Priorities & Campaigns

2026: New Campaigns

Safe Routes to CCS

As Columbus City Schools continue to face challenges and potential transformation to their student transportation programs, Transit Columbus is working with students, educators, administrators, families, and COTA to:

  • Push for safer walking, biking, and rolling infrastructure for students and families, especially around schools

  • Advocate for more and better COTA service to Columbus City Cchools

  • Provide travel training to students, families, and community members

Fair and Democratic City Council Districts

Under our current at-large city council system, people across the city vote for members of city council who do not live in or represent their district.

Because these elections are city-wide, the only people who have a chance of getting elected are those who are backed by big donors and billionaires. This allows candidates to run expensive, city-wide campaigns rather than focusing on earning the votes from the people they’re running to represent.

City council has a huge impact on the type of infrastructure that gets funded and built in our city. We want those who are making decisions on behalf of the people to be accountable to those very same people. That’s why we’re fighting for a system that works for the people of Columbus.

Transit Columbus is working with Our City Our Say to collect 25,000 signatures by July to get our simple fix on the ballot – true district elections for City Council by the people who live in that district.

Ongoing Campaigns

Fulfill the LinkUS and Bike Plus promise.

LinkUS and Bike Plus are two city/regional programs that have the potential to massively improve and reshape transit options in the Columbus region through Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), more sidewalks, safer intersections and pedestrian crossings, and a network of safe bicycle infrastructure.

Better transit and walkability would create a more affordable, more liveable, more resilient Columbus for all of its residents. If delivered as promised, these two initiatives will make our streets safer and more pleasant, make our transit service faster and more reliable, and give Columbus residents more transportation options outside of a car. Even for those who prefer to drive, more people taking transit, biking, and walking, will mean less traffic congestion for everyone else.

When we passed the LinkUS levy and adopted the Bike Plus plan in 2024, residents were promised infrastructure and service that would create opportunities, give us more transportation choices, and keep vulnerable road users safe. Now it’s up to us to hold our leaders accountable and ensure that what we get is what we voted for.

    • Dedicated lanes and signal priority for bus rapid transit (BRT) routes throughout LinkUS corridors.

    • Dedicated funding for BikePlus plan projects and implementation of BikePlus policies.

    • True protection for bike infrastructure created as a part of LinkUS and BikePlus Initiatives - paint and plastic are not protection.

  • These are two transformative projects that will reshape our streets to be safer to travel regardless of your method of transportation.

    LinkUS will increase COTA service by 45% over 2019 levels, plus add hundreds of miles of new sidewalks, bikeways, and shared used paths.

    Bike Plus aims to create a network of bike infrastructure across the central Ohio region, including protected lanes, bike boulevards, and greenways.

A true vision zero.

Almost everyone knows someone who was killed or seriously hurt in a car crash. Traffic deaths and serious injuries are treated as just the cost of doing business, yet decades of evidence shows that we can design streets that are actually safer for everyone. We simply choose not to due to old-fashioned approaches to traffic engineering that are not only dangerous, but don’t actually do anything to improve traffic conditions.

Every life lost, every person seriously injured on our streets is a policy choice, and a policy failure.

The city of Columbus has a goal to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2035, but to do that we must act with more urgency to completely overhaul the way that we’ve designed and built our streets for decades.

Transit Columbus is pushing for the city and the region to adopt modern policies and design guidelines for street design, urging the administration to prioritize and fund traffic safety as a key public safety issue, and get creative with quick-build projects to increase safety in the short term while longer term safety projects are underway.

    • Adoption of the best complete streets policy in the country by City of Columbus Department of Public Service (DPS) as measured by the standards set forth by Smart Growth America.

    • Reinstatement of the defunct pedestrian and cyclist safety commission outlined in City Code Chapter 2103.

    • Increase dedicated multi-modal project funding at the local level to $25m up from $6m.

    • Easy public access to information on Department of Public Service (DPS) projects early in planning stages.

    • Adoption of the NACTO design manuals as baseline design guides for projects built by the Columbus Department of Public Service.

  • While people often point to distracted driving as the primary issue for traffic safety, the overwhelming majority of evidence shows that designing our streets differently is the most effective way to reduce traffic deaths and injuries.

    To put it simply: laws and speed limits can be ignored; concrete bollards and speed bumps cannot.

    According to Vision Zero principles, the solution to traffic violence is systemic change, not policing individual behavior.

  • A complete streets policy is a framework adopted by a city or planning organization that provides requirements and guidance for how streets are designed and built. It’s purpose is to to focus on the safety of all road users—including pedestrians and bicyclists, regardless of age or ability—and prioritize the needs of ALL transportation methods, not just cars.

    A robust complete streets policy is critical to meeting the city’s stated goal of zero traffic fatalities by 2035; however, such policies are only effective if they are actionable, measurable, and backed by the appropriate funding mechanisms to make implementation possible. 

  • In 2025, the Department of Public Service adopted an internal Complete Streets policy due to the advocacy efforts of Transit Columbus, our members, and our partners at YayBikes! and the American Heart Association.

    Columbus City Council also approved funding for quick build materials that will help create short-term fixes while longer term improvements are planned and built.

    In 2026, we are pushing for changes to city code that would make that policy more transparent and create more accountability and oversight by Columbus residents and City Council.

