COTA Line Review: 35 Dublin/Granville
despite having both dublin and granville in the title, the line goes to neither dublin nor granville
Oh, the 35. Where do I even start. At the beginning would make sense so let's start there
what is this
The route, only 2 years old and COTA’s newest route (it ran pre-pandemic but in a different spot) starts at the New Albany Park & Ride, runs express along SR-161 before turning south to the Easton Transit Center. After stopping there, it heads up Westerville Road and turns west back onto SR-161, where it makes local stops for the rest of the route, including one at the Northland Transit Center.
okay, where does it go
Starting at the New Albany Park & Ride, we passed through a small amount of suburbia (6 lane roads, buildings a quarter mile away from each other, etc) before getting onto SR-161 where we quickly made our way over towards Easton. The route really should run local along Johnstown Road and Morse Road, but we can't have nice things. There are some heavy commercial areas along Hamilton Road which would benefit from some more bus too, and the rather limited service on the 24 to that area probably doesn’t cut it.
We sat at Easton for a while because we had a driver change for some reason. After Easton, we passed by the outskirts of the actual Easton mall (but didn’t get close enough for the connection to be useful), then turned north onto Westerville Road. This part of the route, near Minerva Park, was where we hit peak ridership, about 6 people, I’d say those numbers are decent for a weekend afternoon (rode on 14 dec 2024).
We eventually turned onto SR-161 again… and quickly got off it to make a diversion to a senior center. This diversion wasn’t too bad, it followed along the main road. Speaking of the main road, a bus route should NOT run local along an eight-lane limited-access expressway. There are plenty of side roads the 35 could use, but no, they decided to run it along the highway (with poorly maintained sidewalks, if sidewalks at all).
not long after that diversion, we made it to the Northland Transit Center. This transit center gives the 35 a vital connection to CMAX, columbus’s pseudo-brt, and a not-so-vital link to the 43, a commuter line to Westerville. I didn’t get off here, but it has a decent sized parking lot, arguably too many bus bays, and a building to shelter from bad weather. looks nice.
Continuing past the transit center, we got back on the stroad that is SR-161 and made a few more stops before terminating just past I-71, at the intersection of SR-161 and Busch Road. This stop has a nicely timed connection to the 8, which proved handy as I was ultimately headed down to Nationwide Arena to see yet another Jackets overtime loss to the Anaheim Ducks, of all teams.
so what
The 35 is certainly a route. A major factor of my ranking of this route is something I haven’t mentioned yet. Despite running through areas that would benefit from more frequent COTA service, this bus only runs every HOUR. Even during peak times. This headway severely restricts when you can go places. I have had the threat of a missed connection to the 35 in the past, which led me to make a last-minute move to a 0-minute connection to a separate line, which ultimately worked out but i guarantee if I wasn’t exactly on top of the timetables down to the minute I would have had to wait for 55 minutes at Northland.
final rating
I give the 35 a 3/10. It’s the only regular route to New Albany, which scores it some points, I guess. But other than that, the hourly frequency and hostile pedestrian conditions really tank the score. While a fair bit of the line runs through endless suburbia, a lot of it serves communities that, in my opinion, would be better off with more COTA service than less. This route is pretty much the bare bones of what could be a great line, but alas, we have this. Also, extend it just that little bit farther to Worthington to connect with the 102.
how would i improve this
There are quite a few things that could be done to improve this route. First off, it doesn’t go west far enough. This route should take Dublin-Granville Road all the way over to Dublin instead of terminating in Northland. This would give one-seat rides from Dublin to Easton, which is currently a two-seat ride with a pretty annoying transfer just north of Clintonville.
Another thing that could be done is improving the headways. This could be said for pretty much any other route, but with the 35, there are just so many places where it is the most convenient route that you can take to get there, but it only runs every hour. This should run every 30 mins at least.
One more thing that could be done is to run it locally along streets in New Albany before getting on SR-161 at New Albany Road. It’s around a 45 minute walk from the Park and Ride to the center of town, and if you ran it locally along Johnstown Road, Market Street, and Fodor Road, it would much better serve New Albany. And while we’re at it, have it briefly get off SR-161 at Hamilton Road, stop, then get right back on. If you extend either the 24 or 34 up along Hamilton, this could make it a lot easier to get from New Albany to the Hamilton Road corridor; it currently requires you to go all the way to Easton then backtrack.
COTA wanted to run this route to connect with 102 but Worthington complained about having a bus sitting at layover.