A Closer Look at Columbus Growth and Rail Transit
From the CBus Transit Blog:
Census and Transit
A few days ago the Census Bureau released some updated figures concerning the population of US cities. While Columbus continued to grow, it was surpassed by Austin, Texas and slipped from being the country’s 15th largest city to the 16th. Columbus remains, however, the largest city in the country without a form of rail transit thanks to the completion of Phoenix’s light rail line. But is there a correlation between our falling rank and our city’s lack of a comprehensive plan for improving our cities transportation opportunities? Perhaps. CBT looked at the five fastest growing cities in the country (by percentage) with populations over 500,000 to analyze their rail transit systems.
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Related Tags: demographics • growth • light rail • passenger rail • population • streetcars
July 6th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Seriously, this has become a major retention issue. When I stop and think about it, literally every one of my friends that have moved out of Columbus to pursue “real life” are now in a city with rail transit. 100% of them. I can’t say for certain that that’s the reason they went where they did, or the reason they left here, but it’s definitely not just a coincidence.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
We need real transit like Columbus is going out of style.
July 6th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Check out my 10 year plan for rail in Columbus.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
@garret - great work. Have you sent this to anyone at the city?
July 6th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Beautiful. Hire that man!
July 6th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Thanks guys. I did this about a year ago when the streetcar thing was hot. Today I was updating my portfolio and decided to include it. Who do we need to talk to to get this done?? Let’s do this before I get a job out of the state.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
MB - holla at this gentleman.. :P
July 7th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Garrett…that plan is incredibly thought out and well put together. While I love the idea, I wonder about costs. I see that you included your proposed fees. With ridership, would those fees be enough to cover costs? Any private investor or private companies to run and maintain the system? These may not be questions you are prepared to answer.
Like I said, I love the idea, I just worry about money. The city is asking to raise taxes and plainly admits that those taxes are not enough to cover our budget woes.
We need to find you the right people to talk to about this project as you have something here….
July 7th, 2009 at 1:11 am
It could be perfect and the city will ignore it, with that being the best outcome. The city can’t even standardize what a complete street is, so until they figure out how to properly fix what we have, I’d actually rather not put rail options in their hands.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Columbusite: Who exactly are you talking about when you say “the city”? Every single person who works for local government? I’ve met a lot of people who “get it” and your blanket statements would seem to include them.
Ultimately, everything boils down to money. The City of Columbus can’t make money appear out of thin air. A great idea is a great idea, but if you don’t have the money to make it happen, then it’s a little silly to complain about a lack of visionary leadership and their ability to make it magically happen.
Also, I think you’re confusing “inaction” with “ignoring”.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Central City Recording, did your friends move to Cleveland or Buffalo?
Order the 3C’s in terms of rail transit options, then in terms of economic and demographic success. There is actually an inverse correlation.
Cleveland, St. Louis, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh all have rail but are hardly models of health. If you look at the cities in the Midwest that are doing the best: Columbus, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis - all growing at faster than the national average - only the Twin Cities has any real rail transit. Nashville, TN is rocking and rolling and only has a toy train. Austin, TX doesn’t have light rail either, does it?
I’m a huge transit supporter, but the facts don’t back that Columbus needs an expensive rail system to be successful.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I think that by adopting a long-range, best-case-scenario residents from all neighborhood could see how one step in another part of the city will eventually come to their door step.
The best case scenario can be a rallying point for and verify the importance of small projects; whether they be complete streets, change in bus efficiencies, or streetcars.
So we end up with two plans: a feasible plan for basic transportation in the region which we already have and a best-case scenario for improving the quality of life and sustainability in the region.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am
“I’m a huge transit supporter, but the facts don’t back that Columbus needs an expensive rail system to be successful. “
Agreed. But the degree of success?
July 7th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
The people who “get it” are letting those that don’t continue with the status quo of traffic flow being most important priority for any street they are given control over. If you want to leave rail up to people who think wider, faster roads are the solutions to our all of our problems, well, you can, but I wouldn’t.
