COTA Line Review: CMAX

all i want for christmaaaassss is brttttt (yes i am aware it is july)

CMAX is among COTA’s most important and busiest routes. Even though I don’t live within more than a few miles of a CMAX stop, I would say it is one of my most-used routes. Let's take a look at the entire route and see how it lines up with the rest of COTA’s routes!

okay, where does it go

We started our trip at the OhioHealth on Polaris Parkway at Africa Road, at an intersection with the 102. Headways on this part of CMAX are every 30 minutes, this will increase to every 15 minutes later on.

OhioHealth at the northern terminus of the route (I rode the part north of Northland in the winter and the part south of it in the summer)

We left the stop and headed down Cleveland Avenue. The ridership on this part was pretty low, as was the density. We made a deviation to Mount Carmel Hospital as we went through Westerville on our way south.

A very chilly Northland Transit Center

Crossing over I-270, the density increased, and the single-family homes became closer together. As we crossed SR-161, we entered the Northland Transit Center, with interchange available to the 35 and 43. A lot of people boarded here, and the ridership was pretty good.

After Northland, the vast majority of stops on this route have dedicated special CMAX stops with larger shelters and real-time screens. They’re a great addition to this route, and we need more of these on other routes too!

morse

Passing Morse, where interchange is available to the 34, we left Northland and entered North Linden. We stopped at the Northern Lights Park and Ride, one of the largest transfer points in North Linden. At this point, most seats were taken (this was an inbound trip on a weekday afternoon/evening). One stop later, at Huy, interchange is available to the 32.

Continuing down into South Linden, the density increased as well as the amount of people riding. All seats were taken, and a few people were left standing. Interchange is available to the 11 and 31 at Hudson.

south linden i think

As we continued south, the bus became more and more full, and we stopped at the Linden Transit Center. This transit center is arguably COTA’s worst one, as all it really is is a bus shelter that isn’t even connected to the adjacent building where the transit center is. In addition, only 2 routes stop here: CMAX and the 8.

near ish milo grogan i think maybe?

At East 5th, in Milo-Grogan, interchange is available to the 22 as well as the 12 only a block away. After this point, the bus started emptying out and became less and less full. The density also dropped slightly, and the buildings around the route became more and more industrial. However, that would change pretty quickly when we crossed the interstate and entered downtown Columbus.

nationwide!

We turned west onto Mount Vernon which became Nationwide, then turned south onto N High. The stop at the intersection of High & Nationwide is close to the Spring Street Terminal, where interchange is available to the 6, 51, 52, and 61. This route used to be a part of the 6, however, it was upgraded to being CMAX and the 6 was cut down to only Lincoln Village to Downtown via Sullivant Ave. Passing by the Statehouse, the amount of people on this bus dramatically dropped off, and a few stops after that, we terminated at E Mound & S 4th. The stop at E Main & S High is close to the COTA Transit Terminal, with 11 rush-hour routes departing from here to suburbs north of Columbus.

so what

As a bus route, this route is perfectly fine. It gets great ridership (top 5 in the system), has signal priority so it can have traffic light patterns that align with where the bus is, has sidewalks for (almost) the entire thing, and the scenery isn’t too bad.

The problem is, COTA doesn’t call CMAX a regular bus route. It calls it “Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)”, which is a very real and useful tool for building fast, effective transit at a low cost. The problem is, CMAX isn’t BRT. In short, it doesn’t meet most of the criteria for BRT to be considered (such as level boarding, off-board payment, dedicated lanes, etc). For a deep dive into what is and is not BRT, and how the future LinkUS lines are going to be real BRT, check out my article on BRT linked below!

final rating

Due to the nature of the route, I will rank CMAX similar to other frequent routes, and not on its own grading scale. On the normal grading scale, I’d give CMAX a 7/10. The only reason it isn’t higher is because, in my experience at least, this route gets delayed very often and isn’t the most reliable. If I was grading it similar to other true BRT routes I’ve rode, it doesn’t even compare.

how would i improve this

Despite the already pretty good frequency of every 15 minutes on the core section, it just doesn’t feel like enough. During peak hours, I would up it to every 10 minutes on the core part and doing either 20 or 30 minutes on the northern segment.

Something a little more ambitious that could be done on this route is dedicated bus lanes from Downtown to at least Hudson, if not Northern Lights or even Northland. Despite the signal priority, this bus still manages to get stuck in traffic. Doing this would speed up travel times by so much along this section, especially in the peak hours.

CMAX near Northland Transit Center