It’s hard to get around in Columbia.
Our public transportation, in the minds of many, is capricious at best and irresponsibly treacherous at its worst.
Public roads are littered with potholes, pedestrian crossings and bike lanes have become increasingly dangerous, and who hasn’t been stuck waiting on some type of shuttle whose estimated arrival time was “10 minutes ago?”
Available parking spots are few and far between, especially midday, and once one is finally found, you still have to walk five or ten minutes in order to get to where you actually wanted to go.
I wish I could tell you that the City of Columbia was looking into parking and transportation problems, but when I look at the Traffic Engineering Department of Columbia’s website — supposedly with links to traffic studies — I come to a picture of a minivan and a paragraph explaining that “studies are conducted to address the safety and efficiency of traffic flow in the City of Columbia”.
But there are no studies to review.
The city has applied for, and received, four grants worth over $16 million for transportation needs over the past seven years — and $6.5 million dollars of that went toward those aforementioned transportation studies. The city is currently “in [the] process of revising [a] previous application” for $100 million to rebuild railway infrastructure, which would ideally alleviate traffic congestion.
Upon reviewing the Parking Fund Budget for 2016, the city is projected to rake in $2,300,000 in revenue from parking meters and $2,100,000 in revenue from non-moving violations (a.k.a. parking tickets). And “in previous years, the Parking Fund has transferred as much as $1,750,000 to the General Fund” of the City.
I realize that it costs money to repair a fractured system in a city like Columbia, but when close to $2 million dollars can be taken from the parking budget while students and citizens are in danger of potential hit and runs and Columbia offers very little in the way of the alleviation of traffic congestion, it seems as though the city could do more to address our current situation.
Not to mention the lack of safety seen throughout streets with massive potholes, traffic intersections at the top of hills which obstruct visibility, and the increasing desire for citizens to walk and ride bikes on already heavily congested streets.
I know it will take time, but that’s no reason to delay any longer. Economically, socially and environmentally, we should urge the continued proliferation of bike lanes, sidewalk expansions, pedestrian walkways, moped parking, and high occupancy commuting services. And perhaps one of the best ways to accomplish all of those things is to bring a newer system of transit to Columbia that will give the city a safer and more efficient way for its 802,300 citizens to move around.
Could that new service be a monorail, a skyway, a subway, or a completely revamped shuttle system? I don’t have the answer to that, but I do know that whatever it is, it cannot come soon enough.