Columbus is Killing COTA Before Our Eyes

Unconscionable decisions are being made in the midst of a climate crisis that city leaders swear they believe in.

The Central Ohio Transit Authority will eliminate Line 6 service along Cleveland Avenue on Monday. It will also not reinstate late-night service and reduce Sunday and early morning service along the 1, 2, 10 and CMAX lines—among other cuts.

In July, the organization announced it would not seek a paltry .5% sales tax increase to finance an East-West bus rapid transit lane, which would have been the first of its kind in Columbus. The city also turned over bus stops in the Short North to Lyft and Uber as “pick-up zones.” Then its trustee boards couldn’t even reach a quorum for its monthly meeting a couple of weeks later.

Staffing shortages have hampered the agency like every other business. Busses are routinely late and caught in the same traffic as those who travel by personal car. Its ridership stagnated last year, but it’s still about half of what it was before the pandemic.

In March 2020—remember what happened shortly after that?—the union's secretary-treasurer resigned while under FBI investigation for embezzling roughly $260,000 from her co-workers. That woman died of breast cancer before she was even charged, and the scandal died entirely.

Last year, Shannon Hardin, in one of his five total tweets mentioning COTA, touted reforms that would be coming to the struggling bus line:

Shannon Hardin @SG_Hardin

3 things @lizforus will do to support TRANSIT as a commissioner 1 appoint bus riders to the COTA Board 2 fight to include anti-displacement funds in any future rapid transit investments 3 help ensure that transit plans include sidewalks, bike lanes, & reduces traffic fatalities

A year later, they have accomplished none of that. Here are the professions of the current trustees:

• President, Marlon Moore Consulting, LLC

• Attorney at Law, Treneff Cozza Law, LLC

• Associate Vice President, Local Government & Community Relations, The Ohio State University

• Former Assistant City Manager, City of Westerville

• Whitehall City Councilor

• Director, City of Columbus Department of Public Service

• Partner, Kooperman Mentel Ferguson Yaross, Ltd.

• Chief Information Officer, City of Dublin

• Assistant Business Manager, Sprinkler Fitters Local Union 669

• EVP, External Affairs, American Electric Power

• Social Responsibility & Environmental Sustainability Manager, White Castle Systems, Inc.

Do any of those professions seem like they’re taking the bus to work or anywhere else? How much time, collectively, do you think any of them have spent on a bus in the last year? This stuff isn’t personal to them. The results speak for themselves on that.

The cutting of service has directly impacted the scheduling of operators, as one explained to The Rooster:

“Pay is good for what it is. Scheduling sucks; overworked like fuck. No time to spend with family and friends. Since the pandemic, they cut routes by ending service from 12 a.m. to now 10 p.m. which now makes drivers like me who have been there for a decent amount of years back at square one with shitty off days and shitty hours.”

The pandemic has compounded mental health crises as well. Bus operators are often the first on the scene before police or paramedics.

“Mental health [problems] have been at an all-time high. That’s 98 percent of the people we deal with. Those not mentally stable to drive themselves all that… barely getting regular working folks, et cetera.”

My girlfriend is a young professional who takes COTA for her commute downtown. I would be lying if there weren’t a couple of times that I was alarmed by some of the stories from her commute. It’s understandable why some women would be too scared to put themselves in that situation. Unfortunately, that’s the society we’ve made ourselves.

There is, however, a problem with the bus stops. Sure, they look nice despite the hostile architecture downtown and in the Short North, where tourists and important business people see them. Outside of those areas, however, things get grim.

Here are some bus stops from my travels around town:

W. Mound Avenue

Parsons Ave.

W. Mound Ave.

Sullivant Ave.

These types of stops are not an anomaly. They are the majority.

That last one was my old stop in the Bottoms. That abandoned house you see being leveled used to serve as the cover from any nasty weather that came upon you while waiting for a bus that was inevitably running behind schedule. That house no longer exists.

What kind of person wants to wait at bus stops like that after a hard day’s labor? It’s the kind of circumstance to which you only subject yourself if you have no other option.

And our city leaders, who claim to care about climate change, seem to have no interest in elevating mass transit service above that threshold. Like, look how much better bus stops become with some minor additions:

W. Broad

A trashcan! A bike rack! A love seat, albeit with anti-homeless architecture! There is no cover from the elements, yet this is more humane than any of the previous pictures. An older woman can sit while she waits for the bus. A passenger can toss his trash while he waits for the bus. A rider can park his bike at the stop and leave it for when he returns.

But look what it can become with a simple cover:

This should be the standard issue bus stop. A bench for people to sit on. Room for a wheelchair user to seek cover if need be.

Don’t hold your breath for these to become widespread. The COTA budget for 2024 and 2025 includes $83,000 each year to “replace up to 15 bus shelters.”

That’s $5,533 per bus stop, which is apparently an expense we can’t even afford for half the bus stops.

And hell, our covered bus stops have gone backward, too. Old COTA stops didn’t include hostile architecture to prevent someone from taking a nap on a bench:

E. Main Street at Ohio Ave

City Council does not ride the bus. The mayor does not ride the bus. No trustee is an active bus rider.

Is it any wonder why this city lags with adequate mass transportation? We’re already the largest city in the country without light passenger rail service. Are we trying to be the largest city without bus service, too?

Because I understand that Republicans in the legislature hate transit and refuse to fund it from a state level, but don’t tell me that COTA in its current state is the best Columbus could do if we had leaders that cared about it. That’s something I refuse to accept.

Otherwise, I’m starting to think the city government is strangling the bus system, so they no longer have to pretend to care. It’s hard to tell the difference at this point.

THOSE WMDs. Recipe: Cheesy white bean-tomato bake… The extraordinary way we’ll rebuild our shrinking islands… State government may soon kill a solar project in Mike DeWine’s backyard… In 1500s Europe, masks were fashionable and scandalous… The rise of “stealerships” and the shady economics of car buying.