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EducateWorthington.org

The 912 Project - Glenn Beck

912 Group of Central Ohio

Please let me know if you'd like your link added

["The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."]

COTA held a series of public meetings in late January, 2004 to update the public on the status of the North Corridor Light Rail Transit (NCLRT) Project and explain how comments and suggestions received from the public during the Public Scoping Period are shaping the planning process.

As part of the NCLRT Project’s environmental and engineering studies now underway, COTA held Public Scoping Meetings in July, 2003. Scoping is the process designed to inform the public, interested groups and involved agencies about the project, alternatives being considered and issues for public and agency review and input. The suggestions received during the Scoping Process were evaluated during the Screening Process to determine which alternative routes, modes and station locations will be carried forward into the next phase of the study.

The public meetings were held at the Columbus Urban League, the Worthington Municipal Building and the North Broadway United Methodist Church. Comments received during the public meetings will be included in COTA’s ongoing database of public comments and concerns and will be evaluated as the project moves forward.

Go to the following for COTA's Project Update:  http://www.cotafasttrax.com/pdfs/public_up...update_0104.pdf


 

Shoot, I wish we would have known about this. Would have been a great Cavalry event.

I would really like to have Tom weigh in on this from a "sprawl" perspective. The Buckeye Insitute recently highlighted a study (http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/Articles/2...2_04Hisrich.htm)  that indicates sprawl actually tends to reduce commute distance.

How?

As people sprawl out, businesses are suburbanizing as well, to be located closer to viable pools of employees.

Peter

Much of my dissertation research has been on or near the topic of sprawl. I also did a study a year and a half ago for Buckeye on traffic (to date unpublished).

The most interesting thing to me is that for all of our talk about urban growth and sprawl, there is not one single empirical study of American cities. Even worse, having read through every regional plan in the state of Ohio, not one actual study of what we can expect our cities to look like in 30 years. It is virtually all post-modernist imagery.

There are empirical studies of how particular areas of cities have grown (which develops first: residential or commercial) and some theoretical work on growth but no one has simply organized the data for the last 50 years of all of the cities in America and reviewed growth. Of the 15 metroplitan areas in Ohio only Columbus, Dayton and Cinncinatti have shown any consistant growth. Cleveland is reviving and is almost back to where it was in 1970.  All of the others are either growing at very low rates (less than 3%) or actually shrinking.

(To illustrate the fact that mass transit is not a solution to Columbus' problems but a standard solution dictated from above, notice that even cities with shrinking populations have regional planning commissions pushing light rail. The particular circumstances of any given city are irrelevant. Mass transit is THE answer to any question.)

As to what is going to happen in the future, all I can find are scare tactics. The Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission states that there will be 400,000 people added in the next 20 years and that auto use has gone up by 182% since 1960. That is the extent of their analysis. Three points: Auto has gone up by 182% since 1960 but most of that occured in the 1960's and 70's. In the 60's auto use increased 6 times faster than the population growth (itself growing fast due to the baby boom). By the 1990's auto use was growing at the same rate as population growth. In the 1950's there was one auto for every 3 households by the 1990's there were more automobiles than people. Unless you know of a third sex that is about to join the workforce, there is no way we will ever see 182% increase in auto use again.

Second, the 400,000 person growth figure is a worst case scenario. In fact it is beyond worst case. If you add up all of the county level Census projections and compare them to the national population projections, the sum of the counties is nearly 20% larger than the worst case for the nation. The Census Bureau states that the first part of the next century will "provide the slowest rate of populatoin growth in our nation's history." What growth there will be will come from immigration, which will account for 86% of all the population growth between now and 2050. So the 400,000 is a worst, worst case. Even at that rate 400,000 is a slower rate of growth (in absolute numbers) than we have seen in the past. In percentages it is significantly slower. Columbus grew at a 60% clip in the 50's and a 44% clip in the 60's. At 200,000 people per decade we are slowing to 12% growth.

The third thing is that statement doesn't tell you anything about the 1.4 milloin people who currently live here. We will have nearly as many people turning 65 as we have new people. If you consider that 80%of people currently in their fifties are commuting to work but only about 40%of the new people are commuters, you can easily see that we could have an actual decline in rush hour traffic.

What's more, many of these older people are "empty nestors". They bought three and four bedroom homes when they had kids and kept those homes after the kids left. As they begin giving up those homes due to retirement, disability or death, one and two person households will be replaced by 3 and four person households. Even at this worst,worst case population growth rate the number of households will be declining.

Over the last three decades we have seen a lot of spatial growth in some American cities like Columbus. The biggest reason is that when younger families went home buying, their parents still owned the homes in the central cities and inner suburbs. Upper Arlington, Columbus, Bexely, Gahana are all heavily baby boomer/empty nesters. While suburbs have seen skyroketing enrollments Columbus and the inner suburbs have seen their plummet. As we get to 2010 (less than 6 years away), many of those baby boomers will start reaching age 65. As the numbers of homes in Arlington, etc. double each year there could be less demand for homes in the outter suburbs (or there could be thousands of abandoned homes!).

Whether the boomers retire immediately or not, they will adjust their driving habits. Surveys by the AARP and USDOT indicate that the number one priority for people who plan to work past age 65 is flexible scheduling, i.e. we may keep working but we don't want to sit in rush hour traffic. Workng part-time, telecommuting is much more possible for a 65 year old than a younger worker. Commuting patterns will change almost as dramatically as they did in the 60's and 70's but in very different ways.

