Committee advances ordinance extending loitering rules to transit centers, emphasizes outreach

Chair Scotty Johnson presiding at the Cincinnati City Council Public Safety and Governance Committee moved an ordinance to extend existing transit loitering rules to transit center zones, saying the goal is to ensure people using public transportation have safe access to seating and waiting areas.

The ordinance amends Chapter 723 (streets and sidewalk use), specifically sections 7.23.91 and 7.23.26, to bring transit centers into alignment with rules already applied to bus rapid transit and streetcar zones, Chair Scotty Johnson said. Repeated failure to leave a designated transit zone after being warned would be treated as a minor misdemeanor and could carry a citation with a maximum fine of $150; the committee’s legal representative noted streetcar-area citations can be higher (up to $250).

Vice Mayor and Committee Vice Chair Michelle Lemon Kearney emphasized the administration’s stated intent is to avoid criminalizing people who are unhoused and to use the measure as a tool to connect people to services. “We don’t want to criminalize people for being unhoused,” Kearney said, noting outreach crews would be used to offer services to people sleeping on benches.

Council member Mark Jeffries pressed the administration for a clear enforcement plan, saying transit centers are harder to evaluate than individual bus stops or enclosed streetcar platforms: “If there are 20 buses flowing through a transit center, how are you going to know if somebody is loitering and not waiting for a bus?” Jeffries asked, and asked the administration to return with details on enforcement and legal standing.

The City Manager (name provided on the record as city manager but not spoken aloud in this transcript) described a phased, intentional rollout that would start at downtown locations where data shows concentrated issues. The manager said the city will coordinate with SORTA (the regional transit authority), use 311 community responders, outreach workers and place-based managers, add signage and pursue design or bench changes over the long term; police involvement would be a last resort. “We are the goal is to have a very intentional rollout…really utilizing problem solving to see if we can get people to move on and make the right solution before we talk about police enforcement,” the manager said.

Committee members said they favored consistency across transit zones but asked for detail on how the city will balance safety for transit riders with constitutional and civil-rights concerns. The committee’s law representative confirmed that the ordinance is written to mirror enforcement used in other transit zones but said the outreach plan details remain to be worked out.

After discussion, Chair Scotty Johnson said the committee would move the ordinance on for passage “without any objection.” The committee did not record a roll-call vote in the transcript; the motion to advance was made on the record and the chair closed the agenda.