Light Rail in Central Ohio

[spfld_expat]

We need to ask everyone in the community: Are you ready to open your pocket…

Terrible salesmanship. Leading with the sky high cost is not a good way to be persuasive.

[_calebross]

spfld_expat wrote:

We need to ask everyone in the community: Are you ready to open your pocket…

Terrible salesmanship. Leading with the sky high cost is not a good way to be persuasive.

Its a good way to be honest. And honesty is what lays the foundation for trust, especially when it comes to asking for a tax increase for mass transit funding, which we all know will probably have to happen.

[jbcmh81]

Walker Evans wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JAL wrote:</div>
Hopefully this can get momentum soon.

From the article:

“At this stage, the discussion would be entirely theoretical…”

Breaking News: No news to report.

In related news, Zach Klein may depart council by the end of the year.

Wasn’t there some organization that was going to release a list of potential priority mass transit routes this spring?

[Lu]

We need to ask everyone in the community: Are you ready to open your pocket…

I’m a big fan of mass transit, and would love to see light rail here. But the problem for Columbus is that our taxes are already sky high (among the highest of any city in America). Wallets are already way, way open, and taxpayers have been showing recently that they’re at their limits (e.g., recent rejections of CCS and zoo levies).

I don’t think asking everyone in the community to open their wallets even further is the answer. Elected leaders should look at creative funding options like a TIF on commercial property owners adjacent to the rail line (i.e., the landlords and developers who would benefit financially).

[heresthecasey]

jbcmh81 wrote:

Wasn’t there some organization that was going to release a list of potential priority mass transit routes this spring?

Some organization? Yes there is, we call it COTA.

[lazyfish]

from vintage columbus a little bit ago…. is there an election happening?

[jbcmh81]

heresthecasey wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>jbcmh81 wrote:</div>
Wasn’t there some organization that was going to release a list of potential priority mass transit routes this spring?

Some organization? Yes there is, we call it COTA.

Sorry, I couldn’t remember who was spearheading it. There’s been so many vague things going on in recent years with this stuff.

[Posole]

We should do a few more studies on mass transit. That always gets people’s hopes up and keeps them from pestering the politicians too much while the study is going on.

[WJT]

pestering the politicians

lol. Yeah…God forbid the politicians actually should expect ‘the masses’ to question ‘pester’ them.

[Ned23]

I’m starting to think that we’ll never get mass transit here but rather the whole concept will be replaced by on-demand Google cars that you hire from your smartphone before we ever get rails.

[MichaelC]

Ned23 wrote:

I’m starting to think that we’ll never get mass transit here but rather the whole concept will be replaced by on-demand Google cars that you hire from your smartphone before we ever get rails.

A lot of folks that were “on board” with mass transit five years ago are of this opinion today.

I think the counterargument is pretty straightforward: Mass transit will still have an important role in society and development. As with any transit system, it has to be developed and to be operated in concert. Columbus could be in the fortunate position, perhaps, of being the first major city in the world to build a mass transit system from scratch after driverless technology has arisen. Here’s hoping we rise to the occasion.

[ricospaz]

I’d be willing to help finance it. But don’t put it on homeowners alone.

[jbcmh81]

Posole wrote:

We should do a few more studies on mass transit. That always gets people’s hopes up and keeps them from pestering the politicians too much while the study is going on.

There have already been more than enough studies to make transit happen. The issue has never been the endless supply of studies, but the will to move beyond them. I have no faith that the renewed discussion will go anywhere beyond the “Let’s study this” phase, even with new city leadership in place. I’ll continue to be dismissive of all this until the moment that the plans are drawn up, financing is secured and construction has begun. Anything less than that means something could go wrong, the way it always has the past 35 years.

[Lu]

MichaelC wrote:

Columbus could be in the fortunate position, perhaps, of being the first major city in the world to build a mass transit system from scratch after driverless technology has arisen. Here’s hoping we rise to the occasion.

Good point. The driverless news that came out of the Detroit Auto Show last week was pretty exciting. (GM’s $500m investment in Lyft, Toyota’s $1b investment in driverless R&D.) There seems to be a lot of buzz around an Uber/Lyft subscriber model for driverless, which could be a complete game changer for urban and suburban transit.

[King Gambrinus]

Clearly the biggest hurdle is cost and no amount of studies are going to make that go away. As a city we’ve invested so very heavily in our road infrastructure and it’s so good that’s it’s hard to make the argument for another sizeable investment in mass transit. When you can basically a can get anywhere in the gigantic geographic area that is Columbus in 20 min it’s hard to sell mass transit. “so you’re telling me you want me to pay higher taxes to go walk to a station to pay for a ticket to get to a place in twice the amount of time and then have to walk from that station to where I actually want to go?”

I think the idea of driverless cars helps to make that argument even tougher. If I can sleep/read emails/do whatever on my way to work in a personal space and get picked up and dropped off exactly where I want to be without higher taxes that whole train thing seems even worse.

[Author]

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