The Future of Transit

Tim Fulton 00:11Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: Columbus is the largest city in the country without any form of rail service. That might not be changing anytime soon, but plans are coming together for an alternative by way of the LinkUS Columbus initiative, bus rapid transit. In today's episode, Josh Lapp of Transit Columbus talks about that plan, how to convince people that we need transit, and what Amtrak service in Columbus may look like in the future. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. The Confluence Cast is sponsored this week by the Central Ohio Transit Authority, or COTA. Car expenses rack up fast. There's the car payment, insurance, gas, parking, and maintenance. Fortunately, there's a more affordable solution. Never pay more than $62 per month to roll with COTA. Download the Transit app and set up your COTA account to get started. For more information, visit cota.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with the chair of Transit Columbus, Josh Lapp. Josh, how are you, sir?

Josh Lapp 01:57I'm doing great. How are you?

Tim Fulton 01:59I'm doing well. We are talking about transit today, talking about transit in Columbus, the needs that are there, and what initiatives are coming into place in order to fulfill those needs. First of all, talk about Transit Columbus and its background.

Josh Lapp 02:16Yeah, that's a good question. I'm glad that you brought that up, because I feel like a lot of folks hear about us and they're like, what is this organization? Where did it come from? What's your backstory? So the organization actually grew out of a group of folks that have been working on these issues for a really long time. They were called 1000 Friends of Central Ohio. This was back in the early 2000s, and really about smart growth. So that kind of faded away, and a lot of those same folks wanted to really focus more on transit, because that is really the key piece that was missing in Columbus. So around 2010, after—I don't want to go through all the sad things that happened in terms of transit and trains, a lot of things we're still trying to address today—there was really this feeling that there was a need for a transit advocacy group. So that group reconstituted into Transit Columbus. Lots of folks that are well known around the community in this space—Chris Herman, Mark Conte, a bunch of other folks—were really involved in this kind of advocacy work in that decade. And since then, it has really just grown and flourished more, brought in a lot more industry, individuals that are out in the community and really just want to be involved. So we've done all kinds of events over the years, we've advocated for different things over the years. But transit is a really big thing. It's billions of dollars, it's a lot of time. So we've also focused on doing smaller-scale things, because it's really hard to get those big things happening; that takes many years. We do placemaking initiatives. We help out with Ollie Islands over in the Discovery District. So we do small-scale stuff. But we've really been focusing the last few years on trying to get these big things to happen, and I think we're now seeing the fruit of that, which I'm sure we'll talk about more.

Tim Fulton 04:22Yeah, absolutely. The occasion for us talking today is the LinkUS initiative. The steering committee has been meeting. Can you talk about the origins of that initiative?

Josh Lapp 04:37Yeah. So I've sat through enough presentations, including some of the things that they're giving background information on. There's been a lot of efforts over the last five or more years from COTA and from the city to really figure out how we're going to address transit holistically. So COTA did a NextGen plan, COTA did a transit system redesign where they redesigned all their routes and really focused service. And so I think LinkUS was a natural outgrowth of that. And a lot of folks that are in those organizations really came together and said, we need to do something much more comprehensive. So we need to figure out how we're comprehensively going to address transit and density and urban design and cycling infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure and all these things. And that's really how LinkUS came about. And one of the other things is the MORPC studies that were done over the years. There was ultimately a corridors concept study that was done—time escapes me, I think 2018 is when that came out—and it really talked about focusing development on corridors, but not the transit piece of it. And now we're looking at this LinkUS as this large-scale initiative that's going to help us solve our mobility issues and our housing issues and our lack-of-walkable-neighborhoods issues, and really looking at it comprehensively. So that's what LinkUS is, without getting into the specifics, which we can do.

Tim Fulton 06:16Well, tell me about the specifics. This is an initiative that is a group of people, but the city has a buy-in here. The regional planning commission has a buy-in here. And then COTA. That's sort of the three pillars, correct me if I'm wrong here.

