COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Like Rip Van Winkle waking up from his long sleep, a coalition of transportation and environmental groups are trying to awaken leaders of a state, now ranked 40th in the nation for its level of commitment to public transportation, that they should turn around their dismal, decades-long record of declining investments towards transportation in order to reflect the positive role public transit can play in creating a more equitable, vibrant and sustainable Ohio.
This about-face on increased state spending for public transportation is the new cause cé·lè·bre of 10 transportation, public policy, social service and environmental organizations that are uniting under the banner "Save Transit Now, Move Ohio Forward (STNMOF)."
The group's stated mission is threefold: 1) overturn the state constitutional prohibition on using Ohio gas tax revenues and motor vehicle fees for non-highway purposes; 2) use currently available flexible transportation funding sources – such as gas taxes collected from off-road vehicles, farming and landscaping equipment, and revenue raised from vanity license plates – to fund mass transit; and 3) lobby the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and metropolitan planning organizations to whenever and wherever possible take advantage of flexible federal highway funds and use them for public transportation.
Arguments ignore state's hobbled finances
As compelling as the group's statistics are that more Ohioans travel on buses and trains within the state's metro areas each day than fly in and out of its airports, or that 350,000 Ohioans daily use buses and trains to reach jobs, medical appointments, grocery stores, day care, pharmacies, schools, job training and other services, or that for every $1 invested in public transportation, $6 is generated in economic returns, the environment for this Hail Mary pass of a call to arms could not come at a worse time, as state revenues and increasing uses for those revenues are moving in opposite directions.
Hard hit by the affects of the Great Recession, Ohio's jobless rate, now at 10.6 percent, may linger there or even increase through this year and maybe into 2011, presenting fits for its next governor and legislature, who will be forced to wrestle with the size and scope of state government as we know it.
Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland fought a bitter battle with Senate Republicans at the end of last year over how to fill a gap in the current two-year state budget of nearly $900 million. Prior to this test of wills and political ideologies, Strickland, due to cliff diving revenues, was forced to slash state spending by about $2 billion, including downsizing the state's workforce by about 5,000 jobs. Ohio's repayment tab to Washington for money it has borrowed to pay benefits to Ohio's army of jobless workers is approaching $2 billion, with repayments slated to start within two years.
With personal and sales tax revenues falling, Ohio has been forced to rely on billions in one-time stimulus largess from Washington to balance its approximately $50 billion budget. As the pocketbooks of individuals and families come up short, they turn to social services provided directly or indirectly by the state. All such services got whacked good during the most recent budget cycle, and the prospect for them returning pink again is a long shot at best, given the declarations by some economists, not the least of which have been those who advise Strickland on such matters, that rosy times reside far off in the future.
For Gus, bus may no longer be one of 50 ways to leave his lover
Despite the need for public transportation, Ohio transit agencies have been forced to slash transit services and raise fares, according to a media release by STNMOF. It stated that elimination of federal operating funding for public transit systems serving communities of more than 250,000 people a decade ago forced Ohio and other states and their local governments to make up for the federal cut.
While most states dramatically increased support for public transit, the group said, Ohio has cut funding by 75 percent since 2002.
"Less than one percent of the Ohio Department of Transportation’s budget is spent on public transit," Ken Prendergast, Executive Director of All Aboard Ohio, said in a statement. This amount, he observed, is less than the cost of mowing the grass growing along Ohio's Interstates.
Amanda Woodrum, a researcher at Policy Matters Ohio, a non-partisan economic think tank group located in Cleveland that is one of the 10 groups comprising STNMOF, said it is no accident Ohio's public transit agencies are in crisis but the "direct result of choices we Ohioans have made on how to spend our state transportation dollars.”
As bus services gasp for funding, STNMOF groups on board with $564M slow train
Others in the group, who point to the "healthy mix of transportation choices" in "livable cities around the world" and who invoke the fierce urgency of now in their plea to provide Ohioans a "transportation alternative that includes safe, reliable and convenient public transportation services," are among the same voices pushing Ohio's plan to spend over one-half billion dollars ($564 million for a "Quick Start") on a conventional, grade-level train between Cincinnati and Cleveland that will take six and one-half hours to make a one-way trip and that will average 39-mph doing so.
While most Ohio newspapers have been obedient scribes, repeating the talking points of state rail bosses who accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative on what many say is the boondoggle of the 3-C rail project, glimpses of newspapers seeing the reality of the situation are few and far between, but this one shows some are thinking their own thoughts.
New train choice offered but ignored by ODOT/DOD officials
ODOT and development officials met last May with officials from Tubular Rail, a Texas company, who have offered them a golden opportunity to help birth a new, fourth mode of advanced train technology, one that will also create thousands of jobs, in Ohio. But these officials, bound to the expensive, slow status quo train technology of the past, are refusing to see the future other states like Texas and Nevada are now ready to work towards.
One factor complicating any success the so-called 3-C train corridor plan will have has already been articulated by the group, namely, a dismal lack of supporting transportation infrastructure, including basics like train stations, that will likely leave 3-C riders stuck at their destination, as bus and transit agency operations implode rather than expand.
Ohio had more passenger rail service 158 years ago than it does today. Those livable cities in other parts of the world some STNMOF point to did not forsake their public transportation systems for the car as America has and continues to do.
America's I-love-my-car mindset powerful obstacle
During the Christmas season, television commercials showing people being spell bound by the new BMW or Mercedes that slowly drove were both pure magic and more unassailable proof that Americans have been inculcated over the decades to love their cars, making this call to resuscitate public transportation by changing priorities of Columbus lawmakers maybe a bridge to far at a time when state resources, which could easily be north of 5 billion or into double figures if Republicans are successful in trimming or eliminating the state's take from the personal income tax, force a bloodbath over state spending.
Maybe STNMOF, as part of its campaign to convince Ohio lawmakers to turnaround their spending priorities, should launch a media campaign touting bus and commuter train services. They could also revisit their choice of train technologies, because telling everyone the future will be a rehash of the past isn't a winning idea.
The future demands a futuristic train. But if you can't see the future, you can't take advantage of it, especially if you spend lots of money on outdated, carbon-based public transportation systems. Consultants and metropolitan planning organizations -- who can strangle a good idea to death given enough time -- are partners in the problem. ODOT, whose budget is about $3.8 billion, routinely spends about $506 million each two years just in contracting with consultants, who rake in millions or even billions in planning dollars and who spend years in the Byzantine world they've created that few have challenged despite it being one of the major stumbling blocks to making transportation the key building block to the urban and suburban sprawl that now paralyzes Ohio and other states and isolate seniors and the disabled in suburban shires far from urban cores.
The public, despite exhortations by this group or ones to follow, will likely still be waiting decades from now on the bus to arrive on time and take them where they want to go, if they don't already have a new, electric car to quietly, efficiently get them to the church on time.
To read more stories on people, politics and government in Ohio, go here. You can also become a subscriber above or you can follow me on Twitter @ohionewsbureau.
Comments
It will be great to watch Status Quo, i have bought tickets from ticketfront.com forward to it.
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