COTA’s proposal for light rail still struggling
COTA’s proposal for light rail still struggling to get on track
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Tim Doulin
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Central Ohio transit experts have spent more than two decades and nearly $13 million studying every aspect of light rail.
So why aren’t we riding trains to work?
You can blame some of it on pooh-poohing by city leaders, some of it on voters and a bit on COTA’s cold feet.
“These projects move along at glacier speeds,” said Cleve Ricksecker, executive director of the Capital Crossroad Special Improvement District and a member of a transit coalition in the 1990s that supported rail.
“Cities have struggled for years with these issues. Columbus is not unique.”
Although the idea of some sort of rail system first came up in Columbus in the 1970s, it wasn’t until 1984 that the Central Ohio Transit Authority had a cash surplus and considered spending it on light rail. However, the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce told COTA to forget it and instead concentrate on its buses.
The idea came up again in the next decade, and COTA and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission studied rail options at a cost of about $1.5 million.
COTA began planning for a 1995 levy campaign to expand service and build an 11.2-mile light-rail system along the city’s North Side that would have cost about $256 million.
But without city backing, COTA killed the levy plan, blaming impending federal cuts in operating assistance and capital for new projects.
Four years later, city officials got behind light rail and COTA put a levy request on the ballot.
Voters rejected the idea.
“Generally, I believe every time we have studied it, eventually the recommendation was for light rail in that corridor,” said Bob Lawler, MORPC’s director of transportation.
“However, as those studies get stale and if COTA doesn’t have the finances to go forward with the options, they have to be restudied.”
Since 2003, an additional $11.2 million, including about $367,000 from COTA, has been spent to study the feasibility for light rail, bus rapid transit and streetcars.
COTA had said light rail would cost about $545 million, with about 25 percent of the cost to be paid with local tax dollars.
But the transit system is working on new cost estimates for light rail and the other two options. COTA officials say they will present a recommendation to their board this summer.
“Anything that was done previously is institutional history,” said William Lhota, COTA’s president and chief executive officer.
“(We) are starting with a clean slate in developing a long-range comprehensive transit plan.”
The board could endorse one of the three transit options or none at all.
Whatever the decision, COTA plans to put a levy issue on the November ballot.
Lhota said light rail, bus rapid transit or streetcars would be just one piece of the transit plan that would primarily restore some of the bus service that recently has been cut, add runs to overcrowded existing routes, extend service hours and provide new bus service.
“As we talk about a levy, this is not a levy on a North Corridor (light rail) project,” he said. “This is a levy on a transit plan for central Ohio.”
Alternative transit in the North Corridor, which has the highest population concentration in the area, has been studied and discussed several times the past 20 years.
In 2002, COTA’s project was one of eight nationwide that received a recommended rating from the Federal Transit Administration. But by the end of 2004, the federal agency told COTA it was going to lose that rating.
“It had nothing to do with the merits of the project,” Doug Moore, COTA vice president of planning and customer service, recently told the COTA board. “It had to do with the fact we had not been to the voters yet.
“We had been telling (the federal agency) for several years that we were close to going to the voters. So basically, they backed away from the project and said we can’t give you a recommended rating now because you haven’t brought that voter money to the table yet.”
Without that rating, COTA can’t receive federal funding for the project. But COTA says that if it secures the local funding, it will regain the rating and be able to get federal funds, which would cover about 50 percent of the cost of the project.
COTA slowed work but did not abandon the project.
“It is frankly astonishing we have the 15 th-largest city and we have no passenger rail at all,” said David Hull, a member of the MORPC transportation citizens advisory committee.
Hull said he supports improving bus service.
“But if that is all you do, it is going to look too much like more of the same without anything significantly new and improved,” Hull said.
Tony Kouneski, a vice president at the American Public Transportation Association, said he remembers Columbus talking about light rail in the mid-1980s when he was general manager of Cincinnati’s bus system.
“. . . On the whole, a major public-works project like this takes a lot of time because it takes the support of almost every major segment of the community,” Kouneski said.
“There is lots of evidence all around the country where communities have taken 10 years, 20 years and sometimes 30 years to build a rail system.”
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Related Tags: bill lhota • COTA • Development • light rail • passenger rail