Josh Lapp 06:35Yeah, no, you're right on. They are leading it. It is an initiative of the city, COTA, and MORPC. So it is actually those entities leading this. You can go to LinkUS—I think it's linkuscolumbus.com—and it really shows you the information on what they have been doing. So there have been two large-scale corridor studies taking place as part of the LinkUS initiative. And what that means is they're looking at the east-west corridor. So this includes East Main Street, East Broad Street, and West Broad Street. Looking at how do we implement high-capacity transit in those corridors, and how do we look at the zoning, and how do we look at bike connectivity and pedestrian connectivity in that corridor. So that is a study that is more than underway. They've already made their preliminary findings, which you can search on the website there, and that has really decided that we're going to build a BRT line. Actually, we're going to build several as part of that initiative.

Tim Fulton 06:35For those of us—give me the BRT.

Josh Lapp 06:35Yeah, sorry, I'm an urban planner.

Tim Fulton 06:35No, it's fine. I love the acronyms.

Josh Lapp 06:35BRT is an acronym for bus rapid transit. This originated really in South America as a concept where you're providing rail-quality infrastructure with buses. So it's more affordable to implement, it's quicker to implement, but you're dedicating right-of-way on the street. So you have separate lanes, buses, you have stations. It should feel like you're riding a train, but you're on a bus. But you're getting really great service, really frequent. And actually, one of the best examples in the country of BRT is in Cleveland. In Cleveland, they have the HealthLine that runs on Euclid Avenue. And it has dedicated right-of-way, you board at stations, it has all the amenities of rail without the rail. And I will say here, because a lot of people will question this—we were pushing for light rail, we would love to see it—but I don't think that the BRT is—rail would be great, but BRT is also really good and hopefully more affordable, and will allow Columbus to build a larger system more quickly. So BRT has been determined by all these studies to be the optimal mode to build on East Main Street and West Broad Street first. And then also in the near future, hopefully, on East Broad Street, as part of the east-west corridor study. There's also a northwest corridor study that also is recommending building a BRT line that would run essentially from downtown up the Olentangy River Road corridor, and then eventually over to Bridge Street in Dublin. So we have made, with these studies—and they're not just like, hey, here's an idea. These are, what's it going to look like, where are the stations going to go. So all the real details around this have been worked out. They're still in the early design phases, but they are designing the system. And that's really what we're looking at. So they've identified as part of LinkUS these three corridors that we're talking about, that I've already mentioned, as ones that we're doing the research on right now to actually start building and have operational before the end of this decade, which is really great news. There's also a number of other corridors that will eventually be built out as part of this program, including to the airport in Easton, potentially improving what we've already done with CMAX, going northeast to Polaris up the High Street corridor—not sure how that one will work out—and then southeast towards Rickenbacker. So really looking at a comprehensive system.

Tim Fulton 11:07To address that point of, like, I don't know how that would work out—there's not enough real estate in terms of the width of the road to make that easy to implement.

Josh Lapp 11:17You're right on. Decisions were made—and not necessarily bad decisions, just decisions—as part of the buildout of the High Street streetscape a few months ago, as we all might have remembered. So that took away, in a good way, some of the pavement and gave it to pedestrians. So that's really great. High Street is a fantastic pedestrian street. My husband owns a business at Second and High. I love walking around and biking around and taking the bus in the Short North. But that stretch of High Street is now at a size that it really can't accommodate a dedicated right-of-way for transit. So High Street is a difficult thing. How are we going to address that corridor? That may mean running up Third and Fourth. It might mean, I don't know what it might mean. Because of the width of it, it is harder to accommodate, for sure.

Tim Fulton 12:17Gotcha. And so the work—I'm just translating back what we've talked about up to this point—the work of LinkUS is hearing those studies that have been commissioned, and sort of saying, yes, this sounds like a reasoned approach to how to solve the transit issues that we have. And then, we were talking right before the recording, you guys actually have a steering committee meeting that will look into or hear recommendations based on funding of, like, how does this get paid for?

