The new one-day, unlimited ride passes are part of Metro’s ongoing fare payment overhaul that began back in 2011 with the introduction of new electronic fare boxes.
The new day passes will be able to be purchased directly on any Metro bus as you board. Jill Dunne, Public Affairs Manager at Metro, says that all the purchaser will need to do is notify the driver before paying their fares. The pass is then activated upon its first use and will be valid for unlimited rides until 3am the next day.
Government Square Ticketing Kiosk [Travis Estell]
The passes cost $4.50 for Zone 1, which is anything within city limits, and $6.30 for Zone 2. A pass purchased for either zone accounts for all necessary transfer fees.
Since these day passes will be ideal for visitors, you can also purchase them in advance at the sales office on Government Square. The passes can then be distributed to friends or family members and used at their convenience, only being activated upon their first use.
“Riders have been asking for day passes for several years,” Dunne explained to UrbanCincy. “They are great for visitors, occasional riders and anyone who plans to ride Metro frequently throughout the day without worrying about exact change or transfers.”
In many cities around the world, however, the idea of buying day or month passes is a thing of the past thanks to the advent of smart card payment technology. If Metro were to switch over to a system like this, which their new electronic fare boxes are capable of handling, it would allow for riders to use enabled bank cards or loadable fare cards.
“We are looking at all options for fares to make it convenient for our riders,” Dunne emphasized. “We have been working on ‘smart cards’ for a while and I hope we’d be able to roll them out in the future.”
Another new feature riders can soon expect, and has been rumored for some time, is a regional stored-value card that works on transit services offered by Metro and the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK). Metro officials say they are optimistic that will be available within the next few months.
Those interested in getting their hands on the new day passes can do so by attending a ceremony Metro will hold at Government Square on Monday, November 3 at 10am. To celebrate the moment, Metro employees and SORTA board members will be giving out 500 free day passes on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Taking transit is not always a gratifying experience. Sure you are reducing your stress by not sitting in traffic, and you’re reducing the impact on both your wallet and the environment. But that does not change the fact that there are many times where you are waiting for your bus or train in unpleasant circumstances.
Of course, unpleasant waiting and riding conditions are not the only things keeping some people away from taking transit, or upsetting those that already do.
The Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) has been trying to fix some of these issues with recent service enhancements and new transit facilities. But those efforts have only gone so far with a limited budget.
Here’s where you come in.
If you have an idea that you think would improve the transit experience for existing and potential future riders, Ioby – a neighborhood crowdfunding program – wants to hear about it. In partnership with Transit Center, they will select the best applicants and award them up to $4,000 in matching funds to implement their idea through what they are calling the Trick Out My Trip campaign.
In order to qualify, organizers say that projects should be non-digital tools that improve the public transportation experience, focus on a single node within a transit system (train station, bus station, bus shelter, subway or metro stop, bikeshare docking station), encourage the use of clean transportation, or be something that is in the spirit of improving shared public transportation experiences.
Ioby also asks that project budgets not exceed $10,000, and that each project involves a group of three or more people working together.
Since Ioby is a crowdfunding platform, project budgeting will require each application to create their own crowdfunding page where the amount of money they raise will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $4,000, by Ioby.
Those interested are asked to submit an initial form of interest by Monday, October 6. From there projects will be selected, with fundraising activities taking place in late October. Organizers say that projects will need to be implemented by November 25, 2014, with reports on their effectiveness delivered by December 16.
The UC*Metro program, which allows University of Cincinnati students, faculty, and staff to purchase discounted transit passes, has seen many changes since it was introduced in 2007. With the latest extension to the agreement, the cost is unchanged; students will be able to purchase passes for $53 per semester for the next three academic years. The cost for employees is also unchanged at $160 per semester.
What riders will notice, however, is that several of the Metro facilities they’ll use have been significantly upgraded. Work is now complete on the Uptown Transit District, Metro’s name for a number of improvements at four locations near campus. In addition to wayfinding signage and improved lighting, all of the new stops feature real-time arrival information, which was first introduced by Metro in 2012, and two of the stops also feature ticket vending machines, like the ones Metro installed at the Government Square bus hub earlier this year.
The Uptown Transit District upgrades are an example of how the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) is continuing to improve service and increase ridership in spite of its limited budget. In February, we reported that SORTA is one of the best stewards of limited financial resources, compared to 11 peer agencies across the country.
