RTA NEWS

STATE OF OHIO

TRANSPORTATION AND JUSTICE SUBCOMMITTEE

April 5, 2007

Testimony Given by:

Joseph A. Calabrese, President � Ohio Public Transit Association

Good morning Chairman Patton and Members of the Committee.

My name is Joe Calabrese, General Manager of the Greater Cleveland RTA, and President of the Ohio Public Transit Association.

I have the great privilege of working in the public transportation industry for over 30 years, helping workers get to work, students get to school, seniors get to their doctors, and persons with disabilities get to wherever they want.

Nationally, the Public Transportation Industry is serving its customers well. As a matter of fact, in 2006 over 10 Billion trips were taken on Public Transit in the U.S., the highest ridership in 50 years. Ridership on Public Transit has grown by 28% since 1996, faster than the growth in airline travel and even vehicle miles traveled.

In Cleveland, we just celebrated our 4^th consecutive year of ridership growth.

I am here today on behalf of the 59 public transit systems in the Great State of Ohio, 24 in urban areas, and 35 in rural areas of our State.

Collectively, we serve approximately 500,000 customers each weekday.

Over 60% of all public transit trips in the State are work related. Seniors and persons with disabilities account for over 48% of all transit riders in rural areas.

These agencies range from the larger, such as my agency in Northeast Ohio, COTA in Columbus and SORTA in Cincinnati, to the smaller agencies such as the systems in Pike and Ross Counties.

For Ohio to function, for Ohio to prosper, Ohio needs a viable transportation network, which must include highways, airways and public transit. To have that viable public transportation network, we need your help.

In recent years, State of Ohio funding to Public Transit has been decreased by 63%, to 1980 levels� from $44.3 million to $16.3 million.

I am sure you realize that no agency in the State can continue to provide needed services in 2007, with a 1980 budget, any better than can a working family in Ohio support their family on a 1980 paycheck.

The result of these dramatic reductions in funding has been layoffs, increases in fares and cuts in service. It has also resulted in deferring capital projects and the delay in the timely replacement of buses. These are not good things.

Reductions in transit service, for one, make it not only more difficult, but impossible for many Ohioans to get to jobs, support their families and pay taxes.

For many, it�s public transportation or public assistance!!!

Isn�t it wise public policy to subsidize a ride to work, as opposed to spending taxpayer money for public assistance?

Let me give you just one current example:

A new shopping center is opening in the Cleveland area called Steelyard Commons, located on a site of an abandoned steel mill. Today, I think just the Home Depot and Target stores are open for business. RTA started service to Steelyards Common upon its opening, and pretty good service at that. This service is offered until 7 PM, 7 days a week, at a cost to RTA of approximately $200,000 annually. Because of budget implications, RTA has to cut other services in the region to fund this new service to the mall, which we knew would need public transit service. The example is, that a few weeks before the Target Store opened I got a call from the store Manager who told me that they had a real problem. The problem was that over 50% of those that filled out employment applications for work at Target would not be able to work there unless RTA extended the hours of service until 30 minutes after closing time, which would take even more financial resources. Of course we extended our schedule to provide job opportunities to those that needed it.

Deferring capital projects means loss of good paying construction jobs and loss of economic development opportunities.

Funding Capital projects, on the other hand, could be a great thing. One such example is our Euclid Corridor Silver Line Project in Cleveland. This $75 million, TRAC funded project leveraged Federal �New Starts� finding and additional local funding, resulting in 4,000 construction jobs, $225 million in construction, yielding $2.3 Billion in related economic development. Groundbreaking happened in October 2004, construction is on-time and on-budget, and we hope that each of you can attend the ribbon-cutting scheduled for fall of 2008.

Deferring bus replacements is never a good thing and means the existing buses are older, less reliable, and more expensive to maintain and less friendly to our environment.

The Public Transit Systems in Ohio have responded well under these very difficult situations. We have reduced costs and increased our productivity.

As a matter of fact, just last month, in a national competition, two Ohio systems were presented awards from the Federal Transit Administration, for initiatives that increased ridership. These were the Greater Cleveland RTA and PARTA, in Portage County.

Just last fall, the residents in the greater Columbus area affirmed the critical need for COTA, by voting to increase their local sales tax to support COTA operations.

This is to say that we are doing the best that we can with the revenues that we have, but the future is not bright. We are headed for a crisis in public transportation in the State of Ohio.

The deferral of bus replacements have resulting in the fact that in 2007, a minimum of 555 buses in this State will be beyond their useful life, and desperately need to be replaced. That number is 422 replacement buses in 2008.

I have included in my handout a spreadsheet outlining this bus replacement need over the next four years by transit system, by region, and by Legislative District, jointly developed with the assistance from ODOT. These replacement amounts were developed with the understanding that no more than 10% of the agencies buses would be beyond their useful life in any year.