Josh Lapp 12:51Yeah. So we've been talking about funding, because this stuff is not cheap. Even BRT, which is not as expensive as light rail, is still not cheap. So we've got to find a way to pay for it. Now, the federal government will pay for a lot of it, but we still have to have a local match. So the LinkUS Leadership Coalition, which again is being led by the city and COTA and MORPC, has been studying this and presenting this to the committee that I'm serving on, part of the LinkUS Leadership Coalition. And, you know, ultimately this has not been presented to us, but Transit Columbus has been talking about the fact that we will need a ballot measure to pay for high-capacity transit. That is more than likely an outcome of this process. I don't know, because the meeting is tonight. We have to find a way to pay for it. The way that we currently pay for transit is that we've had ballot measures in the past that are really COTA ballot measures, and they are passed by the public in order to pay for it. So we currently have a half-cent sales tax that pays for this, and that was through two different ballot measures. So we're going to need more money. I mean, that's the be-all and end-all. And if you look at the LinkUS plans, it's not just about building the BRT lines. So, like, the northwest corridor is a great example. You can look through the plans on the website. This is really about a system, the transit system, but also a system to connect to the BRT lines. So you have a whole network of protected bike lanes or shared-use paths. I have a friend that I talk to regularly that lives in North Clintonville, and this would be near a BRT stop at like Henderson and Olentangy River Road, which right now is sort of a no-man's-land. But if you build that BRT line, you can build shared-use paths so that he can bike there. He has a five-minute bike ride to the BRT, that he can take then in 10 minutes to OSU, or in like 15 minutes to a Crew game, or to downtown, or to work, whatever. So that's really what it is. It's about building a network. It's not just about building that. So some of the funding may go to pay for improvements like shared-use paths, and protected bike lanes, and sidewalks, which are really a huge piece and important to this overall new system that we're looking at.

Tim Fulton 15:42And so that's the pitch, right? Because you've got to get a majority of voters to approve it. The pitch is, it's not just, we're going to implement this BRT system, but that it's a holistic approach to transit in Columbus. Because if you say to somebody, hey, I want to increase your sales taxes, and it's for drastic improvements to the bus system, oh, yeah, it takes away a lane of traffic for you—then you get the pushback that it's like, well, I don't use the bus, because I don't need to. But the argument should be, now you can. It is so much more convenient than your current system. And I got stuck in traffic yesterday, and I was like, okay, the world is back to normal now, that we have to go places, and we're not all just on Zoom calls constantly. And I do think Columbus does a good job of identifying that equity is important. But the pushback that comes from people a lot of times is, that doesn't help me, why should I care about that?

Josh Lapp 16:55So there's so many different ways to look at it. I think transit has so many positive benefits. But as you're saying, the various ways you can approach selling transit are: yes, not everybody's going to take it, but we want to give you the option to. We want to give as many people as we can the option, to make it a real option. I see people on Reddit all the time, or on other online forums, talking about, well, if the bus was quicker, or more convenient, then I would do it. And, yeah, well, we need to make it more convenient. There's no other way to get around that. But that doesn't mean that everybody's going to ride the bus. It's also about just creating the opportunity to ride the bus if you want to. But also, making sure that we're not adding additional people to the roads. Our region is growing by another million people by 2050. That is, hopefully, within our lifetimes. And so we have to address how those people are going to get around. And part of building out LinkUS is creating the opportunities to build up more dense, walkable neighborhoods, so that we can accommodate those people, and so that those folks don't have to go build a new house on a greenfield out in the middle of nowhere because that's the only place that is available to them. We really have to accommodate more of those people, for environmental reasons, and for lifestyle reasons, within the urban core, but we can't do that if we don't have good transit. So that's part of it. But there is a huge equity piece to this too. That is part of the factors in looking at the routes that COTA and the city were looking at. So equity was at the top of the list of the things that they were using to evaluate where the transit should go, and how it should be implemented. And so I think that is just totally core. If you read all the documents, that was the thing that they were looking at. And so that's part of why the east-west corridor was chosen. But we have to remember, too, when we're talking about equity, people are traveling all over the city. So just because it serves a neighborhood and is providing that equity piece, it still needs to connect to the places where people go to work. So that's why the northwest corridor is so important. Because if you really think about Ohio State, Riverside Hospital, all the things, and downtown—all these jobs up and down that corridor, that's a really key piece that we need to connect to. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to Ohio State, whether it's the hospital or students or employees. That's a huge job center. Downtown is still a huge job center, even with everything that's happened during COVID. It's still the key jobs center in the region. So we need to connect to these places.

