The Central Ohio Transit Authority is still struggling to hire enough bus drivers to run its routes. As a result, service changes scheduled to go into effect on Monday, September 5 will include less-frequent buses on some routes and the elimination of Line 6 along Cleveland Avenue.
Line 6 riders are being directed to the CMAX, which runs along the same portion of Cleveland Avenue but with fewer stops.
COTA customers hoping for the return of late night service are also out of luck – the last buses will continue to leave downtown around 10 p.m.
Other service reductions include:
- Reduced Sunday and early morning service for lines 1, 2, 10 and the CMAX.
- Lines 4, 31 and 102 will now run every 60 minutes, seven days a week (down from every 30 minutes)
- Line 3 will run every 45 minutes Monday through Friday (down from every 30 minutes)
- Airconnect select event service will end on September 22
COTA makes changes to its routes and service schedules three times a year – in January, May and September – and 2022 has seen service reductions each time.
The driver shortage issue is not a problem unique to Columbus. A February survey from the American Public Transportation Association found that 71% of the 117 agencies surveyed had to either cut service or delay service improvements because they couldn’t hire enough workers (the advocacy organization Transit Center published a report on the issue in July).
Earlier this year, COTA increased its new operator training wage from $15.50 to $17.50 per hour (after training, wages increase to $21.10 per hour), but that and other efforts to recruit new drivers have not been enough to stave off cuts at a time when ridership still lags significantly below pre-pandemic levels.
Numbers provided by COTA show that ridership this year will likely end up at a level similar to last year, which is less than half of the fixed-route ridership recorded in 2019, when more rides were taken on the system than during any year since 1988.
Here are the ridership totals dating back to 2019:
2022 (as of August 30) – 5,780,826
2021 – 8,875,200
2020 – 10,322,467 (includes the January to March pre-pandemic period)
2019 – 19,141,454
More information on the September service changes is available at cota.com.
In other COTA news:
- A new educational pass is available for free for all Columbus City School students in grades nine through 12. The passes, which are being called Student Success Cards, allow students to ride for free on any route, seven days a week.
- The COTA Board of Trustees voted to make the agency’s income assistance program permanent. The program provides half-price fares for low-income riders.
- The board also approved funds to extend the Short North C-Pass program, which provides free rides for Short North workers, residents and visitors, and approved a capital budget which calls for a new transit center at Rickenbacker International Airport.
- The agency announced earlier this month that it has received $26.7 million in federal grants from the Federal Transit Administration as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The grant money will go toward the purchase of 28 more battery electric buses. COTA’s first electric buses started running last fall.