Fast and free buses for Columbus.

Making buses fare-free not only increases equity and reduces barriers to transit ridership, but it actually improves service. Eliminating fares has multiple proven benefits:

  • Increased Ridership: One of the most consistent findings across randomized trials of fare discounts and eliminations, fare-free pilots on individual routes and lines, and system wide fare eliminations, is that transit being fare free leads more people to ride it.

  • Quicker and Safer Operations: With no requirement to wait for passengers to pay their fare one at a time before getting on the bus, boarding times can decrease, leading to quicker trips. Furthermore, not requiring bus drivers to collect fares has proven to increase the safety of transit operators.

  • Broad Improvements to Social Indicators: A trial of subsidized transit in Boston showed recipients took more trips to health care and social services, a broader randomized trial demonstrated improvements to financial and physical health of subsidy recipients, and qualitative research also makes clear the additional freedom of movement and peace of mind that comes from not requiring transit riders to pay fares.

[Information provided by The National Campaign for Transit Justice]

    • A short term roadmap to zero-fares, starting with easily identifiable populations like students, veterans, disabled persons, and low income residents.

    • A long term roadmap to zero-fare COTA service by and beyond 2028.

    • Identification of short and long term funding streams to achieve zero-fare public transit without reductions in service.

    • Supportive policies in collaboration with TWU Local 208 to ensure the safety of transit operators in a zero-fare environment.

  • While fare collection brings in revenue, it is not free. Costs include physical fare cards and passes, credit card processing and other fare-collection fees, the cost of bus fare boxes, and staff time needed to count cash fares.

    Fares make up only a small percentage of COTA’s annual revenue, and removing fares would reduce or eliminate the technology and administrative costs associated with fare collection.

  • There are also indirect costs of collecting fares. One is increased time waiting for people to pay the fare at stops, known as “dwell time”. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), buses spent 20 percent of their time on routes in dwell time.

    Another is transit operator safety, as requiring operators to enforce fares can lead to conflict with passengers. According to the MTA, during it’s free bus fare pilot, not only did ridership on the free lines increase by 11 percent in that period but bus operators also experienced 39.8 percent fewer verbal and physical assaults from customers.

    Finally, fare collection comes with both economic and technological barriers for low income individuals, some people with disabilities, and some children and aging adults.

  • After years of advocacy from Transit Columbus, Sunrise Columbus, the Central Ohio Worker Center, and others, COTA announced in 2025 that it would study the feasibility of going Fare Free. Transit Columbus was one of the stakeholder groups interviewed as part of that study to determine the potential benefits of going fare free.

    We are currently awaiting the results of that study.

Passenger rail service for Central Ohio.

Columbus is the largest city in the US without passenger rail service. Rail service between Columbus and other cities such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, would create more opportunities for all Ohioans, reduce traffic congestion, and save commuters and travelers money on the cost of car ownership, insurance, and gas.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) identified four projects in Ohio for further study, but we need to put pressure on the statehouse to get this rail service funded and built. We work with our partners at All Aboard Ohio to advocate for these projects to increase fast, affordable inter-city travel opportunities.

    • The reintroduction of Ohio to the The Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Commission (MIPRC)

    • Approval of federal funding to Ohio passenger rail projects, in particular the “3C+D” line and the “Midwest Connect” line, which would both service central Ohio.

  • We are partnering with All Aboard Ohio to put pressure on the statehouse to provide the funding necessary to design and build the projects identified by the FRA.

  • We hope to see all four projects fully funded and built out, including two routes that pass through Columbus: The "3C+D" route (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton) and the Midwest Connect (Pittsburgh to Chicago via Columbus and Ft Wayne.)

Green social housing.

Transit and housing are inextricably tied. Housing choices are limited by affordability, but also by access to reliable transit and mobility options.

While the city and region are focused on increasing housing stock through zoning updates and development incentives, we know that market-driven mechanisms continue to ignore affordability for those most in need, resulting in housing instability, displacement, and modern-day redlining.

Social housing fills a significant gap when it comes to deeply affordable housing. The social housing model has been hugely successful in cities across Europe, most notable in places like Vienna, Austria and Paris, France; but US cities and counties are starting to catch on too. Places like Montgomery County, VA, and Seattle, WA have built social housing programs to create deeply affordable housing that offers true dignity to residents.

    • A social housing pilot that would create a process and mechanism to scale social housing development in Columbus.

    • Policies, plans, and funding to create and incentivize green social housing - publicly or communally owned and managed housing that is mixed income and contains deeply and permanently affordable units for long-term residence. 

    • Such housing should be built with lasting, quality materials; provide adequate green space; and be designed such that it can reduce energy costs/consumption and be resilient to the extreme weather conditions that we are already experiencing and will continue to see in the coming years and decades.

  • Decommodified housing options like public housing are important and necessary to keep people housed safely, comfortably, affordably, and with dignity. Historically, public housing projects have resulted in slums, which were poorly maintained and resulted in negative health effects, high levels of stigma, and limited resources.

    Social housing is designed to be mixed-income, long-term, and community focused.

  • Transit-oriented development necessarily includes housing. Since the city, the county, and other decision makers are focused on incentivizing and building housing along new transit corridors, we have the opportunity to advocate for social housing as a part of this process.