Tim Fulton 20:14Absolutely. Is there any contention in this? Everybody that's there is an advocate and wants to see these things happen. I don't imagine that people are coming to you with these commissioned studies, and you're saying, well, that won't work.

Josh Lapp 20:32The only pushback I've heard about LinkUS is that folks would like to see light rail. And I would too. But I am also aware enough to know that we need to do this, and we need to do it now. We cannot wait. And I'm not saying that to be dire. I'm saying that because our region is adding—we added like over 100,000 people in the last 10 years, we're going to add a million more, especially with things like Intel—and I really think, with everything going on in the world, Columbus is really well positioned. We're going to grow, and we're going to grow rapidly. And we're going to have the problems of cities like Atlanta, and Austin, and some of these other places, and Nashville, that have absolutely not planned for their growth at all. And they're having to go back in and spend all this money and hear all the complaints, and all the traffic, and just having affordability issues. Like, we have to do it now. So I'm not hearing any pushback, except for, we should be more aggressive. And I think the public's there. Do I think the public was there 10 years ago? I've been involved in transit, in Transit Columbus, basically since it started. I'm not sure that the public was there 10 years ago. But I think now, it just seems like everybody gets it. I'm not going to say that we're going to pass a ballot measure with 100% support, but I feel very confident, because almost anybody that I talk to understands it. Even if you don't take transit, you understand the need for it. And you understand that our region is not going to be world-class until we have a high-quality transit system. And it's funny, because so many people are moving to Columbus, and I'm sure you talk, just like me—you run into people, and they move from Chicago, or New York, or wherever. And it's like, oh, well, I love Columbus, but the transit, though. And I'm not saying COTA doesn't do a good job, they do. But we have to, as a region, support them, and help them grow into a really world-class transit system. Not just buses, but buses that have their own—buses that are trains is what we're really talking about here. And that's what we need.

Tim Fulton 22:58And has there been any sort of public opinion research done on where this is going to go? I mean, what happened the last time we tried to get light rail, that it was a ballot initiative, and it spectacularly failed, with all of our city leaders, and it was just like, nope?

Josh Lapp 22:58There's been several initiatives.

Tim Fulton 22:58Well, give us the history. Oh, why we're here.

Josh Lapp 23:23I am from Plain City. So I was here for this, but—not to give away my age—I was, I guess, probably 10 years old when this happened. So as much as I love transit now, I was not paying that close attention to it then. So in '99, there were actually two ballot measures. It had been broken into two ballot measures, one of which was a sales tax paying for COTA's operations, and one of which was a sales tax that would have helped build out a light rail system. Well, the operations one passed, and the other one didn't. And it wasn't by a large measure. We were really close, unfortunately. So then fast forward a few years later, and COTA is really in somewhat of a financial crisis. The beginning of the 2000s were not a great time for anyone, for recession, and 9/11, and all that. So they were in dire financial straits, and I believe in '06 they passed a permanent sales tax measure that really solidified their finances. They got their house in order. Then Mayor Coleman pushed, in '08, perhaps the worst timing possible, the streetcar.

Tim Fulton 23:23The streetcar.

Josh Lapp 23:23Yes. Had we not been, again, in the midst of a global recession, we might have a train running up and down High Street today. But it was not to be. We also had the 3C rail. We had $400 million in funding from the federal government that was rejected by the Kasich administration in 2010. So there was this series of failures. And we could have been much further than we are now. But I don't think any of them were—except for the actual ballot measure that failed in '99—real rejections. And so your question was actually about polling.

