Ohio rail group's call to save public transportation at odds with support for $1 billion rail plan

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The recent launch of a Web site by a rail advocacy group that designed it to showcase the wishful thinking that's pulling Ohio's proposed first-phase, $564 million "quick start" plan to restart surface grade, conventional train technology running between Cincinnati and Cleveland, ignores the very real problems that will be created for passengers who arrive at their destination only to learn that the local public transportation system can't take them where they want to go, when they want to go.

Public transportation services in every city in Ohio are shrinking and fares are rising, says All Aboard Ohio (AAO), a non-profit group that wants to see passenger rail a reality in Ohio and believes the 3-C quick-start plan being pushed with all the political might Gov. Ted Strickland and his rail chiefs can muster is the best way to get there.

Ohio's failing public transportation systems

But a recent call from AAO to the public at large to lobby their federal and state officials to help stop or even reverse a decade or more of plunging pubic funding for them, that is further exacerbated by declining revenues, worried riders and vanishing routes, shows the group's recognition that without viable public transportation systems in the principle stops of Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland, the already slow 3-C train they are backing, whose average speed will be 39 mph and whose one-way travel time will be a slow six and one-half hours, would have another challenge to deal with as its riders may be stranded at stations that offer few good ground transportation options to get them to the church, or anywhere else, on time.

As it stands now, convincing Ohioans to leave their car for a long train ride will be a monumental challenge. A report by the U.S. Census shows nearly 83 percent of working Ohioans drove to their job alone in 2008, just slightly lower than the previous year. Ohio was among 12 states where 80 percent or more of workers drove alone in 2008.

The state of Ohio's public transportation problems can be seen in recent announcements by the state's three largest transit systems, which announced another round in a series of service cuts, fare hikes or both. The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, carrying half of Ohio's 250,000 daily transit riders, announced it will need to reduce or eliminate service on nearly 30 popular routes next year. Cincinnati Metro recommended a 12 percent service reduction with a fare increase proposal. The Central Ohio Transit Authority in Columbus will increase fares by up to 26 percent in 2010, while other transit systems statewide are also following having to leave more riders at the curb.

Ohio among worst states in funding for public transportation

But like the midnight ride of Paul Revere, AAO is also riding pall mall, but its warning if for a different purpose. "Your public transportation service to work, school, day care, health care, grocery store, voting booth and elsewhere is endangered," say the bold red, capitalized letters on the group's flier asking that public transit be saved.

"Public transportation services in every city in Ohio are shrinking and fares rising just as the need for jobs access is greatest!" shouts their flier.

The group's clarion call on public transit in Ohio is built on the premise that the state's population is aging and owning a car or two is too expensive for many families.

It says Ohioans need public transit more than ever but 'that it just isn't a federal or state priority -- right now.' Even though federal and state governments say they can't afford to support transit, AAO says "they spend your tax money for new roads to build new suburbs that drain your aging neighborhood of residents and jobs."

AAO says Buckeye lawmakers and leaders are one of the worse groups when it comes to providing operating support to public transportation, according to information from the American Public Transportation Association that shows only 10 states support transit less than Ohio. Per capita, Indiana spends 3.6 times more than Ohio on transit, Michigan nearly 10 times more, and Pennsylvania than 33 times more, as reported by Policy Matters Ohio, a progressive economic think tank. Ohio transit systems have been left to fend themselves, a grim reality AAO says happened after Congress in the late 1990s eliminated all operating funding for transit systems in metro areas with populations greater than 250,000. In 2001 Ohio elected officials slashed state funding for transit by 75 percent. Today, AAO says, all transit agencies are dependent on municipal or county funding sources for nearly all of their non-passenger revenue. Without public funding, these systems would drown in red ink because fares alone never turn a profit for contemporary systems.

So what's stake? Well, lots, AAO says, like access to jobs, food, education, health care and "even the voting booth..." Federal funding exists to build bus and train facilities, we're told, but money to run those systems was eliminated a decade ago, leaving state and local officials to find the money.

Ohio, it seems, has reduced public transportation funding by 75 percent since 2001 while other states have done just the opposite. Today, the group says, transit funding is less than one percent of the $3.8 billion annual budget of the Ohio Department of Transportation. State officials, presumably Gov. Strickland and members of the General Assembly, say it's up to local officials to find the money.
 

Rail group paints support for public transportation as civil rights issue

AAO, claiming public transportation is a civil rights issue, says nearly all of Ohio's urban counties are seeing their financial ability to support transit diminish as jobs and residents move to distant new suburbs built near new highways.

So with all this hand wringing, does it makes sense to back a surface-grade rail plan, that will at a minimum cost $1.3 billion and maybe more to fully build out, when key support systems like buses or commuter rail systems that are integral to the successful operation of the 3-C, if and when it is ever built, are allowed to atrophy because government revenues have hit hard times?
 

Legacy by car, oil companies on take down rail systems haunts Ohio, nation to this day 

As Americans hyperventilate over the excitement and expectations that Euro-style trains traveling at impressive speeds of 200 mph can engender, they forget that integral to the exhilaration of riding a high speed train in Europe and China and Japan is the tremendous investment those countries have made and will continue to make in their supporting transportation infrastructure systems.

In 1949, National City Lines, the front group owned by General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone, Mac Truck and Philips Petroleum to take down urban rail systems was found guilty in a Chicago court room of conspiracy, a conviction that was later upheld by a federal appeals court. Their punishment for destroying America's transit systems was a $5000 fine. No one went to jail but they went on to earn billions from the increase in sales of cars and buses. The legacy left from this group's fabulously successful elimination of their widespread but less expensive, more affordable and efficient rail competitors haunts us to this day.

As this site shows us, after nearly a century during which public transportation systems failed in large part because public policy support for mass transit systems declined as it shifted to forcing the nation to rely on and invest in roads, cars, buses and trucks as the modes of transportation to use to move people and things from place to place, about 30 communities, including Cincinnati and Columbus, say they now want to invest in streetcar systems. Their eyes, however, may be larger than their wallets.

Voters of Cincinnati last month voted down an initiative that would only allow a rail system to come to town if it was first approved by voters. In Columbus, the idea for a street car program being pushed by the mayor is moribund until such time as the city's finances perk up enough to make discussion on it sensible, despite the challenges presented by capital costs, operating issues and who is supposed to ride it.

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