For example:

COTA in Columbus needs to replace 38 in 2007 and 37 in 2008.

Greater Dayton needs 134 in 2007 and 26 in 2008.

Huron County needs 2 in 2007 and 3 in 2008.

Pike County needs 1 in 2007 and 1 in 2008

Buses may not be sexy, but buses are to us like paint to a painter, or a stove to a cook. We certainly cannot do the people�s work without them.

Public Transportation Systems throughout the State, also save money for other State funded institutions, such as education. Many public transit agencies provide service for their local Board of Education in a way that significantly reduces education costs.

In Cleveland, for example, RTA provides all the transportation services for the Cleveland High Schools and Jr. High Schools.

This is the same in about 20 regions in the State, such as:

Dayton � 4,000 students daily

Akron � 3,200 students daily

Youngstown � 1,000 students daily

And in Carroll County, where they provide service to one Carroll Exempted Village School District student that is wheelchair bound, because the normal school bus can�t navigate down the child�s narrow rural driveway.

Public transportation also provides considerable service to State of Ohio Colleges and Universities.

Examples:

Cleveland � Cleveland State and Case Western Reserve

Portage County � Kent State University

There is the potential for similar savings in many other areas, where the State funds transportation as part of a Departmental budget, but where that transportation is not coordinated with the local public transit provider, and therefore duplicates existing services. An example of this is Ohio�s Medicaid Managed Care Program. Managed Care Organizations that the state has selected to provide Medicaid managed care have contracted with private transportation brokers and in many cases they are not efficiently utilizing the existing public transportation services. The many state agencies that provide transportation services to Ohio�s citizens should more effectively and efficiently work together to coordinate transportation services in cooperation with Ohio�s public transit systems.

OPTA strongly urges the State of Ohio to mandate that each agency funded by the State must coordinate their transportation needs and transportation dollars with the locally recognized transit agency first.

These are State of Ohio funded programs that include transportation costs as part of their Departmental budget. This transportation however, is not coordinated with local public transit providers, resulting in a duplication of services, expenses, and is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

�Public Transportation is also good for the environment. In Cleveland, RTA reduces 48,000 cars from the roadways each weekday. This reduces pollution, congestion and enhances roadway safety.

I will not go into a discussion of transit�s impact on reducing global warming, because frankly, I think a little global warming may be just what Cleveland winters need!!

The public transit industry can also be an effective partner with Ohio�s farmers, in the use of Bio-Diesel fuels, already being used in Columbus and Cincinnati, with tests beginning soon in other portions of the State.

How does Ohio compare to its neighbors in transit funding? Not well at all.�

Different States fund public transportation in different ways. In some, a majority of the funding comes from the State budget, while in others, including Ohio, the majority of the funding comes from local sources.

On the basis of State funding per capita, Ohio is near the bottom of the list.

For example:

Pennsylvania�� - $ 63.29

Illinois�� - $ 61.25

Michigan�� - $ 20.73

Ohio �� - $�� 1.58

In total (2004) dollars, the comparison is

Pennsylvania�� - $ 785,000,000

Illinois�� - $ 778,700,000

Michigan�� - $ 210,000,000

Ohio �� - $�� 18,100,000 � subsequently reduced to $16.3 million.

For the State of Ohio to compete, in the World, National and even Regional economy, this must change.

We want to thank the Ohio Department of Transportation, especially the Office of Public Transit, which has been very supportive throughout the period of severe budget cuts.

We want to thank Governor Strickland and ODOT Director Beasley for proposing an increase in funding for public transit, from $16.3 million to 20.3 million. That gets us about half way back to 2001 funding levels, and is at least a start in the right direction. We urge you to strongly support this increase.

We also hope that a portion of the Federal Transportation Funding that flows back to Ohio from Washington DC can be �flexed� to transit, to assist in our lagging bus replacement program. This type of flexibility is what allowed the Euclid project to go forward. This amount is approximately $1.3 Billion annually, and is in addition to the approximately $1.1 Billion in State Collected Gas Tax.

Only four percent of these Federal dollars can fund approximately half of the State-wide bus replacement needs. OPTA is working with our Federal Elected Officials to seek funds for the other half.

We acknowledge the difficult situation that you face as Legislators in your budget deliberations, but we urge you to creatively find a solution to this important issue.

Other States have concluded that Public Transit needs a dedicated funding source, and have established bi-partisan committees to study this subject.

We urge Ohio to consider creating a bi-partisan study committee, similar to the study committee that reviewed the need for the most recent gas tax increase, to meet and bring forth a proposal to the Ohio General Assembly to create a dedicated source of state funding for public transit in Ohio.

There is no progressive and viable city or state in the world that hasn�t intelligently invested in public transportation.

We urge Ohio to join that list.