Tim Fulton 25:36And the history and the context is important here, right?

Josh Lapp 25:38Yeah. But there has not been polling. That's something my organization has been wanting to do, at least none that has been public. But I would say the best public polling that we have is in 2016. In a year that Donald Trump won the White House, the COTA ballot measure that was up for a vote that year, it was a renewal, it passed with 71% of the vote. 71%. And that's actual votes, that isn't just a poll. So I think the support for COTA, I think that kind of says it to me, even though I don't have the actual polling on what it would look like today.

Tim Fulton 26:26Right. I will say, you look back at the history of what's happened, and I wonder if now is the appropriate time. You make an excellent argument for why now is the right time. But from a "can we get it done" standpoint, we're experiencing a lot of growing pains at the moment as a country. Columbus seems to not have experienced as much of it, but with the housing prices going up, the cost of gas—is this the right time? What's the timeline for trying to implement this? Would this be something on the ballot in 2023? Can you do it faster than that?

Josh Lapp 27:09My personal opinion is—and I think it will happen—it will be on the ballot in 2022. It'll be on the ballot this November. COTA has the ability to put a levy on the ballot anytime; their board just has to vote on it. It's state law that they are allowed to do this. I think that they can put it on the ballot as late as August. So there is time. If you look at LinkUS—there's actually a chart if you go into the final LinkUS east-west corridor study—if we get the money from the federal government, and if we have additional funds from local funding, this will be operational by 2027. I mean, that's a long time. But also, that's not that long, in terms of infrastructure. That's fast. Unfortunately, infrastructure takes a long time to plan for and build. And this is something that's really going to positively impact—it's really going to impact our neighborhoods, it's going to impact the street, it's going to impact the way things look. So yeah, it takes time. But it's something that we can have in place relatively quickly. The Intel thing makes me excited, and it scares me, because we just don't really have the infrastructure to support rapid growth. You look at what has happened, again, in Nashville, or Austin, or some of these other places, and they just have so many issues. We have the opportunity. We're sort of at that inflection point where we can address it. And we're going to have to, one way or the other. But it's much easier to do it ahead of time than it is to retrofit. So yeah, I think we're at the appropriate point to do that. And I will tell you, it's not going to be a secret after I tell you, but I went to a conference a couple years ago, through an organization called TransitCenter. And they showed a slide of the rate at which ballot measures pass for transit. And it really has to do with turnout. If turnout is above 45%, the transit ballot measures almost always pass. And the best time to put them on the ballot is when a lot of people are going to go vote, because people generally support these things. Now, if you make it just about that—if you have an election, and it's only a transit ballot measure—then you get folks that are against additional taxes, or don't like something about the plan. But ultimately, if more people are going to go out and vote, it's going to pass, because people generally support this. And if I stopped somebody on the street and say, do you want a better transit system, and you're going to pay a little bit for it, of course they say yes.

Tim Fulton 27:09Right, exactly.

Josh Lapp 27:09Even if you're not going to use it. That's the thing. You want it for the region, not just for me.

Tim Fulton 30:06And so you wouldn't want to wait until '23 to put it on the ballot, is what you're saying.

Josh Lapp 30:11I don't think we have the time. Well, I don't think it's an appropriate election strategy. But I also think that we just don't have the time to wait. We need to do this stuff now. And again, there's only a certain opportunity to capture what Intel is going to be. When it's going to be open, in 2024, I think, or 2025 they said—if we wait until then, we will already have missed the boat. And again, it's not just about Intel, but I think that's a harbinger of the growth that is going to come, that's already happening. I mean, housing prices are just absolutely outrageous, even though we're not bad compared to other places. We're starting from a lower place. But I own a home, and I get calls every single day of people trying to buy it. You look at Zillow, or whatever, and it's like, this is just outrageous prices. And if we don't address it with transit, and affordable housing, and more density, we're just going to have more problems. And then you take away the things that make our region great, which is that it's an affordable place that's easy to get around. You know what happens when that goes away? That's not something I think any of us want. We want to address this. Oh, and by the way, we want better lifestyle opportunities to bike and walk and take the bus. And we also want better neighborhoods that have more businesses, and we want to help the environment, and help prevent climate change, and all these things. Yay, they're all answered, I solved the issue. But it's never that easy.

