You can't get there from here -- yet: UPDATED

People who have lived in or visited metropolitan areas similar to ours – or simply residents frustrated from trying to get from Point A to Point B without a car – will tell you that our region is way behind the curve when it comes to public transportation. So Hamilton County Commissioner Todd Portune’s proposal this week to create a regional transit board, while short on details, is certainly worth noting.
Portune says he’d like to see the new board, which would embrace but go beyond the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA, the Metro bus folks), off and running by this summer. He’d have it gradually incorporate Butler, Warren and Clermont counties, then Northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana to develop a more comprehensive bus system with cross-county and inter-county connections.
This is going to have to happen sooner or later, and it may as well happen now. Our area’s changing demographics and population patterns are making the current SORTA system’s scope, and its downtown-centric routing paradigm, seriously outmoded. And it simply doesn’t have the resources to become a truly comprehensive system.
A lot of tricky and nasty politics will be involved, of course, with the chronic city vs. suburbs tension in play. It will require buy-in – literally – from communities outside Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
Portune also mentions adding light rail to the mix – still a sore subject since Hamilton County voters turned down a proposed $2.6 billion system in 2002. The Enquirer editorial board opposed that plan as having too many question marks. But we took great pains to praise its “MetroMoves” component, an expanded and reconfigured bus system. We said SORTA should implement it first, then build support for a refined, perhaps more limited light-rail vision.
That’s not unlike what Portune is proposing now. It’s about time.

UPDATE, March 23:

Commissioner Todd Portune sent me an e-mail today with specifics that address some of the points raised by this post and by readers' comments on it. Here's what Portune had to say:

"We expect that this discussion will lead to the formation of a new entity that encompasses our four-county metro area in SW Ohio at a minimum. There is some talk of perhaps expanding to include Clinton and Montgomery counties -- especially given the high volume of traffic in the Cin-Day corridor.

"As for light rail, the start will be out the Eastern Corridor using existing rail and DMUs [Diesel Movable Units], which are passenger trains that look futuristic but run on diesel and use existing track. The county Transportation Improvement District this year will act at my direction to choose a preferred alternative on connecting the track from the Montgomery Ribs Boathouse to the downtown transit center. The TID will also begin action toward presenting a demonstration project on the route.

"It is possible that as early as 2010 passenger service from Milford to downtown with a side line from Red Bank to Xavier University will be in service under our lead and all without the necessity of a tax increase.

"As for bus service, we are taking the Metro Moves bus proposals of 2002 as the Gold Standard and working to implement that plus integrate service to Butler Warren and Clermont and their system improvements. Service to the disabled will be improved and expanded beyond the I-275 outer belt.

"I also expect that we will introduce Trolley shuttle service circulating downtown along as many as four different routes that would likely run continuously between: a) our three river cities; b) our places of culture and entertainment; c) our places of government and business; and d) between downtown and uptown, the University and medical complex including, perhaps, the zoo."