BY TANYA ALBERT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnatians are getting a pretty good deal for their tax dollars that go toward the region's bus system, according to a University of North Carolina at Charlotte study released last week.
It was the 22nd best among the nation's 135 large urban areas. And the best deal in Ohio.
Cincinnati was the only Ohio city in the top half of the cost-effectiveness ranking based on 1996 figures, beating out Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Canton.
The next best Ohio city, Columbus, ranked 73.
Cincinnati "has a very good performance for a large system," said UNC-Charlotte Transportation Center Director professor David T. Hartgen. "And it's been improving over the past few years."
Cincinnati's Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA), which runs the Metro bus service, ranked 31 in 1995 and 26 in 1994. UNC-Charlotte's annual public transit system study ranks the systems on 12 factors, including service levels, operating costs, fares, subsidies and ridership rates.
"We look at how much we give these folks and how they did spending it," Mr. Hartgen said.
For example, SORTA spent 42 cents per passenger mile
traveled in 1996. That was well below the 60-cent national average, according to the study.
"We are lean and we are very cognizant of that," Metro General Manager Paul Jablonski said. "We have a lot of service in a relatively small geographic area."
The top five most cost-effective transit systems were in Santa Monica, Calif.; Champaign-Urbana, Ill.; Tucson, Ariz.; Las Vegas, Nev.; and Springfield, Mass.
The worst systems in the nation, according to the survey, were in Riverside, Calif.; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Queens, N.Y.; Lexington, Ky.; and Greenville, S.C.