Tim Fulton 31:46Exactly. So, setting LinkUS aside—we can't do the omnibus of transit—but there is movement on us being a getting Amtrak, basically getting what was promised, during the Kasich administration.

Josh Lapp 32:05Yes, I already mentioned it, so now I have to remember it, even though it makes me angry. So it is definitely in the cards that we have the possibility of getting Amtrak service. We don't fully know what that looks like. There's a lot of talk about 3C plus D. So this is a train line that would run from Cleveland to Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati, along with some other stops in smaller cities in between. This is more or less the same proposal that was almost built in 2010. Amtrak really wants to do it, they keep talking about it. We don't know exactly what that looks like. Our state legislature is not exceedingly supportive of transit in general, and certainly not of 3C plus D, although there are some folks that do support it, particularly the rural communities along the path that could see the benefit for them. So it's a possibility. It's also possible that if the state doesn't support it, there are other ways to pay for and receive the grants from the federal government that can build it. So there's a possibility of local governments and/or regional governments like MORPC, or others, that could help receive that funding and actually build out the service. I'm not a full policy expert, so I don't have all the answers, but I think it's certainly possible. And I think that we have to voice, as people that live in Columbus, we are the second largest city without Amtrak service in the country, second to Phoenix. We're the largest city without any type of rail. Because Phoenix has light rail. So I think we're primed for it. And think about—I don't know about you, but I end up traveling to Cleveland or Cincinnati, whether it's for pleasure or for work, frequently, and I know that many other folks do as well. And even if the train is not as fast as driving, which it very well may be—but even if it's not, that's productive time that I have. That's a much more happy scenario than driving on 71, which is never a happy scenario. I never get out of my car in Cleveland and think, that was great.

Tim Fulton 34:40What a pleasant drive that was today.

Josh Lapp 34:43Yeah. Oh, great, the Lodi outlet mall. This is wonderful. Like, no. And I actually frequently take the bus to Cleveland, the Greyhound. I think that service should be improved, whether we get a train or not. We need to have better connections all over the state. But Amtrak is a possibility. And if you look at—so the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority has already done a study on what the station would look like in Columbus. And it's beautiful. Sorry, it would take away a Starbucks in the—

Tim Fulton 35:25It's a small price to pay.

Josh Lapp 35:27I love coffee. But I would say goodbye to Starbucks for Amtrak. And, oh, by the way, build a One Line in the train station, and I would be much happier with that. So, anyway, it would be beautiful, it'd be right on High Street, right next to transit service that would connect people within Columbus. So it has the possibility of happening. You're going to see more advocacy from our organization, and I think from others around the state, because this is the most money that Amtrak has ever been given. It's not even comparable to anything that they have ever had the opportunity to do in the past. They have been on life support since they were started in the '70s, since they started up in '71. So this is really—we're on the precipice of actually building out—maybe not a French or Spanish or Japanese style train system, but certainly improving Amtrak to an acceptable level around the country. And I think Ohio is actually a really awesome place for Amtrak service. We have a bunch of cities, they're all relatively close. Amtrak sees it, because they keep talking about it. I was actually in a Washington Post article last year being interviewed about this, and Amtrak is like, we want to be in Ohio. We want you in Ohio, Amtrak, please come. Even if our state legislature says no, please come. Make it happen for us, because the people here want it. Our legislature isn't necessarily reflective of our state, as we've seen with things that have been happening over the past couple of months. But it's a real possibility. And I will be, like, the first person—I will absolutely do whatever I can to be on that first train when it leaves. Since, I think, 1977.

Tim Fulton 37:42Yeah. The good thing is that there's an opportunity, as you said, to take a different—there's so many travel metaphors—take a different route to make it happen, even if the state legislature doesn't want it to happen. That you get a coalition of semi-governmental entities to say, we will accept this grant money in order to build up the infrastructure for this thing to happen.

