COTA Line Review: 34 Morse
morse road is the bane of my existence
what is this
Morse Road is a main east-west thoroughfare for northern Columbus. They forgot one big thing when they built it, though — the people. If this route was on pretty much any other street, I would love it, but alas, Morse Road.
okay, where does it go
We started at the Easton Transit Center, turning south out of the facility. The 34 is among the more common sights at Easton as it is one of the most frequent routes to serve the area. We went south along Stelzer, then west on Easton Way, then north on Morse Crossing to loop around the main Easton mall.
Turning west onto Morse Road, we crossed Alum Creek and entered an area with some small houses, but primarily businesses with large parking lots in the front. As seen later, this route is VERY monotonous.
Passing Cleveland Ave and CMAX, the scenery remained unchanged. No notes. The bus was sort of busy though, with about 10 people on the bus (on a weekday).
At this point, something changed: Morse Road widened from 7 to 9 lanes!!! How exciting. It quickly dropped back down to the much more reasonable 7, and we kept heading west.
As we headed west, we hit the interchange point with the 8, 42 (see review here!), and 11, the latter interlining all the way to the western terminus of the line. We passed under I-71 and the scenery changed as we entered the extreme north end of Clintonville, with more and more houses and less and less car dealerships.
We eventually turned onto north onto High Street, stopped at the Delawanda Park & Ride, and terminated. Connection is available to the 2, 11, 33, and 102.
so what
The only reason the 34 is subpar is because of the street it runs on. Morse Road is a TERRIFYING stroad (congested, wide, hostile street-road combo) that should be revamped ASAP. Other than that, it runs every 15 minutes on weekdays and provides a critical link between the High Street corridor and Easton.
final rating
The 34 gets a 5/10. It’s a strange combination of good frequency but bad facilities, and I think the rating reflects that. It’s reliable yet mediocre, much like COTA overall.
EXTRA NOTE: I just checked the proposed service changes for May and this route (along with the 102) is potentially getting a weekend service boost to up to 15-minute headways! This creates a funny scenario where the 34 Morse becomes COTA’s most frequent route despite being nowhere near downtown.