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We just have to fight against people and views espoused above that will continue the quest to destroy RTA and other systems like it.
You're funny. I generally vote for public funding for RTA and such. RTA's least worry is me or people like me. It probably people like you, that push them to spend ever more money on systems that are not being utilized. You want to save RTA? Make recommendations to provide more transit to more inner city voters within the given budget, not the budget you dream about.
You're funny. I generally vote for public funding for RTA and such. RTA's least worry is me or people like me. It probably people like you, that push them to spend ever more money on systems that are not being utilized. You want to save RTA? Make recommendations to provide more transit to more inner city voters within the given budget, not the budget you dream about.
Been doing that for years and will continue to do so. As bad as I complain about terrible operation of rail lines like the Waterfront Line so much so that it discourages people from riding, I've also strongly advocated more bus service for inner city folks who more often don't have access to cars, but where the City is backing highways/boulevards like the Opportunity Corridor as a fast bypass for West Siders to get to Cleveland Clinic jobs while reducing bus service to the bare bones -- like no service on important Woodland Ave anymore from E. 55 eastbound through Larchmere into Shaker Hts. ... among many other deficiencies. And also demanding County officials put more pressure on businesses to not relocate to far-away suburbs where there's little to no transit service at all; while, also, trying to get RTA to increase service to suburban corridors like Beachwood, Solon and Mayfield Heights.
... are you doing any of these things rather than simply badmouthing the rail service that we have?
In the early 2000s Ohio, under more enlightened leadership, had prepared studies, then engaged in start-up geared toward a Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati (or 3-Cs) passenger rail line. It was to be run by Amtrak and would have included a Dayton station-stop. In fact the FTA had awarded a multi-million dollar grant (I believe was in the hundreds of millions), to get this rail line started, and would have included a rail car and engine building and maintenance facility just east of downtown off the Shoreway... The important thing to remember is that planners saw this initial line as the foundation for expanding into a Euro/Japan-style high-speed rail line.
Unfortunately state Republicans were not on board, so to speak (big surprise!). They used the media -- often with unbiased reporters and writers who knew no better -- to attack the costs and overall slow speed of the line; allegedly predicted as about 47 MPH from end-to-end, as evidence against the service which many more knowledgeable experts saw as specious and misleading. In the end Republican gov candidate in 2010, John Kasich, campaigned in part on killing the 3-Cs rail line and putting more money into highways. Unfortunately Kasich defeated incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland during the Tea Party/anti-Obamacare wave sweeping the nation and Kasich made good on his campaign promise.
Kasich and others argued that Ohio should be allowed to spend the FTA grant to build and improve highways and freeways. The Obama Administration, however, correctly held that the grant was earmarked specifically for passenger rail and, thus, yanked Ohio's funding (along with Florida's where their Republican governor, Rick Scott, similarly killed of his state's HSR proposal), and the funding went to California where their obviously troubled, but more enlightened Republican gov Arnold Schwarzenegger, welcomed the federal high-speed train money.
So this is why today Ohio, despite being a highly populated industrialized state, has among the worst passenger rail service while Columbus is the nation's largest city with no Amtrak service at all. Not only did Kasich and his followers kill off the promising 3-C train project that literally was ready to roll, they practically killed off all funding for transit maintenance, placing industrialized Ohio down with rural and/or Southern states, like Mississippi, in terms of transit funding.
It's all pretty pathetic and gives a strong indication why a well-built transit network like RTA is struggling so badly. Both locally and statewide, the rail haters are clearly in power here.
I think the most awesome thing about the whole debacle was that a lot of the criticism hinged on the initial proposed speed of the train, including stops, and then when a deeper drill down study found out the average speed was actually going to be significantly faster, especially on the Columbus to Cleveland stretch, the project was killed anyways. Also during that period, the jobs situation wasn't too great so the stimulus funding would have been really helpful for Ohio and meanwhile the downturn meant that the materials and goods for building this thing were quite a bargain. Having those two stops for the 3C rail corridor in Cleveland, one at Cleveland Hopkins for a transfer to the Red Line and another one in downtown near the lakefront on the Waterfront line, would have meant a lot better ridership for RTA since these are people coming in and out without a car.
It's still a pretty good idea today, but it was a fantastic value proposition back then.
Anyhow, a diamond crossover just south of Flats East Bank station is a good and relatively cheap bit of infrastructure. That should be built.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 07-01-2019 at 12:22 AM..
