the pieces are worth considering, a comprehensive solution with unified leadership is worth considering for the sake of implementation. In my admittedly poorly-informed Monday-Morning grumpy opinion.
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