COTA 2010: How is it? « Columbus Underground Messageboard

Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion » Transit

COTA 2010: How is it?

[26 posts] [12 contributors]

Topic Rating:

(Total Ratings: )
Rate this topic:

Started 2 years ago by Columbusite
Latest reply from BCNation

Tags:

cota

12 Next »

Columbusite
Minneapolis
Login to Send PM

Well, I can't say I'm looking forward to taking the #2 again today. A couple of days ago I took it from W 1st in the SN to Downtown. I was using COTA's website to see where the nearest buses were. One was already at Long, where I wanted to go, and the next closest bus was at Hudson, with two other buses right behind it. When it finally arrived the bus was moving at maybe 20 MPH the whole time and made several stops thanks to COTA's insistence that there be a stop available at just about every block. Surely Lhota has to know that there are way too many stops which seriously slows down service? By bike I would have been to my destination in 15 minutes. Going by COTA and walking a handful of blocks off High took 45 minutes.

Also amusing was a woman at one stop who asked if the #2 went all the way down High. The driver told her it goes down to Main and the woman thanked her and walked away. Yes, having the #2 go up and down High vs. veering off to E Main, which should be a different line, would just make too much sense.

It's 2010 and COTA still sucks.

Posted 2 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
Login to Send PM

I rarely ride the #2 and I rarely have problems with any other routes.

Do you ever try other bus lines, or are you judging all of their service based on their most busy, congested route?

Posted 2 years ago #
Columbusite
Minneapolis
Login to Send PM

I'm mainly judging COTA on the line which traverses the main street in the city. I've ridden a couple other routes and was not thrilled with those. One of them being the #10 on a Sat. when the wait between buses is quite a bit higher. I'm just glad Brioso is open so I can wait there and leave once a bus gets close to Downtown.

COTA makes the #2 congested. You can defend them if you want, but I alone could turn the #2 around and make it work so much better. Right now it even goes all the way down Brice road to a little suburban shopping center. Out there you'll be waiting an hour or two in this weather for the bus. Cut down the number of stops which are too close to each other first and then if necessary cut out Main and Brice and make that a different route, preferably an E Main route only, no Brice service unless it's another separate park & ride route.

Posted 2 years ago #
Cookie
Flyntonville
Login to Send PM

I'm not a particularly lucky person, but I've had nothing but good experiences riding the #2, which I do pretty frequently.

Posted 2 years ago #
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
Login to Send PM

The COTA website isn't god awful like most other city service oriented websites. They have a detailed customer support page with multiple points of contact.

Have you tried reaching out to them?

http://www.cota.com/Contact-Customer-Support.aspx

Posted 2 years ago #
agtw31
columbus
Login to Send PM

last year,my car broke down right in front of graceland.left it at a garage there,and jumped on a bus.
took me 45 minutes to get to sawmill & bethel.
say what you want,cota kicks ass.

ETA:grab all those folders you see on the bus

Posted 2 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
Login to Send PM

Columbusite wrote >>
COTA makes the #2 congested. You can defend them if you want, but I alone could turn the #2 around and make it work so much better.

I'm not going to defend the #2, and I agree that there are ways that they could improve service times.

I'm just saying that your statement of "It's 2010 and COTA still sucks" should be more along the lines of "It's 2010 and riding the #2 still sucks."

;)

Posted 2 years ago #
Anne
King Lincoln
Login to Send PM

Busses got held up today at Broad and High, but that is because of other idiot drivers who kept running the lights. I have had pretty good service so far this year riding the 6 and the 11.
But today I walked home from work, left at 4pm, got home in about 30 minutes and still beat the busses whose drive would usually take 10-12 minutes. !

Posted 2 years ago #
claw71

Login to Send PM

Walker wrote >>

Columbusite wrote >>
COTA makes the #2 congested. You can defend them if you want, but I alone could turn the #2 around and make it work so much better.

I'm not going to defend the #2, and I agree that there are ways that they could improve service times.
I'm just saying that your statement of "It's 2010 and COTA still sucks" should be more along the lines of "It's 2010 and riding the #2 still sucks."
;)

I hate to say it, but COTA sucks. For as much money that we've pumped into them over the years I think the final product is far below what this city deserves. Jon Myers is correct, their website is underwhelming, but not as bad as some. It's not intuitive at all so if you type in a landmark or an intersection the subsequent search turns up nothing. That needs to improve.

