Ohio ranks near the bottom among states in spending on public transportation — just 63 cents per person annually, or less than 1 percent of its transportation budget. By contrast, New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland spend more than $150 per person a year.
The result is an uncompetitive, unbalanced, and inadequate network of mass transit systems in Ohio that must cut service despite growing demands for ridership, raise fares, or both.
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The Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority plans to raise its fares in July. State aid provides 1 percent of TARTA’s budget, compared to 12 percent in 1994.
Without dedicated funding, the state allocated $7 million in general revenue to transit last year — down 80 percent from $43 million in 2000. Only one transit authority in Ohio, Cleveland’s, operates rapid-transit buses or rail service. Nearly one-third of Ohio’s 88 counties have no public transportation at all.
“Transit systems need to be reliable and convenient,” Amanda Woodrum, a researcher for the progressive advocacy group Policy Matters Ohio, told The Blade’s editorial page. “When you force people to pay more for less, you put transit systems in a death spiral.”
Ohio is saddled with a transit-unfriendly governor and General Assembly. In 2011, Gov. John Kasich thumbed his nose at $400 million in federal funds to develop high-speed rail in Ohio. The money went to states with less-myopic leadership, including Florida, New York, and California.
Worse, a decades-old amendment to Ohio’s constitution generally prohibits money from state motor fuel taxes from going to public transit. Few states have such nefarious restrictions.
Even auto-centric Michigan allocates nearly 10 percent of its transportation revenue to public transit. The federal government allocates nearly 20 percent of federal gasoline tax dollars to transit.
Ohio’s support for public transit, which provides 115 million rides a year, needs a big boost. The Ohio Transit Needs Study, commissioned by the Ohio Department of Transportation and published this year, found a market demand for 35 million more rides in 2015. In urban areas such as Toledo, nearly 15 percent of residents don’t have cars and rely on public transit to get to jobs.
Dedicating 10 percent of state transportation dollars for transit, as Policy Matters Ohio advocates, is a good starting point for debate. Amending the state’s constitution to permit gas taxes to go toward transit, and setting aside a percentage of those revenues in a transit trust fund, also would help.
Changing the state constitution, however, is arduous, whether citizens or state lawmakers initiate that process. Instead, the General Assembly could approve a statutory exception to the constitution by defining mitigation of traffic congestion — and thus, public transportation — as a road-related use.
Even without legal or constitutional changes, federal transportation dollars — which make up roughly half of Ohio’s $3 billion a year transportation budget — are not excluded from transit uses. With political will, it can, and must, be done.
Urban regions nationwise that compete with Ohio’s metropolitan areas for talent and capital are expanding mass transit to slow sprawl, improve air quality, connect people to jobs, attract young people, and spark millions of dollars in transit-oriented development. To do the same, Ohio needs adequate, sustainable funding for transit.
First Published March 23, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
