Consumer demand from young people across the United States is loud and clear. From bike lanes to enhanced bus networks and rail systems, we want to see more convenient and widely available public transit. Yet public transportation remains a minuscule budget priority in Ohio compared to highway expansion.
Consumer demand from young people across the United States is loud and clear. From bike lanes to enhanced bus networks and rail systems, we want to see more convenient and widely available public transit. Yet public transportation remains a minuscule budget priority in Ohio compared to highway expansion. Why aren't Ohio politicians listening to what we want?
Maybe it's because the media doesn't talk enough about what we want as consumers. There's a huge amount of media coverage about the Millennial Generation, and a lot of it amounts to repetitive hand-wringing: We're narcissists! We're lazy! Too many of us got trophies in youth soccer and that means we can't function as adults!
Toss in a few too many stories about Lena Dunham and you've got almost the entire spread of millennial media coverage. What major media fails to report is that our generation is arguably the most entrepreneurial in American history; according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, 54 percent of millennials want to start their own business or already have, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce notes that young people founded 160,000 start-ups per month in 2011 alone. We're now the largest generation in America, and we'll outnumber Baby Boomers in the workplace by 2016. Meeting millennial lifestyle and utility needs is absolutely critical for a future of economic growth and innovation in every state, including Ohio.
The availability and convenience of public transportation is a massive priority for millennials deciding where to live, and that should also make it a priority for the state as well. Our organization, the Ohio Public Interest Research Group, released a new report in conjunction with the Frontier Group finding that millennials are twice as likely as other generations to use public transit at least once a week. We're also less likely to use a car in commuting to work or school, and almost one in five young people bikes every week. Demand for automobile alternatives is multimodal — from subway systems to bike lanes, Generation Y is significantly more likely to desire additional ways of getting around as opposed to older generations, yet our voices go unheeded.
Ohio's Department of Transportation allocated a massive $2.5 billion for highway expansion during the 2014 construction season, while public transit received a paltry $10.1 million in comparison. It's an incredible discrepancy in funding which should be outrageous to voters of all ages, since greater availability of public transportation means a greater number of people who can commute to their jobs. It means improved access to hospitals, human services and shopping malls as well as flexible transportation options for people to build their daily schedules around. Public transportation benefits everyone, and ignoring our need for it makes life unnecessarily harder for a lot of people while also jeopardizing Ohio's economic future. Young people have the potential to revitalize Cleveland in a way it's never seen while also making the rest of the state a more attractive option for tech companies and start-ups. In turn, we keep our best and brightest college graduates here. We’re talking about the future of Ohio, and it's a conversation worth having.
This op-ed was co-written by Avi Epstein, an Ohio University senior studying environmental geography, and Neil Button, campus organizer for the Ohio Public Interest Research Group.
