- Panelists said reliable transportation is essential for connecting workers to jobs and sustaining economic growth.
- Transit demand has shifted toward suburban job centers like CVG and major logistics corridors, creating new challenges.
- Leaders emphasized that solving transportation gaps will require coordinated efforts among employers, transit agencies and local governments.
Northern Kentucky University economics professor Janet Harrah believes reliable transportation is one of the central pillars for maintaining and growing the region’s workforce.
Transportation is often a prerequisite for employment, as workers need to reliably get from where they live to where jobs are at the right times. Regional infrastructure largely determines the public transportation options accessible to workers. In Northern Kentucky, a widespread public rail system does not exist. As a result, workers rely on either a personal vehicle, carpooling, or the Transportation Authority of Northern Kentucky bus system to commute to and from their jobs.
To inform the public about the state of NKY’s transportation network, the Northern Kentucky Forum hosted a panel on Tuesday, featuring speakers who discussed the transportation system and the real-world barriers workers face. The panel, moderated by Harrah, included Gina Douthat, executive director of TANK; Gina Stough, vice president of human resources for the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport; and Corey Eimer, director of NKY Works, a regional workforce development organization.
“There’s a more basic question that underneath all that, for many people in the region, and that’s, ‘can I actually get to the job I want to have?’ So before we can participate in the workforce, they have to be able to physically get to the job, or where they live, to where the work is, and reliably and at the right time,” Harrah said. “Transportation really shapes access to the workforce. It affects who can work, which employers can attract talent, and how competitive our region is over time.”
Regarding shifts in regional transportation, Douthat said that commuting patterns in Greater Cincinnati have changed over the past 15 years. According to Douthat, TANK passengers previously used the service to travel from the Northern Kentucky suburbs into downtown Cincinnati, which was described as the Cincinnati region’s center of jobs because of its corporate presence.
As the regional economy changed, transit demand has reversed, with more people traveling from urban areas to suburban job centers, particularly around CVG and Interstates 71/75, which serve as the region’s main hubs for air and trucking logistics. CVG is home to Amazon Air’s North American Superhub and DHL’s North American Superhub, two of the largest employers in Northern Kentucky.
“I would say, 15 years ago, 90% of our customers got on a bus in a suburban city in Northern Kentucky and rode to their job downtown,” Douthat said. “And they were writing because they were trying to save money on parking that has completely flipped today. Almost 10% of our customers are going to downtown Cincinnati for jobs that are that type of work, and most of the people that ride the bus today are going out from downtown to jobs in the suburbs of Northern Kentucky, primarily in the airport region.”
Eimer, sharing his experience managing a workforce development organization, noted that transportation barriers affect key sectors in the regional economy, including healthcare, logistics, and retail. These barriers are particularly evident in Northern Kentucky’s entry-level, low-wage positions, with some people never even applying for certain jobs because of a lack of reliable transportation.
“Talking with employers and hearing them describe how employees may only be able to last a few weeks or a month, because, you know, they’ve got private transportation, but it may not be reliable,” Eimer said.
The panel also discussed housing affordability, highlighting the widening gap between areas where housing development is taking place and job locations. Douthat said that as housing costs rise in Northern Kentucky’s denser, transit-rich urbanized areas, affordable housing options spread outward, often into places that are not yet prepared for transit service.
“As those more urban dwellings start to get more and more expensive and they turn over and they become less affordable for people to live, the more affordable housing opportunities are spreading out, and, you know, I’m not sure exactly where they’re going to be 10 years from now.”
In terms of solutions, the panel emphasized collaboration among transit agencies, workforce organizations, employers, educators, nonprofits and local governments. The panel stressed that there is no single organization that can fix the issue. Instead, it depends on long-term progress achieved through regional coordination and investment among different stakeholders.
“There are solutions,” Stough said. “They may not be easy ones, but there’s always solutions.”