Cost of COTA plan grows by $850 million
The estimated cost of a plan to provide public transportation through 2050 is at least $850 million more expensive than COTA officials initially said.
Lisa Myers, a spokeswoman for the Central Ohio Transit Authority, provided The Dispatch with information on Tuesday that said the cost of the plan under consideration was $6.6 billion over the next 32 years. After a COTA planning commission meeting on Thursday, Thomas Wittmann, the consultant COTA hired for the project, said the actual cost is $7.45 billion.
Wittman stressed that projected cost is a starting point for “high-level planning estimates” for the project being considered. He cautioned that all numbers — the estimated $5.4 billion in capital costs plus the $2.05 billion in increased operating costs — are preliminary and depend on choices the public and COTA will make to determine what the new transportation system will be.
COTA is looking at how to move people through 2050, a time when the Columbus population is projected to add 1 million people and 300,000 jobs. The so-called NextGen plan doesn’t specify what transportation systems will be used, but it laid out options: conventional bus, high-speed bus (perhaps using dedicated road lanes), light rail or other options.
The goal is to move people more quickly to where they want to go. A goal would be taking workers to and from work more efficiently and to more areas, allowing people to leave their cars at home during traditional commute times.
The plan attempts to address the trend of people wanting to work, live and play in one area and for more people to live in downtown areas and already dense areas across Franklin County.
NextGen seeks to have at least 11 high-capacity transit corridors, and maybe as many as 14, to act as main transportation arteries. Those corridors will get riders to large hubs where riders could use other means of transportation — such as cabs, Uber or Lyft — to get to their final destination.
Officials did not discuss how to pay for the system, except to say it will be paid for by the public. COTA gets $125.2 million of its overall $146 million annual budget from two sales taxes — a permanent quartercent sales tax and a 10-year, quarter-cent sales tax last approved by voters in November that runs through 2026.
Possible ways to pay for the plan are more local sales taxes, increases in payroll taxes, vehicle registration fees, rental car fees, hotel taxes, commercial parking taxes, naming rights, public-private partnerships or a combination.
The plan also proposes a pilot program to use driverless vehicles for part of the system by 2025.
COTA board member Letty Schamp said the increased costs in the transit system could be offset by lower costs to build fewer highways and ramps. Additional economic development benefits, such as new businesses and homes rising along the system’s high-capacity corridors, can’t be estimated, but could be significant.
The plan could be adopted at the COTA board’s July 26 meeting.