Josh Lapp 38:12And one thing that I'll add about it: Governor Kasich rejected the money. Governor DeWine has said nothing. And I call that a victory, because I don't need full-fledged support. I just need not full-fledged opposition. Just let it happen. You're not going to kill it. Great, that's all I need. Because there are plenty of people that support it. And this, unfortunately, tends to be a political thing, a Republican-versus-Democrat thing. But it doesn't have to be, and it's not everywhere. Michigan has been really good about investing in Amtrak. They took part of our money, and they had a Republican governor when they did that. Because it's not about a political thing. It's just about connecting our communities better. And really, again, with Intel, I think this is the kind of ecosystem that will grow up with that tech cluster. It would be great if people in Mansfield, where this train will run, or in Springfield, or Dayton for that matter, have an opportunity to connect better to a place that is really growing and has a lot of jobs. I don't need everybody that is going to work at all these places to live in Columbus. Happily live in Dayton and take the train to work every day, for a 45-minute ride or whatever, and come to work. Isn't that great for our state, that we're giving people more accessibility? Because driving is expensive. I have an electric car. So there's been a meme going around from Arrested Development that's like, how much was gas—$10? I have no idea. I have an electric car, and I take the bus, and I have an e-bike. So I don't ever use gas. But I know it's expensive, and it really sucks. And I did have an ICE, as we call them in the EV world—an internal combustion engine car—before. And so, even if it's not like people are going to get rid of their cars necessarily, but they will have an option to do something else. When gas prices are $4 a gallon, you can ride your bike, take the bus, take Amtrak from Mansfield or whatever to your job. That's the kind of system that we want. It's the kind of system that exists elsewhere, even elsewhere in the US. So I think people just need to buy into the vision, and understand that we're not trying to change everything. We're just trying to add more opportunity and options.

Tim Fulton 40:58Absolutely. I wrap up these interviews by asking two questions. One is, what do you think Columbus is doing well? And I'm going to assume the answer to the second one: what do you think Columbus is not doing so well? And maybe, if you want to take it outside of transit, because we've talked so much here about the things that we're trying to do, but maybe from a higher-level approach.

Josh Lapp 41:23Yes. So what Columbus does well is, when Columbus sets its mind on doing something, that leadership, those people, it gets done, and it gets done quickly and well. So I think about, like, the Scioto Mile and Scioto Greenway. That was a horrible area before. The river was gross. And when whoever the decision makers and the planners and everyone decided, hey, we're going to do this, they found the money, and they were like, we're doing it. And look at it today. If you go down there—I live in Olde Towne, so I go down there often—absolutely full of people, and diverse, like one of the best places in Columbus to just be amongst people that actually interact with each other, aren't just in their own bubble. You'll hear all languages, you'll see all types of people. And it's really one of the few places in Columbus that I think is a really big gathering spot. So I love that in particular. But I think that's a reflection of when we as a community decide we're going to do something, we're doing it, and we're going to do it well. So we should do that for transit. Of course, that's my plug there. What don't we do well? I think sometimes we have a tendency in Columbus to think we're special, but in almost a bad way. I used to hear this about transit, like, well, we're different, we're not like all those other cities. Actually, we are. We're like every other city. Just do it well. Look at what's working in other places. We don't have to replicate it, we can put our own spin on it. But don't think we're that different, because we're not. We're an American city. We're probably one of the most American cities. So let's not let us thinking that we're special detract from doing the things that sometimes are hard, but that other people are doing. Because I see things happening—I travel for work, I see great pipelines other places—and I think we need to do that. And then I hear, oh, well, we can't do this for this and this. And, no, if they can do it elsewhere, we can do it here. We're not special.

Tim Fulton 43:53Yeah. Josh, thank you for your time.

Josh Lapp 43:56Well, thank you so much, Tim. This was great.

Tim Fulton 44:04Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite transit advocate. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.