I assume that if the appointment has CPT's support, then this is generally a good sign?
A lot of RTA's woes are from that of a city that faced heavy manufacturing losses, highway construction, and suburbanization. It's difficult to see how a RTA even with great leadership can really cope with such.
Still love beating this dead horse though--that loss of the 3C project had some probably massive ramifications down the line. The current state and federal administrations offer no possibility of reviving the project, and while it's still a good idea, that project actually getting off the ground when federal funding was approved would have made a massive difference for Cleveland and beyond. Since it didn't happen, the benefits of the 3C rail project are generally understated or not thought of at all. This is still a good rail project, but it's sad to think about what could have been.
I assume that if the appointment has CPT's support, then this is generally a good sign?
A lot of RTA's woes are from that of a city that faced heavy manufacturing losses, highway construction, and suburbanization. It's difficult to see how a RTA even with great leadership can really cope with such.
Still love beating this dead horse though--that loss of the 3C project had some probably massive ramifications down the line. The current state and federal administrations offer no possibility of reviving the project, and while it's still a good idea, that project actually getting off the ground when federal funding was approved would have made a massive difference for Cleveland and beyond. Since it didn't happen, the benefits of the 3C rail project are generally understated or not thought of at all. This is still a good rail project, but it's sad to think about what could have been.
It's the tale of 2 Republican guvs. Ironically, John Kasich, the more moderate on social issues, was terrible on transit. He not only killed the 3-C passenger rail line, he also presided when the state starved transit systems to death -- Cleveland was only getting about $7M per year after the state lost its ability to tax Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCO) in part due to some machinations by Kasich's administration.
in 2018. DeWine, who is more socially conservative, apparently is a bit more passenger rail friendly and transit appropriations jumped to around $70M/year.
... but back to India Birdsong, RTA's new transit chief: I'm hoping she brings a far better approach than Joe Calabrese. She has a background with major transit authorities: Nashville and Chicago's RTA while Calabrese came from little Syracuse, NY. He was learning on the job and brought a small-town, fiscally conservative approach to RTA. Yes he helped successfully manage the books during a time with external forces starved the agency -- most notably the 1% county sales tax shrunk dramatically with the heavy population and retail shrinkage of Cuyahoga County over the last several decades. But Calabrese often seemed overwhelmed and certainly was either anti-rail or just indifferent to it. He killed off all but one rail expansion proposal (the study of extending the Red Line to Euclid) and did little to nothing in planning any growth or serious TOD elsewhere. The TOD we see now at a few rail stops -- W. 25, W. 65th Little Italy and Van Aken, to name a few, was almost exclusively the result of outside forces. In fact, until Chris Ronayne came aboard and jump started UCI at University Circle and pushed the very-successful, long-overdue relocation of the Red Line's Euclid- E. 120 station to Mayfield/Little Italy, RTA had loosely discussed closing the station altogether; a similar situation was occurring at W. 65th until an Oberlin-based study group championed the Eco Village concept there.
In short, I can only see Ms. Birdsong as a breath of fresh air and improvement over Calabrese... But of course, the proof is in the pudding and, well, you know the rest...
It's the tale of 2 Republican guvs. Ironically, John Kasich, the more moderate on social issues, was terrible on transit. He not only killed the 3-C passenger rail line, he also presided when the state starved transit systems to death -- Cleveland was only getting about $7M per year after the state lost its ability to tax Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCO) in part due to some machinations by Kasich's administration.
in 2018. DeWine, who is more socially conservative, apparently is a bit more passenger rail friendly and transit appropriations jumped to around $70M/year.
... but back to India Birdsong, RTA's new transit chief: I'm hoping she brings a far better approach than Joe Calabrese. She has a background with major transit authorities: Nashville and Chicago's RTA while Calabrese came from little Syracuse, NY. He was learning on the job and brought a small-town, fiscally conservative approach to RTA. Yes he helped successfully manage the books during a time with external forces starved the agency -- most notably the 1% county sales tax shrunk dramatically with the heavy population and retail shrinkage of Cuyahoga County over the last several decades. But Calabrese often seemed overwhelmed and certainly was either anti-rail or just indifferent to it. He killed off all but one rail expansion proposal (the study of extending the Red Line to Euclid) and did little to nothing in planning any growth or serious TOD elsewhere. The TOD we see now at a few rail stops -- W. 25, W. 65th Little Italy and Van Aken, to name a few, was almost exclusively the result of outside forces. In fact, until Chris Ronayne came aboard and jump started UCI at University Circle and pushed the very-successful, long-overdue relocation of the Red Line's Euclid- E. 120 station to Mayfield/Little Italy, RTA had loosely discussed closing the station altogether; a similar situation was occurring at W. 65th until an Oberlin-based study group championed the Eco Village concept there.
