Ohio's future transportation system may involve less focus on highways

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 NPR Kevin Niedermier

Ohio's transportation emphasis will shift from highways to more public transportation if some Ohioans have their way The state has formed a task force that is holding public hearings across Ohio to help shape the state's transportation future. Last night, the task force came to Cleveland.

The Ohio Department of Transportations Task Force is made of government and business officials. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is the group’s chairman. He says that of the six public hearings held so far, including the one last night in Cleveland, most of the testimony called for less dependence on highways.

“There is a lot of discussion around public transportation and commuter rail tying cities together, which is not only a great ideal for people to be talking about in the past, but is now a necessity so to speak. I believe there should be investment in public transportation and commuter rail to tie cities together throughout Ohio.”

20 year-old Joe Inganfeld of Lakewood was at last nights meeting and his opinion mirrors Mayor Jackson’s and most of the other attendees.

“I feel that right now we have too much of a focus on ODOT’s money going towards highway and too little of it going towards mass transportations like trains. Right now in order to go to Cincinnati or Toledo you have to take a highway; you can’t take a train. It’s very inconvenient. If I’m going to go to Cincinnati or Toledo I’ll just take the car but that’s pretty expensive and it’s going to get more and more expensive.”

Gene Krebs is an ODOT Tack Force Member and a member of the Columbus based think tank Greater Ohio. He says young people’s opinions are very important in shaping transportation plans because businesses move to and expand in areas of concentrations of bright young people, and many of today’s bright young people would rather not drive themselves.

“And one of the key things they like to go and be involved in is mass transit, walk able communities, complete streets, places with sidewalks, that their models for growing up were the television shows Friends and Seinfeld. So Ohio’s going to lose out economically if we do not shift from being car centric to being more people centric.”

Use of public transportation is up nationwide but the bus and train systems are hurting financially because of rising fuel prices and reduced government funding, and Krebs says ODOT is not going to be able to keep building and repairing highways to move people and products.

“Their forecasting a 3.5 billion dollar deficit for the year 2015. 3.5 billion dollars! Yet despite that we keep hearing from economic development people around the highways, I just need to complete my bypass, I need to get my connector done and their not going to have the money to do that. We’re going to have to completely reconfigure how Ohio moves and transports citizens and right now we have a system where cars pay to move cars and we’re going to have to move to a system where it’s more about people being the ones being moved. Right now cars pay to move cars and people get to ride along as an afterthought because of the gasoline tax.”

ODOT’s budget is based on a state fuel tax and Krebs says that’s been hurt by a drop in demand and for high priced gasoline and by Ohio’s drop in population, and he says the budget problem will only get worse as cars become more fuel efficient.

ODOT’s final public hearing on reshaping the state’s transportation system will be in Akron this Monday at the John S. Night Center. The task force expects to present a final report to state lawmakers this fall.

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