Cincinnati City Council members heard a presentation from the Cincinnati Innovation Team during a Climate, City Services and Infrastructure Committee meeting on Tuesday, focusing on new approaches to city challenges.
Council members Seth Walsh, Meeka Owens, Jeff Cramerding and Ryan James are exploring new ways to improve transportation access and reduce carbon emissions, with a focus on equity and affordability.
The presentation, given by the Cincinnati Innovation Team, created in partnership with the City of Cincinnati and the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University, focused on transportation and mobility priorities outlined in the Financial Freedom Blueprint and the Green Cincinnati Plan.
The Green Cincinnati Plan includes several mobility goals, including increasing public transit ridership by 25% by 2030, increasing zero-emission vehicle use by 25% by 2030, and increasing the number of people living within 0.25 miles of safe bike and pedestrian infrastructure by 50%.
Joshua Pine, director of the Cincinnati Innovation Team, or the i-Team, said his team is focused on reducing carbon emissions.
“Thirty-one percent of our carbon emissions come from the transportation sector, the second largest after the building sector,” Pine said. “It’s certainly critical for our city to reduce reliance on car-centric forms of development.”
The Financial Freedom Blueprint also aims to address job mobility challenges, including transportation and education as barriers to higher wages. The i-Team said 1 in 10 people find getting to and from work to be a barrier.
Nia Baucke, a civic designer on the i-Team, spoke about the team’s progress, including research and qualitative data collected through interviews and focus groups with stakeholders and residents in Evanston and Walnut Hills.
From those conversations, the team developed key themes and insights, she said. The i-Team also compiled findings to inform pilot mobility initiatives, including Open Streets and an e-bike incentive program.
Baucke said the issue extends beyond transportation to accessibility.
“We’re beginning to see there is accessibility, but it’s incredibly effortful to get to where you need to go,” Baucke said. “An example would be Evanston. Evanston has low car ownership and technically high transit access. But when you consider that Evanston is in a food desert, most residents live about a 15-minute walk from routes that get them there. Technically, access is available, but it becomes very effortful.”
Baucke said the research is wrapping up and the team will move into an ideation stage. During that phase, stakeholders and residents will be invited to help develop solutions to transportation challenges across the city.
“A lot of the pieces are there,” Baucke said. “They’re not necessarily connecting. During the journeys we studied, people described complex routines, taking a child to school, walking back, catching a bus, transferring routes, and it’s all very difficult.”
Baucke said the cost of car ownership came up in every stakeholder interview.
“The difficulty around caregiving and child care came up for every individual,” she said. “Feelings of isolation when they are not connected. I think we’re at a really interesting place in our city, where individuals are open to transit in a unique way because of increased costs, housing burdens and the neighborhoods they live in — to really think about this as an opportunity.”
Council members expressed appreciation for the i-Team’s work.
“Thank you so much for looking at sustainability-work through a lens of mobility and access and affordability,” James said.