In 2012, SORTA built the Glenway Crossing Transit Center park and ride location, which seves several routes, including the 32, 38X, and 41. Earlier this year, SORTA reported that ridership was up by as much around 20% on these routes compared to the previous year.
While SORTA isn’t anticipating a specific increase in ridership due to the Uptown Transit District upgrades, the goal of those improvements was to “make it easier for current and new riders,” Jill Dunne, Public Affairs Manager for SORTA, told UrbanCincy.
Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley (D) announced Harry Black as his pick to fill the role of the city’s equivalent of a chief executive officer.
It has been widely reported that Black is the current finance director for the City of Baltimore, and that he had a tumultuous tenure while serving as the chief financial officer for the City of Richmond, VA. When selected for the Baltimore job, The Brew had the following to say regarding Black:
Baltimore’s new director…was introduced to the City Council as a green-eyeshades number cruncher well-versed in municipal bond transactions.
That dull description hardly fits with Black’s varied career and his sometimes volatile personality that included an attempt to evict the Richmond school board from its offices and frequent brawls with the Richmond City Council.
It has also been widely reported in the Baltimore and Richmond media that Black earned the nickname of being “the mayor’s bull dog” and “Baby Wilder” in reference to former Richmond mayor L. Douglas Wilder.
What makes this interesting is the explanation for all the turmoil in Richmond, by both Black himself and Mayor Cranley. They say it was due to tensions over the transition of the city from a city manager form of government, to a “strong mayor” system.
It should be seen as no coincidence that Black has been selected for the Cincinnati role after he had ramrodded through a new form of government in Richmond that is also being proposed in Cincinnati by a Cranley loyalist – Christopher Smitherman (R). If Black’s history, and Cranley’s style of governance, is any indication, one can assume Cincinnati’s transition from a city manager government to a strong mayor system may be just as tumultuous.
What adds further intrigue to the selection are Black’s other noteworthy leadership moments.
Harry Black face the media [Fern Shen/The Brew]
In 2007, then Richmond Mayor Douglas Wilder (D) asked for an outside audit of the city school board’s finances. When rebuffed by the school board, Wilder then forced the move and had Black conduct the operation. In order to do so, Black, as the city’s chief financial officer, withheld half of the board’s non-payroll funds and tried to evict them from their offices.
Such behavior and loyalty would come in handy for Mayor Cranley if he does in fact try to dismantle the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA), and shift its control into City Hall – something he has been calling for since his time on city council in the early 2000s.
Later on in his tenure at the City of Richmond, he was nominated to become to the city’s chief administrative officer, but was rejected by the city council, according to The Brew.
Then, in 2008, Black’s office was slammed by a KPMG audit that highlighted a slew of auditing inconsistencies and faults including outdated and unreconciled city financial accounts, improperly recorded account deposits, and more than $5 million in money that was not recorded at all in the city’s cash account as it should have been.
According to the Richmond Times Dispatch, “The memo said millions of dollars from different sources of city money either were not recorded or were accounted for in the wrong period. It also criticized city officials for poor record-keeping of financial transactions, noting that they couldn’t document spending on capital projects or the details of complex economic-development deals.”
At the time, Black attributed the failures of his office to the limited resources he received from the city council, and institutional problems that restricted his ability to hire and fire staff as he pleased.
Black says that he has since learned from his troubled career in Richmond, and that his subsequent experience in the private sector has bolstered his credentials. Unfortunately, there are also disputes regarding his past performance and experience.
Harry E. Black claims to have supervised a $500-million construction program at an architectural consulting firm where, according to a federal administrative judge’s finding in 2006, he “was not a key employee” and “had no management authority.”
[…]
Looking at a joint venture by McKissack & McKissack and Global Commerce Solutions Inc. – a company founded by Black’s wife, Sheryl Black – Small Business Administration Judge Thomas B. Pender ruled on May 24, 2006 that “the preponderance of the evidence” showed that Harry Black had “no management authority when he worked for McKissack & McKissack” despite his title.
“Mr. Black is not a key employee of M&M [McKissack & McKissack] and has no ability or power to control M&M. He was originally hired by M&M as an independent consultant and his role as vice president was in name only,” the opinion, obtained by The Brew, said.