All of this dicussion is about Columbus with its 12% growth rate. For other slower groing or shrinking cities it will be doubly bad. Not only do they not have the growth to compensate for the boomers, their lack of growth means there are fewer non-boomers in their cities. (The people most likely to migrate due to a lack of economic opportunity are the 20-30 year olds, leaving the 40 and 50 year olds behind.) These cities have even large shares of boomers.

So understand that while there are issues in cities about growth most of what you read about growth and sprawl is propaganda. American cities grew much faster in the 50's and 60's. And if you go back and read the newspapers of the time, this growth was celebrated. Cities vied for the label fastest growing. The difference was that there was a willingness to spend the tax dollars to support it. Then during the 70's public money dried up. There was not a single expansion of our transportation system in cntral Ohio between 1972 and 1990. Governments are actually spending much more in general in any terms you want to describe it, but the anti-sprawl people have made evil to spend money on growth.

The truth is that the needed money is for past growth not future growth. Virtually all of the $1.1 billion dollar shortfall that MORPC has identified in Columbus transportation spending is from projects that were defined 20 years ago. (Spring-sundusky interchange was identified in the late 1960's.) An interesting coincidence is that every regional commission has a plan for mass transit whose costs are almost exactly the same as their budget shortfall for roads. This is like saying the roof is leaking and we don't have money to fix it. So lets raise money to pave the driveway. The solution doesn't address the problem. Only one of the commissions specifically states how they will handle the shortfall for roads. Cleveland will double the time between pavings - residential streets every 36 years instead of 18 and major arteries every 20 years instead of 10. Dayton's plan specifically states that it letting the roads deteriorate, forcing people into mass transit, is a positive policy goal.

My personal prediction is that in 15 years the outter suburbs (Pataskala, Hilliard, Powell) will be looking back findly on the growth (and growing tax bases) they are seeing today.

This post has gotten long enough. I can (and will) go on for a long time on this issue.
Later
-Tom

Light rail is a subject that threatens my home and peace.  Running a train up High Street thru Worthington would be highly damaging to the old town, cause substantial traffic problems the entire length of the city, and depress property values.  Once again the government makes war on my town.  I hate these people.

As an aside, if God took his sissors out and cut out all the urban areas on the globle, He could re-arrange them all within the limits of Texas.  If one (rather large) state can hold all the urban areas on the world, then by what measure is sprawl a problem?

Here is a response to an inquiry regarding the Light Rail Transit project. I asked them specifically when the next public meetings will be.

Peter


Thank you for your feedback regarding the Central Ohio Transit Authority
(COTA) FastTrax North Corridor Light Rail Transit (NCLRT) Project.  In
your email you asked if there will be any public meetings regarding
light rail in Columbus.

In July 2003, a series of Public Scoping meetings were held to explain
the purpose and need for the project, seek input on the proposed
alternatives to be studied and outline the project's environmental
analysis. Comments and suggestions received by the project staff during
the Scoping comment period, including various alternative alignments,
transportation modes (i.e. bus rapid transit and commuter rail) and
station locations were then evaluated to further define the scope of the
study.

COTA held another series of public meetings in late January to update
the public on the status of the NCLRT Project and explain how comments
and suggestions received from the public during Scoping are shaping the
planning process.  The goal of the public meetings was to share how the
alternative modes, routes and station locations were evaluated and
inform the community of the alternatives that will be carried forward
into the next phase of the study.  The meetings were held at the
Columbus Urban League, the Worthington Municipal Building and the North
Broadway United Methodist Church.  To view the Screening presentation,
visit the project Web site at www.cotaFastTrax.com.  

COTA will hold a series of public hearings to receive comments on the
Draft Environmental Impact Statement, due to be published later this
year.

COTA also gives presentations to groups and associations and has given
more than 150 presentations to all types of organizations since
beginning the engineering and environmental study phase of the project
in 2003. To learn more about upcoming events or to request a
presentation for your community or organization, please visit the
project Web site at www.cotaFastTrax.com or call the toll free phone
line at 1-866-RAIL-COTA.

We welcome any additional comments and suggestions.  The most critical
piece of this project is continuous public input and involvement.
. Write to us at:
   COTA NCLRT Project
   1650 Lake Shore Drive
   Suite 300
   Columbus, Ohio 43204
   Attn: Mike Bradley, Director of Rail Development
. Visit the project Web site at www.cotaFastTrax.com
. Call the information line at 1-866-RAIL-COTA
. Send an email message to info@cotaFastTrax.com

Thank you again for your input!

COTA FastTrax NCLRT Project Team

To be removed from our distribution list, please email
info@cotaFastTrax.com.
 

The rail will go to Delaware County. The Intermodal Terminal would be in Union County. The taxpayers of Franklin County would get stuck paying the bill.
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: COTA FastTrax email newsletter
To: mjdevo@wowway.com
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 10:33 AM
Subject: COTA FastTrax E-NEWS RELEASE March 4, 2004


 
   
For Immediate Release:March 4, 2004
Contact: Mike Bradley,
Director of Rail Development

COTA TO HOLD OPEN HOUSE REGARDING
PROPOSED INTERMODAL CENTER

WHAT:  Open House regarding COTA’s North Corridor Light Rail Transit (NCLRT) Project and Proposed Intermodal Center
WHEN: Wednesday, March 10, 2004, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
WHERE: Union County Services Center, Conference Rooms A & B
940 London Avenue, Marysville, Ohio