Development| Published on January 18, 2007 10:02 am

COTA is on the brink of living up to its name

By: Walker


COTA is on the brink of living up to its name

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Right now, Franklin County residents see COTA as COBA, the Central Ohio Bus Authority. Let’s change things to truly mean transit. This means, streetcars, light rail and buses. There are opportunities for COTA to embrace.

A recent study by the Center for Transit Oriented Development neatly documents how local bus and streetcar service complement each other for connecting and last-mile service, and longer-distance regional transportation requires light rail or commuter rail services (“Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the 21 st Century”).

Imagine Columbus in 10 years with an aggressive, informed and active plan from COTA. The proposed Columbus streetcar will spark further reinvestment in Downtown and connect Downtown residents and employees with jobs and recreation venues.

We could have an intercity passengerrail plan to connect Ohio’s cities and the Midwest region. Then, stopping Downtown, passengers could hop on the streetcar to get to a meeting or on a light-rail train to get to the suburbs and vice versa.

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Author: Walker Walker is the founder of ColumbusUnderground.com and co-founder of TheMetropreneur.com along with his wife and business partner Anne Evans. Walker has turned local media from a hobby into a full time career over the past decade and serves on multiple boards and committees throughout the community.

1 Comment

  • gramarye January 18, 2007 1:50 pm

    Quite an optimistic perspective, but realistically, if COTA had asked for roughly the cost of one extra happy meal in that levy request, it would have failed. Light rail proposals went nowhere and even the streetcar proposal, though certainly having more steam now than two years ago (which I confess to being surprised to see), is no given. In addition, if the streetcars do get built and are successful, the most likely next step would be expanding the streetcar lines further, not branching out into light rail, particularly because the suburbs have already been developed on the low-density model that makes life hard for fixed-route options.

    This reads to me like someone who knows full well that the voters only gave them an inch but plans to go for a mile anyway.

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