Why you should be riding the Metro
By Krista Ramsey • kramsey@enquirer.com • January 14, 2011
At the 11th hour, police officers' and firefighters' jobs were spared in the new city budget. Metro bus service wasn't.
Last year's cut to the system resulted in a 12 percent reduction in services.
The new city budget scrapes an additional $1 million off Metro's skin-and-bones budget.
Cutting public transportation may not tug at heartstrings or draw protesters to budget hearings, but make no mistake: Lack of commitment to a comprehensive system is one of Greater Cincinnati's fatal flaws.
Good public transportation is crucial to economic recovery. Metro should be expanding to support job growth and worker retraining. Instead it is contracting.
Citizens wonder how they can help resolve economic problems. With Metro, it's easy. They can ride.
So if you've ever even toyed with the idea of taking the bus - or wanted to do something "green" that was meaningful and substantial - make this the year you give Metro a try. You will save money; you will also help save bus routes and hold the line on increased fares.
It is a common-sense, fundamental way to work for the common good.
A regular rider can save more than $4,500 annually in commuting costs, spares the environment the release of 8,400 pounds of carbon dioxide and preserves 433 gallons of fossil fuel.
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That rider also helps keep public transportation alive.Passenger fares make up a third of Metro's budget. Every time people hop a bus, they build their region's capacity.
If you need more reasons to try Metro:
Metro supports the regional education system. For this portion of January alone, Metro has provided 10,500 school-subsidized rides to the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati State. It transports 10,000 Cincinnati Public Schools students daily. It delivers people to dozens of work training programs, including Easter Seals, Urban League, Epilepsy Foundation and Dress for Success. Bus riders include Ph.D. candidates at UC, young adults with Down syndrome going downtown for training, battered women reclaiming their lives and working for a GED, young parents delivering their kids to day care.
Metro can be part of employee compensation packages. More than 20 major employers subsidize employees' bus passes or allow them to pay for the passes pre-tax. Employees save on parking, gas and car maintenance and can sometimes downsize to a single family car. Older workers are able to continue working even when they don't feel comfortable commuting on their own.
Metro helps entire industries - such as health care - attract workers for entry-level or minimum-wage jobs. Riders commute to teacher's aide positions in schools, custodial jobs at hospitals, concession jobs at Great American Ball Park, retail jobs at Wal-Mart. Volunteers hop a bus to the zoo, hospitals, museums.
Metro is a vital link for people with disabilities. Nearly 100 Jewish Vocational Services clients - most with cognitive disabilities - take Metro to jobs, for example. Starfire U clients, who are young adults with disabilities, take Metro to community service. Special Olympians ride the bus to Saturday bowling.
Metro buses link people socially. Bus riders have an ever-widening circle of friends and acquaintances. Buses become their own communities, where riders interact with people they may not normally meet and learn about professions, backgrounds and points of view they don't usually encounter. Commuting relationships - sometimes built over decades - connect and enlighten people, and strengthen the social fabric of the region.
Metro bus riding builds personal skills. Bus riders often become more prompt, better organized, more flexible and more communal. They learn to get to their stops on time, plan errands better and, invariably, how to help one another out.
Just by taking the bus, they become part of a Cincinnati solution.
