With businesses vacating the downtown and moving to the suburbs where parking is plentiful, what is growing Columbus, Ohio, to do?
A private business-improvement group convinced its 500 or so members to pay for free mass-transit passes for their employees, with the fees going to the Central Ohio Transit Authority.
It will be fascinating if the plan can lift the paltry number of 6 percent of downtown workers currently taking transit.
(Take a look at our article back in 2015 noting that free passes is not a strategy to scoff at.)
The passes can be used on any day and on any journey – not just the commute. The program is limited to people who work downtown, turning a financial burden into an incentive.
“I think what the downtown pass program is saying is that Columbus doesn’t really have a parking problem, it has a transit shortage,” says Mike Tomko, a real-estate developer.
Most U.S. cities (apart from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the biggest cities) face one of two problems when it comes to getting people out of their cars and on to buses and trains.
The first problem is found in cities that peaked in the first half of the 20th century and planned their transit network before cars took over – Cleveland, Pittsburgh and St Louis, for example. They have narrow urban streets and compact downtown areas and neighborhoods. But many are declining in population, and the challenge is how to maintain a mass-transit system with fewer people and less money.
The second issue is prominent for fast-growing cities such as Dallas, Phoenix and Orlando that expanded with cars in mind in the second half of the 20th century. They have eight-lane freeways with little mass transit and large population growth. These cities have to figure out how to grow their public-transport options at a time when any suggestion of public tax increases is often pilloried by conservative politicians and unpopular with voters.
The idea was partly sold by pointing to a successful transit program at Ohio State, the third-largest university in the U.S. located just outside the Columbus downtown area. The school charges its 60,000 students a small fee for access to campus buses.
With the first two-year trial of the program set to begin next summer, the goal for transit ridership to downtown is to triple to 20 percent in the first few years.