COTA's Trustees took a whopping four (4) bus rides in 2025

I thought COTA made a mistake when they processed the records request the first time.

Twelve appointed members comprise the COTA Board of Trustees.

The board features a law partner, a CEO, a hospital lobbyist, an Ohio State Vice President, a non-profit president, an environmental organization’s Chief of Staff, a utility executive, a chief program officer, a trustee of an “innovation technology hub,” the president of a real estate firm, a labor union executive, a university vice president, and the Chief of Staff to the odious Mayor Suburbs.

Curiously, however, the COTA Board of Trustees does not feature a single soul that could be described as a regular user of Central Ohio’s only attempt at a mass transit system.

According to public records obtained by The Rooster, the 12-member board logged an abysmal four (4) rides using their free bus passes in 2025:

I’ll admit, I filed this request expecting to prove that COTA’s sachems don’t regularly ride the bus. However, after seeing the first return, I made a second request, thinking that COTA’s notoriously lackadaisical public records department had made a mistake.

That’s an unacceptable number for self-described leaders of a transit system that serves Franklin County and portions of four other counties, with an annual ridership of nearly 12 million people (and climbing!)

As a semi-regular transit user, I took more rides on the Satanic Six Bus in two days during the last legislative session than COTA’s Board of Trustees did in 12 months.

And I understand why most Columbus residents don’t use the bus. The propaganda around car ownership runs deep in this country, to the point where $1,000+ monthly car payments are becoming common, while loan delinquency rates hit a 15-year high in December.

The Satanic Six Bus is convenient for me, because it slides down Sullivant Avenue to within three blocks of the Statehouse. But taking the bus to South Linden or Clintonville because a much longer process than operating a motorized vehicle.

The average resident sees the bus as a last resort for the disabled, the destitute, and/or mentally ill. That’s even the case with ostensibly transit-friendly Reddit liberals always clamoring for “light rail” in a city built on sprawl—as if poor people won’t ride the train, too.

But the Board of Trustees isn’t comprised of everyday citizens. While I understand the need for the politicians to do favors masked as “tapping into influence networks” or whatever they tell themselves, what serious organization would recruit trustees who aren’t familiar with their end product?

Take Stephen Sayre, the Chief of Staff to Mayor Suburbs. Longtime readers of The Rooster can probably surmise how I arrived on him, but we’re not playing intramurals here.

Am I to believe that Sayre’s anti-transit boss appointed him as chief gremlin on the COTA board because of his passion for transit? If that’s the claim, I’m skeptical.

According to voter registration records, Sayre lives in Clintonville, roughly half a block from the Fantastic Four Bus that could take him to City Hall in 36 minutes:

That’s not bad considering the added productivity possible by not being responsible for navigating a 4,000-pound SUV at all times.

But I’d suspect Sayre, like most Americans, prefers a 12-minute commute along Route 71—which past city planners considered our true “mass transit” system—by personal automobile.

Actually, I don’t suspect. I know that’s what Sayre prefers, because as we can see, not a single board member rode the Fantastic Four bus in 2025.

Sayre apparently never thought to himself, “Hey, maybe I should see what this bus thing is all about?” There’s no natural curiosity about the end product after his boss anointed him as one of the most influential transit brokers in Central Ohio?

Does he not want to rub shoulders with the blue-collar workers who make the system run? Does he see himself as somehow above the residents that rely on timely service?

Could he even operate a COTA ticketing kiosk if I put $1,000 in front of him?

Those are just some of the questions that I would ask him. And if I caught him anywhere but a prepared sit-down interview, he probably wouldn’t have any meaningful answers.

I’ve written before that Columbus will never be “the Big City” until we do two things: reckon with Leslie Wexner (whom the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed on Wednesday!) and build a mass transit system worthy of those big-city dreams.

To the latter point, Columbus took a step in that direction in 2024 when we passed the LinkUS package.

I know City Council President Shannon Hardin cared about passing that because he was willing to sit down with me(!) and discuss what that vote meant for Columbus:

But we obviously have a way to go, because, four years after Hardin backed then-City Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown for appointment to a vacated County Commissioner seat, we still don’t have a single “bus rider” on the COTA Board:

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

12:21 AM · Jun 18, 2021

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1 Reply · 5 Reposts · 19 Likes

Alas, what could have been.

Because we do know that the woman who beat Brown for that appointment, then-State Rep. Erica Crawley, is a big advocate for the personalized vehicle, as evidenced by that time she blew through a red light, t-boned an old lady, and then summoned an aggressive mystery couple that turned out to be City Councilman Nick Bankston and his wife.

Would having one “bus rider” appointed to the board have changed that much? Probably not. Ideally, three bus riders would sit on the board. If that upsets the corporate types who enjoy their sinecures, there’s no reason the board couldn’t be expanded to 15 members.

Ultimately, the lack of bus riders on the transit board sends the message that politicians who appoint the Board of Trustees see bus riders as unworthy of rubbing shoulders with the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, utility executives, or CEOs.

There isn’t a single bus rider with a worthwhile insight? Not a single bus rider who could bring a unique viewpoint to discussions that impact them more than anyone else in the room?

I will never believe that for as long as I live.

THOSE WMDs. The wrath of Stephen Miller… Rama Duwaji’s First Lady style and the politics of borrowing fashion… Meet Cambodia’s cyber slaves… The curious cult of Aldi… The slow death of Britain’s TV channels.