But it is what was uncovered by The Brew last October that raises potentially the biggest concern. At that time, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D) was moving forward with awarding a $185 million contract to Dynis LLC to replace 400,000 water meters throughout the city and county.
The problem was that Dynis had no experience in doing such work, and that an actually qualified contractor submitted a bid that was $100 million less, but not accepted. Perhaps predictably so, it was uncovered that Dynis had connections to one of the mayor’s top campaign donors, and would make a considerable profit off of the contract.
While the story was uncovered by Mark Reutter, who Mayor Cranley dismissed yesterday as a “silly blogger”, it eventually became front-page news and earned The Brew national acclaim for the work of its “bloggers” who previously had careers as investigative journalists for various newspapers.
While the story centered on Rawlings-Blake and the unethical process of awarding contracts by Baltimore’s Board of Estimates, Black’s position as the director of finance is tasked with working with the Board of Estimates on recommending and issuing contracts.
Mayor Cranley appears to have used the national search for a new city manager to hand-pick a candidate that will be used to advance his own political agenda.
Black’s past shows a troubled public tenure, questionable private sector career, and paints a picture of a man who greatly desires power and authority, and dislikes those who get in his way.
While his accomplishments in improving minority contracts and reducing structural deficits in Richmond and Baltimore are laudable, his strong-headed and ruthless approach to governance should give Cincinnatians pause.
Bicycle Commuter at Moerlein Lager House [Randy Simes]
Research continues to show that Americans are driving less, but are biking, walking and using transit more. This is true in Cincinnati to the extent that transit ridership has increased in recent years.
While originally attributed to the economic downturn at the beginning of the century, these trends have continued while the economy has rebounded – leading many to believe it is an indication of new market forces being driven by aging Baby Boomers and emerging Millennials. Perhaps predictably so, governments have been slow to change with the changing economic forces.
Despite a growing number of trips for biking, walking and transit, funding has not increased correspondingly. In fact, many communities have seen funding for these non-automotive forms of transportation decrease as governments have worked to cut spending at all levels. This, new research finds, is only exacerbating the problem of having underfunded these modes of transportation for many years.
“Conventional statistics tend to under report active travel because most travel surveys under-count shorter trips (those within a traffic analysis zone), off-peak trips, non-work trips, travel by children, and recreational travel,” stated Todd Litman, Executive Director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, in a summary of his report entitled Whose Roads? Evaluating Bicyclists’ and Pedestrians’ Right to Use of Public Roadways.
Transportation Mode Share in Cincinnati Region [OKI]
“More comprehensive surveys indicate that active travel is two to four times more common than conventional surveys indicate, so if statistics indicate that only 5% of trips are by active modes, the actual amount is probably 10-20%.”
Litman indicates that funding levels tend to be much lower than even the low 5% trip share estimates, and recommends changing those levels to reflect not only the current trip share levels, but those that could be achieved should investments be made.
Unequal Funding Allocations at Regional Level
At the local level, the same situation of unequal funding allocation exists. In the 2040 Regional Transportation Plan, developed by the OKI Regional Council of Governments, approximately 88% of the nearly $21.5 billion in funding is recommended to go toward roadway projects, just 11% to transit and a mere 0.1% to bicycle and pedestrian improvements.
While the level of investment in transit appears closely aligned with current ridership levels for commute-related trips, it is far below ideal levels for bicycle and pedestrian investments.
“Relatively aggressive pedestrian and cycling improvement programs only cost about 1-4% of the total per capita roadway expenditures, or just 4-10% of general taxes spent on local roadways,” Litman contests. “Since walking and cycling represent about 12% of total trips, and a much larger share of short urban trips, and since most North American communities have under-invested in walking and cycling facilities for the last half-century, much larger investments in walking and cycling facilities can be justified to meet user demands and for fairness sake.”
OKI leadership contends that the organization’s regional planning document does not accurately reflect the level of investment being made in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, noting that many of the “roadway projects” in their plan actually include bike and pedestrian elements.
To that end, some recent improvements have been made with regard to bicycle infrastructure. The City of Cincinnati has installed around 40 miles of new on-street bike lanes or paths over the past several years, and has plans to install a total of 290 miles by 2025. The City’s Bicycle Transportation Plan, however, has been plagued by a lack of funding and has been relegated to only moving forward when roadway resurfacing projects emerge.
