Cincinnati's first bus-only lane will launch midway into November, city officials announced yesterday (Oct. 18).
The lane on Main Street between Government Square and Central Parkway will be closed to cars during morning and afternoon rush hours except for vehicles turning off the street and entering and exiting parking lots. Officials have yet to release specific hours for the lanes.
The idea, first pushed by transit activists with the Better Bus Coalition earlier this year, will create a pilot program to test out the bus-only lanes. Better Bus Coalition President Cam Hardy says he hopes the pilot lane will lead to more throughout the city.
The dedicated bus lane is an attempt to boost ridership for the city’s Metro buses by improving timeliness. Generally, bus-only lanes allow buses to move more quickly and efficiently by removing other traffic from the lane they are using.
Cincinnati City Councilmembers Tamaya Dennard, Greg Landsman, David Mann, Chris Seelbach, P.G. Sittenfeld and Wendell Young passed a motion asking for a report on the feasibility of the lane in March.
"This is a pretty big deal," said Sittenfeld, who introduced the motion, when it was approved. "It's something we've never had before."
Sittenfeld said he hoped that the lane would reduce delays and snags throughout the bus system. It can take more than 20 minutes for a bus to get out of downtown under current arrangements. Boosters hope that could be cut down to as little as five minutes under the pilot program. Metro will test on-time performance with the lane and compare that data with performance before it was instituted. More than 600 buses a day traverse Main Street, which is the main exit from central bus hub Government Square.
Both the city’s Department of Transportation and Engineering and the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority recommended adoption of the pilot program, according to a memo from Acting City Manager Patrick Duhaney. The Downtown Residents Council and Downtown Cincinnati, Inc. both support the pilot program, though DRC says it has concerns about the short duration of walk signals for pedestrians at Eighth and Ninth streets.
There is one complication: The city will need to remove a bump-out at Main and Seventh streets to implement the plan. That will cost about $55,000, which will come out of the city’s capital budget for downtown capital improvements. Other than that, the only expense will be signage indicating the lane is for buses only during afternoon rush hour. That signage should be added this month.
One remaining question, however, is how the city will enforce the lane.
“Just because we create a bus-only lane doesn’t mean the problem is solved,” Councilman Seelbach pointed out when council approved the pilot. “What is our plan to get people to actually follow the law here?"
City administration says it is working on that.