While money is a problem, even more so are our priorities with respect to what money we do have. Instead of ensuring money is spent wisely on our roads we’re throwing away millions where we won’t see any sort of investment because it was decided long ago that it was set aside for traffic flow when the city should re-evaluate such plans like adding three lanes to Hilliard-Rome Rd and three more for Hard Rd. Let’s add more lanes we won’t be able to maintain. Yeah, they “get it” alright.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
garrettbe - I love the plan, I have seen several ones that are impressive. I am a huge rail supporter myself and I believe rail can be successful. Unfortunantly, funding is the number one factor. Rail happens if federal, state, and local funds come together at the same time. Sunbelt cities had a jump on rail transit due to large population increases and “new money”. Obviously the state of the economy will place a hold on local rail projects across the country except for the projects that have stimulus dollars. Hopefully, one day the funding will be there for rail transit and Columbus will eventually see an alternate mode of transit.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Arenn,
Austin does have a new commuter rail line:
http://allsystemsgo.capmetro.org/capital-metrorail.shtml
July 7th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Columbusite,
How do you expect streets like Hard Road and Hilliard-Rome Road to become complete streets without the sidewalks and bike lanes that are included with the projects? I’m guessing the answer is that you just don’t care about those parts of the city.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
@cbusislander. How do we get federal, stage and local funds to come together? It’s certainly harder without a plan.
It’s kind of awkward that without a plan we can’t get funding or support but without funding we can’t get a plan or support — an odd conundrum for cities like our own.
It’s all about priorities and having the right mindset.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
John, you know very well that adding lanes will just induce more motorized vehicle traffic. If they’re going to add extra lanes, fine. But they better be bus-bike lanes and there should only be one lane added on each side. You don’t complete a street by pushing bikes off to the side of the road alongside speeding traffic. I bike, I know. Sidewalks are great, but more than doubling the amount of road one has to cross and offering very few places to cross doesn’t make them very effective. These plans do not even approach anything close to a complete streets policy. I’m not fooled by bike lanes and sidewalks, since they can add all they want. Plans like these are still overwhelmingly geared towards cars with everything else an afterthought.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I disagree. In the case of Hard Road it would be almost impossible to induce more traffic since everyone is already driving. Nobody walks or bikes because there are no sidewalks on any of the major roads in the area. There is almost no transit, just the #30 Express during rush hours on Smoky Row. I guess there could be some trips that aren’t being taken, but what is really needed is an opportunity to mode-shift.
This project provides a chance to shift modes to walking and biking. I know we disagree on the value of bike lanes, but I would have used them on Hard Road growing up. I went to three schools on Hard Road, and lived less than 1.5 miles from any of them. We were bused to all three schools because there was no safe way to walk or bike to school. When we turned 16, everyone got cars, so we could sit in traffic for up to 30 minutes to go 1.5 miles every day. It was crazy, but there was no alternative. The rare times we would walk was usually to or from a football game on Friday nights and we had to walk in the drainage ditch on the side of the road. It would have been really nice to have sidewalks or bike lanes.
Lastly, you seem to want every road in the city to be a two lane road with a median like Gay Street, but a city’s roadway network isn’t a one-size fits all thing. There is a need for five or more lanes on some roads. Maybe Hard Road is one of those roads? It certainly seemed it when I was growing up. I don’t think the parallel routes like Snouffer, Billingsley, Sawbury, Summit View, or Jewett need five lanes, but Hard probably does.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Thx for the correction on Austin. Do you believe that is a major factor in that city’s success?
July 7th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
No, it just opened this year. Austin has been successful for a long time before now. They do have an excellent bus system though, which I mentioned here:
http://xingcolumbus.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/cota-ridership-up-but-still-room-for-improvement/
July 7th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
While the original post was a bit simplified in its analysis, I think some of the counterpoints are oversimplified as well. Transit-Oriented Development has a lot of indirect measurements that are hard to line up all in the same column when comparing the growth rates of these cities. A person or a business may not cite rail transit as a main reason that they relocate to a different region, but I would guess that it could very easily be attributed as an indirect reason for many.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
It would be more interesting to look at growth and property values within a region (by census tract) before and after a rail line is constructed.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
garrettbe - We did have a plan for a startup, “North Corridor Light Rail Project” but didn’t get the federal dollars for it. Believe me there should be a comprehensive rail plan developed. I blame COTA for not playing an role in rail. Our public transit entity doesn’t do anything, not even put web space devoted to a possible light rail startup in Columbus.
We need to have a web site similar to www.sunrail.com - to provide the general public information on rail possibility in Columbus.
As far as the growth discussion, the cities having the most success are the ones attacting the most “out of region” jobs and/or overall job growth. Employment is the number one reason for migration and why the sunbelt has been growing so much.