Not everyone is convinced, however, that enough is being done in terms of the overall investment needed for bike and pedestrian improvements.
Implications for Regional Transit
Of the money being recommended for transit investments, not including operations, approximately 96% is targeted for the contentious Oasis Line – a commuter rail line connecting Cincinnati’s far eastern suburbs with downtown.
Furthermore, the vast majority of OKI’s recommended transit funding is aimed to pay for ongoing operations – not pay for system expansions or improvements.
This grim financial picture for transit gets even worse when considering contributions from state and local governments.
In Kentucky, meanwhile, communities struggle with state law that prohibits any dedicated source of transit funding – thus forcing the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky (TANK) to go before the state legislature every year seeking money, similar to how Amtrak must annually go before Congress.
Impact on Environmental Justice Populations
These dire funding and political situations have led to Greater Cincinnati taking the title of being the most populated region in North America without any rail transit; while even far less populated regions advance their own regional transit plans.
What makes the figures more troubling is that those most affected by the imbalanced funding appropriations are minority, low-income and disabled populations. While only 6% of the region takes transit, bikes or walks to work each day, that number escalates to 17% for African Americans, 11% for Hispanics and 10% for people with disabilities; while low-income commuters see that number spike to 21%. Quite simply, the lack of funding for non-automotive forms of transportation is most damaging to those who can least afford it.
Bicycle Commuter at Moerlein Lager House [Randy Simes]
The results of this inequality sparked a recent lawsuit by the ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation and Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a complaint against the Wisconsin Department of Transportation over a $2 billion highway interchange project. In MICAH & Black Health Coalition of Wisconsin v. Gottleib, the ACLU states:
“WisDOT explicitly refused to consider transit expansion (or transit in any way) as part of this proposal. This will further widen the already large gap between transit-dependent communities of color and disproportionately white suburban commuters. The ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation was one of the organizations that have complained about the government’s decision-making and reporting process, as well as how the project would exacerbate segregation and disparities in transportation access for low-income people to jobs.”
And while some of these mode shares may seem low, it has been noted by the U.S. National Household Travel Survey that commute trips are the lowest for walking and biking, while personal trips and trips less than one mile are significantly higher for both modes.
“In much of the region where we have large concentrations of EJ populations the sidewalk network is already quite developed, the roadway network is quite developed and available to bicyclists and the transit service is good,” countered Bob Koehler, Deputy Executive Director at OKI. “We do, as a community, need to do a better job at sharing the road and being aware of pedestrians to make these facilities better for all modes.”
Highway Building Frenzy
Even though young people are increasingly either delaying or choosing not to get a driver’s license at all, user fees collected from the gas tax continue to decline, total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has been decreasing since 2007 and annualized VMT has been decreasing for nearly a decade, the nation and Cincinnati region continue to build new capacity.
Of the roughly $8.3 billion being recommended for roadway projects in OKI’s planning documents, approximately 73% of that is targeted for additional lanes, new facilities or new interchanges, while reconstruction and improvements to existing roadways account for the rest.
I-75 Construction Work at Mitchell Avenue [Jake Mecklenborg]
“Although VMT may be slightly declining in recent years in some parts of the country this may not be a long-term trend. Clearly the region has many needs,” explained Brian Cunningham, Director of Communications at OKI. “This plan addresses the significant existing safety and congestion needs. The plan is updated every four years and will provide an opportunity to revisit the assumptions.”
Litman argues that shifting some of the investment from roadways to bicycle and pedestrian projects due to their proven ability to reduce congestion and improve safety not only for bicyclists and pedestrians, but motorists as well. He also believes that such policy directives empower people by giving them the ability to choose between multiple transportation options for each of their trips.
“It is important to recognize the unique and important roles that active modes [biking and walking] play in an efficient and equitable transportation system, and the various benefits that can result when walking and cycling are improved, including indirect benefits to people who do not currently use those modes,” Litman concluded.
“Just as it would be inefficient to force travelers to walk or bike for trips most efficiently made by motorized modes, it is inefficient and unfair to force travelers to drive for trips most efficiently made by active modes, for example, if children must be chauffeured to local destinations because their communities lack sidewalks, or if people must drive to recreational trails due to inadequate sidewalks and paths near their homes.”
