Public transportation is a vital link for millions of Ohioans. In the four years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio’s 65 public transit agencies averaged more than 100 million trips per year to residents in 84 of Ohio’s 88 counties.
One-time investments from the federal government in 2020 and 2021 helped keep transit agencies solvent and will enable agencies to address maintenance backlogs and modernize vehicles over the next five years. However, transit systems - in rural and urban Ohio - continue to require operational support to adequately address the needs of existing riders and to plan for future users.
Since FY2020, the Ohio General Assembly has invested a record $141.5 million in Ohio’s public transportation agencies. This has been an important down payment for Ohio’s future, but now is not the time to pull back support for public transportation.
Expansion of transportation services - particularly in rural communities - will require investment by the state through GRF funds.
GOPC recommends that state policymakers increase GRF fund allocations to public transportation to at least $75 million per year for system operations, or $150 million+ for the biennium.
You can learn more about why this investment, at this time, is so critical for Ohio in our new white paper, Building on Momentum: An Argument for State Investment in Public Transit in Ohio, which GOPC has just released today. This paper examines the current state of public transportation, the state’s investment in these critical services over the past decade, and makes the case why now is not the time, in spite of historic investment at the federal level, to cut state investment in this lifeline to millions of Ohioans.