I work on Sawmill. I live near 71 and Cooke. If I want to take COTA to work I will either arrive an hour and 40 minutes early or 50 minutes late. That's not including that 1.3 mile walk I have coming after I get off the bus at the nearest stop. Oh, and there's no bus home. How about that? Even if we found a resolution for these issues there's still the 1.3 hour ride. I can bike the 12 miles to work faster than that and I do when weather permits. Even though it's crazy to ride a bike on the roads between home and job.

I like some of the steps they've taken. I don't mind the fare increase, but I can't take the bus even though I really want to. I love the 21 bus in theory, but until they get a supporting route to get me from High Street to my house(ish) I can't take it unless I'm up for a 2 mile walk in the middle of the night. Which I am at times, but not in January.

I know, I know: Blah, Blah, Blah...Boo-frickin-Hoo, plus I'm a big fat weiner. It's just that I've been watching COTA screw around for 20 years now and I'm really tired of watching them fall well short of serving the entire metro area.

The way things are going, we'll have colonies on Mars before COTA gets it right. Lohta's doing a better job than the crooks who ran COTA before, but that bar was set really, really low.

Posted 2 years ago #
michaelcoyote
!seabus
Login to Send PM

COTA is great if you want to go on High, Broad, Cleveland or Main. It's also very downtown centric. I'd really like to see more express and cirulator buses. Where are the buses that will get me from downtown Worthington to Dublin, or Polaris to Powell? I am also still waiting on a good "Airporter" bus that will get me from Port CMH to downtown without switching buses and taking an hour to an hour and a half.

I do like COTA, and I do use it, especially in the winter (I used it today, and it was awesome), but it could be far more useful to me as far as getting me out to and around the 'burbs when I need to go.

Posted 2 years ago #
honavery
Arizona
Login to Send PM

No problems with the 7 or the 4 yet this year. Or really, ever. I'm riding it a pretty short time though.

When I lived in Chicago for a little while, they'd have the same problems with the buses getting stacked together during bad weather. I'm not sure this is a Columbus/COTA specific problem.

Posted 2 years ago #
claw71

Login to Send PM

michaelcoyote wrote >>
COTA is great if you want to go on High, Broad, Cleveland or Main. It's also very downtown centric. I'd really like to see more express and cirulator buses. Where are the buses that will get me from downtown Worthington to Dublin, or Polaris to Powell? I am also still waiting on a good "Airporter" bus that will get me from Port CMH to downtown without switching buses and taking an hour to an hour and a half.
I do like COTA, and I do use it, especially in the winter (I used it today, and it was awesome), but it could be far more useful to me as far as getting me out to and around the 'burbs when I need to go.

That's the problem. COTA opertes under the assumption that everybody works downtown. So they focus on that. Granted, when they did offer limited cross-town service they didn't get many riders but gas was a buck a gallon and the schedules weren't ride friendly either. To be honest, I think COTA has too many stops on some of its routes. I swear I could stand at one stop on the 8 and hit the sign for the next stop down the street with a loogy.

Posted 2 years ago #
lifeontwowheels
Highland West
Login to Send PM

claw71 wrote >>

michaelcoyote wrote >>
COTA is great if you want to go on High, Broad, Cleveland or Main. It's also very downtown centric. I'd really like to see more express and cirulator buses. Where are the buses that will get me from downtown Worthington to Dublin, or Polaris to Powell? I am also still waiting on a good "Airporter" bus that will get me from Port CMH to downtown without switching buses and taking an hour to an hour and a half.
I do like COTA, and I do use it, especially in the winter (I used it today, and it was awesome), but it could be far more useful to me as far as getting me out to and around the 'burbs when I need to go.

That's the problem. COTA opertes under the assumption that everybody works downtown. So they focus on that. Granted, when they did offer limited cross-town service they didn't get many riders but gas was a buck a gallon and the schedules weren't ride friendly either. To be honest, I think COTA has too many stops on some of its routes. I swear I could stand at one stop on the 8 and hit the sign for the next stop down the street with a loogy.

I think it has more to do with the centrality of downtown. Most transit systems work on the model of a central transit hub.

