COLUMBUS — The Central Ohio Transit Authority’s new fleet of compressed natural gas buses, deployed across the city in October, has reduced fleet carbon emissions by an estimated 40%, agency officials confirmed Wednesday.
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The fleet has also, according to literally every resident of Columbus, made the entire city smell like farts.
“It’s farts,” said downtown commuter Yolanda Pierce, 44, exiting a bus at the Broad Street stop. “I’m not going to use a different word. I have used a different word for two months. I’m done. It’s farts. The bus smells like farts. The street smells like farts. My coat smells like farts. My building smells like farts when the bus drives by. I called the city. The woman on the phone said we’re aware of the concerns. She also smelled like farts. I could smell her over the phone.”
The complaints, which began the morning of the fleet’s launch and have not stopped since, span every demographic, neighborhood, and political affiliation in the city. COTA’s customer service line has logged over 11,000 odor-related calls in the past eight weeks. The previous record, set during a 2017 incident involving a leaking sewer main downtown, was 400.
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“We are aware of the smell,” said COTA spokesperson Marcus Bell. “We have heard from the public. We have heard from the public a great deal. We hear from the public approximately every four minutes.”
Bell was asked to characterize the smell.
He paused.
“It is a smell,” he said carefully, “that is consistent with the chemical composition of compressed natural gas, which contains trace amounts of mercaptan, a sulfur compound added intentionally to allow leaks to be detected. The compound is present in very small concentrations and poses no health risk.”
He was asked, again, to characterize the smell.
“It smells like farts,” he said quietly. “It smells like farts. I can’t keep saying it doesn’t. It smells like farts. My wife asked me this morning if I had passed gas in the car and I had not, and I told her it was the fleet, and she did not believe me, and I had to show her the press release.”
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, asked at a Wednesday press conference whether the city had been adequately briefed on the olfactory implications of the new fleet, declined to address the question directly but did note that “the environmental benefits of this transition are substantial and will be felt for generations.” He then sniffed twice, briefly, and moved on.
The fleet, comprising 64 new CNG-powered buses purchased at a cost of $32 million, is part of a broader Columbus sustainability initiative aimed at reducing the city’s carbon footprint by 25% by 2030. Environmental groups have, on balance, praised the decision.
“This is a real, measurable win for air quality,” said Jasmine Olamide, regional director for a midwestern climate advocacy group. “This is exactly the kind of municipal investment we need to be making at scale.”
Olamide was asked whether the smell concerned her.
“The smell is fine,” she said.
She was asked again, more gently.
“The smell is fine,” she said.
A long pause.
“The smell is bad,” she said. “I will not lie to you. The smell is bad. I rode one of the buses to get to this interview and I am wearing perfume I do not normally wear. I had to stop at a CVS. I bought the perfume in the CVS. I sprayed it on in the CVS. The CVS cashier asked me if everything was okay. I said yes. I lied. Things are not okay.”
She paused again.
“Things are still better than they were,” she added. “On net. On net, things are better. Carbon-wise.”
The smell has produced what one local observer described as “a citywide, low-grade gaslighting situation,” in which residents are forced to weigh their immediate sensory reality against the abstract knowledge that the buses are, in fact, an improvement. Local Reddit threads have devolved into philosophical debates about whether a 40% emissions reduction is “worth it” if “the worth-it part smells like a frat house.” Bus drivers, who have been issued no additional ventilation equipment, have reportedly begun keeping windows open year-round, which has not helped, because the smell is now also outside.
Local children have begun referring to the buses by a name that COTA has officially declined to acknowledge. The name has become, in the past three weeks, simply what people call them.
“You hear it everywhere now,” said Pierce, the downtown commuter. “You hear it from kids. You hear it from old ladies. You hear it from, like, real estate agents. I had a woman showing me an apartment last week and a bus drove by and she said, oh, the toot bus. Like it was nothing. Like that was just the word now.”
The toot bus, sources confirmed, is now just the word.
A small but vocal contingent of residents has started a Change.org petition demanding the city revert to diesel. The petition has 1,400 signatures. It is widely understood, even by its signers, to be unserious.
“I signed it,” said one signatory, who asked not to be named because she works in environmental policy. “I signed it knowing it was bad policy. I signed it knowing the diesel buses were worse. I signed it as, like, a gesture. I signed it because I needed to participate in a small act of resistance against something that is, technically, the right thing. The right thing smells. The right thing has always smelled. I am tired.”
A 2024 study from a university transit research center, when asked for comment, declined to weigh in on the smell directly but did note, in a brief written statement, that “the public acceptance of clean energy infrastructure often depends as much on sensory and aesthetic factors as on measurable environmental outcomes,” and that “any city pursuing a CNG transition should expect, plan for, and communicate around a period of, quote, intense and somewhat awkward public discourse.“
COTA, contacted for a final response, said the agency was “monitoring the situation” and was “exploring options.” When asked what options, specifically, they declined to elaborate.
The fleet, sources confirmed, will continue to operate.
The smell, sources confirmed, will continue to be the smell.
The carbon emissions, mercifully, will not.
At a bus stop on High Street late Wednesday afternoon, an elderly man waiting for the No. 2 northbound was asked by a reporter how he felt about the new fleet.
He thought about it for a long time.
“It’s progress,” he said finally.
A bus pulled up. He boarded. The doors closed.
The smell remained on the sidewalk for a long time after the bus had gone.