In short, I can only see Ms. Birdsong as a breath of fresh air and improvement over Calabrese... But of course, the proof is in the pudding and, well, you know the rest...
Right, certainly DeWine does seem a bit more amenable to transit spending, though how much of that will help the RTA is up in the air.
Cleveland certainly has one of the more straightforward paths for improvement and expansion which would be new rolling stock, higher frequencies, a reworking of the bus lines geared towards getting people to an improved rail and BRT effectively and an expansion of the Waterfront Line with one of the two light rail lines along the obvious right-of-ways headed eastward near the lakeshore and the other cutting southeast near Asiatown and beyond. However, some of this requires the city and county’s finances to be in order and population and job numbers to be going up. There’s a good possible link of this with the 3C rail and the currently under study, by PennDOT, extension of the Pennsylvanian with greater frequency to Cleveland (and potentially Toledo or Chicago via Cleveland), but that’s if Ohio is willing to chip in. Essentially, there are a lot of external factors that aren’t really much in RTA’s control.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 07-10-2019 at 08:06 PM..
Well finally some good news for the much-maligned Waterfront Line. According to RTA's new schedule going into effect this weekend, both Blue and Green Line trains will be going to the waterfront until 7p, effectively doubling the frequency to every 10 minutes at rush and 15 minutes off-peak.
On sunny Monday afternoon, I caught a WFL train around 4:30p from Tower City to meet friends for Happy Hour drinks at the gorgeous Lake House restaurant in the Flats. I clocked the duration of the ride. Along with the usual meandering speed through the western end of TC, the stop in the 'chute' before crossing Old River Rd, a stop to let folks off at Settlers Landing, the total trip time to the Flats East Bank station was exactly 3 minutes.
After some really slow Blue Line Rapid rides to the new Van Aken District, I compared the Blue Line schedule with the parallel No. 14 bus line which mainly runs on Kinsman Ave/Chagrin Blvd and also terminates at the VAD like the Rapid. I was startled to learn that the scheduled Rapid is generally only 2 or 3 minutes faster than the bus... What's the point?
I don't know what's going on with RTA but the LRT schedule and Blue/Green drivers are ridiculously casual/laid back/slow (and I've hardly had a trip where drivers don't make that ridiculous, time-consuming driver change at E. 55th street -- are drivers on 1 and 2 hours shifts? ... why can't changes be made at Tower City, only 5 minutes away; less disruptive to riders but, oh yeah, who really cares if it means drivers would be slightly inconvenienced?)...
Back when I was a kid, Shaker trains were scheduled to cover the Terminal Tower-to-Shaker Square portion in 11 or 12 minutes... RTA schedules now have train running this portion in 16 minutes... which is absurd. Add to this the horribly revamped traffic signals at Shaker Square -- where now drivers are favored, train green lights are limited, and nowadays, on average, it takes 3 to 5 minutes for trains to get to the other side of the square after arriving at the SS station from downtown. Hopefully if planners are successful in eliminating through car traffic on Shaker Blvd this may be improved at least slightly...
All in all, Blue Line runs from end-to-end are generally 30 minutes or more. The 14 bus, with a greatly decreased population in Cleveland and many traffic lights eliminated, is about 32 to 35-6 minutes by schedule. Perhaps this signal problem on the trains is harming travel times -- last August RTA placed ugly black heavy-duty trash bags on Blue/Green signals claiming the signals were being upgraded and that this would take 3 months...
... 1 year later, the bags are still there and RTA has said nothing. Has it gotten so bad with transit in Cleveland that nobody gives a damn? RTA pretty much does what it wants with little pushback from anybody, even citizen transit groups... sad.
Thanks for bringing up the green/blue line bizarre driver change at E. 55. I have to say, I've never seen anything like that in any other city. Between the slowing down/stopping/starting up again as well as the physical changing of the drivers and the conversations they have in doing so, it easily adds 3 minutes to the ride. Then they stop again at the actual E 55 station.
I have never taken the 14, would be interesting to see if the schedule resembles reality. I would still much rather be on the rapid though than take that depressing ride down Kinsman though.
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