Posted 2 years ago #
claw71

Login to Send PM

lifeontwowheels wrote >>

claw71 wrote >>

michaelcoyote wrote >>
COTA is great if you want to go on High, Broad, Cleveland or Main. It's also very downtown centric. I'd really like to see more express and cirulator buses. Where are the buses that will get me from downtown Worthington to Dublin, or Polaris to Powell? I am also still waiting on a good "Airporter" bus that will get me from Port CMH to downtown without switching buses and taking an hour to an hour and a half.
I do like COTA, and I do use it, especially in the winter (I used it today, and it was awesome), but it could be far more useful to me as far as getting me out to and around the 'burbs when I need to go.

That's the problem. COTA opertes under the assumption that everybody works downtown. So they focus on that. Granted, when they did offer limited cross-town service they didn't get many riders but gas was a buck a gallon and the schedules weren't ride friendly either. To be honest, I think COTA has too many stops on some of its routes. I swear I could stand at one stop on the 8 and hit the sign for the next stop down the street with a loogy.

I think it has more to do with the centrality of downtown. Most transit systems work on the model of a central transit hub.

True, and that's great if a community is downtown centric but decades of urban sprawl has altered Central Ohio and that is where COTA is failing. COTA's leadership basis their planning on that downtown model, never stopping to consider that Columbus has different needs.

It's not all COTA's fault. COTA didn't plan the city. The city planners designed everything around the car (Sawmill road doesn't even have sidewalks!). So when C-bus annexed huge chunks of land (like Polaris) they promoted development at the expense of killing downtown. That's where Coleman irriates me. He blames City Center's demise on its design. City Center was fine, it was the city's design that killed it. It's that same design, and COTA's failure to innovate around it, that kills COTA.

Posted 2 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
Login to Send PM

claw71 wrote >>
I work on Sawmill. I live near 71 and Cooke. If I want to take COTA to work I will either arrive an hour and 40 minutes early or 50 minutes late. That's not including that 1.3 mile walk I have coming after I get off the bus at the nearest stop. Oh, and there's no bus home. How about that?

I'm really tired of watching them fall well short of serving the entire metro area.

I think your example actually showcases that the problem lies more with the sprawling configuration of the outer portion of the city rather than with the bus system itself.

As MichaelCoyote said, COTA services pre-1950s Columbus very well. The portion of the city that was constructed after 1950 was done so in a manner that was entirely focused on personal automobile transit.

It sounds like you're expecting COTA to put a square peg in a round hole.

That being said, it doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement on COTA's end. I've long been a fan of the idea of 270 BRT line that would act as a giant wheel to service a lot of the suburban spokes and would probably help to cut down on those unridable commutes into Downtown and back out again to go from one burb to another.

I still think that it would be an uphill battle to get COTA to implement something like that because it would be tough to prove that suburban ridership would be there for it. Maybe I'm just not talking to the right people, but all of my friends and family and acquaintances who live in suburban neighborhoods usually consider those ares to be attractive because of their easy highway access, secluded residential communities, and plentiful parking at shopping centers and office parks.

If COTA built it, would they come?

EDIT: Just read your post right before this one, and it sounds like you've already touched on some of the points I was trying to make. ;)

Posted 2 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
Login to Send PM

claw71 wrote >>
The city planners designed everything around the car (Sawmill road doesn't even have sidewalks!). So when C-bus annexed huge chunks of land (like Polaris) they promoted development at the expense of killing downtown. That's where Coleman irriates me. He blames City Center's demise on its design. City Center was fine, it was the city's design that killed it.

While I agree with you that sprawling cannibalistic development had just as much to do with the death of City Center (although the design was also flawed), I don't think it's fair to say that if the city administration that annexed Polaris (I think it may have been pre-Coleman) hadn't done so, that it wouldn't have just been built outside of city limits, outside of the tax base, and still had the same negative impact on City Center.

It's typically a very damned if do, damned if you don't type of situation.

And the best part is that these types of developers will often reject integration with COTA routes and services. That COTA station located over behind the Sam's Club north of Morse Road would work a lot better if it were located in the center of Easton, right? Not according to Easton developers. They didn't want to have anything to do with it and pushed it as far away as possible.

Posted 2 years ago #
claw71

Login to Send PM

Walker wrote >>

claw71 wrote >>
The city planners designed everything around the car (Sawmill road doesn't even have sidewalks!). So when C-bus annexed huge chunks of land (like Polaris) they promoted development at the expense of killing downtown. That's where Coleman irriates me. He blames City Center's demise on its design. City Center was fine, it was the city's design that killed it.

While I agree with you that sprawling cannibalistic development had just as much to do with the death of City Center (although the design was also flawed), I don't think it's fair to say that if the city administration that annexed Polaris (I think it may have been pre-Coleman) hadn't done so, that it wouldn't have just been built outside of city limits, outside of the tax base, and still had the same negative impact on City Center.
It's typically a very damned if do, damned if you don't type of situation.
And the best part is that these types of developers will often reject integration with COTA routes and services. That COTA station located over behind the Sam's Club north of Morse Road would work a lot better if it were located in the center of Easton, right? Not according to Easton developers. They didn't want to have anything to do with it and pushed it as far away as possible.

Polaris was pre-Coleman, I don't blame him for that, but he has certaily embraced even more development in the area to the point where I wouldn't go to Polaris if you paid me. It's hideous. I remember when they put the Polaris interchange in, it was an exit to nowhere. God, I'm old.

Developers don't take public transit into account and the Easton folks didn't want the bus up there because when they were developing Easton the bus didn't transport Easton's target market.

I think, however, city planners need to be more aggressive in supporting mass transit. The casino is a classic example. The mayor's office is willing to play hardball with them but what about other developers? Not that it's perfect, but Portland has some pretty rigid regulations designed to control sprawl and contain different types of developments into predetermined zones. In Columbus development has been chaotic.

Regardless, COTA needs to adapt. It is, as they say, what it is.

Posted 2 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
Login to Send PM

claw71 wrote >>
Easton folks didn't want the bus up there because when they were developing Easton the bus didn't transport Easton's target market.

Sure, I understand why they didn't want it... and this type of anti-bus development mentality is exactly why it's near-impossible for COTA to just "innovate" their way into the most optimal suburban service configurations.

claw71 wrote >> I think, however, city planners need to be more aggressive in supporting mass transit. In Columbus development has been chaotic.

Agreed. Agreed.

Posted 2 years ago #
michaelcoyote
!seabus
Login to Send PM

claw71 wrote >>
Polaris was pre-Coleman, I don't blame him for that, but he has certaily embraced even more development in the area to the point where I wouldn't go to Polaris if you paid me. It's hideous. I remember when they put the Polaris interchange in, it was an exit to nowhere. God, I'm old.
Developers don't take public transit into account and the Easton folks didn't want the bus up there because when they were developing Easton the bus didn't transport Easton's target market.
I think, however, city planners need to be more aggressive in supporting mass transit. The casino is a classic example. The mayor's office is willing to play hardball with them but what about other developers? Not that it's perfect, but Portland has some pretty rigid regulations designed to control sprawl and contain different types of developments into predetermined zones. In Columbus development has been chaotic.

Keep in mind that Portland has a regional/metro development commission to control and focus development in the areas they want. I'd imagine to get that here, the city would have to pass on some of it's power to a regional entitity, and I just don't see that happening here.

I also recall the "road to nowhere", so you're only old if I am (the road actually turned off to Worthington Rd., so it was only "almost nowhere").

claw71 wrote >> Regardless, COTA needs to adapt. It is, as they say, what it is.

I agree. Saying that COTA services it's pre-1950 boundaries is great, but we're in 2010, so it's got about 60 years of catching up to do.

I also would like to see COTA become far more aggressive in servicing areas like Polaris, Easton, Dublin, etc., and a 270 beltway express and especially a BRT line could be a fantastic step in the right direction.

The fact that Easton was able to bully COTA from putting transit center up there is just fucking awful.

Posted 2 years ago #
BCNation
Franklin Park
Login to Send PM

COTA definitely needs to adapt....

Yes, it's very downtown and OSU-centric, but...what about the jobs along the outerbelt, for example? There is no local/crosstown service to Hilliard (the # 5's 2 AM & PM trips to Hilliard-Rome does NOT count), Polaris, or Gahanna (other than the # 95 & 96).

Keep in mind there will NEVER be service to Powell or Pickerington, because neither are in COTA's taxing district, but COTA though needs to be LESS downtown-centric, because the jobs have left downtown for years.

There should be more service to Westerville (other than being Cleveland Avenue-centric), they cut trips through Otterbein College & Uptown Westerville because nobody was riding them...problem was, they weren't on weekdays, but on Saturdays....and at weird times that really didn't work at all....and while there are now trips to the Ohio Health on Polaris Pkwy, whenever I go up to Westerville, only one or two people at most have ridden past St. Ann's Hospital.

Posted 2 years ago #