jtadams

As for enforcement, I'm more familiar with some of these stretches than others, but I've never seen much law enforcement on the ones I know well. I did get pulled over once (over 30 years ago) just west of one, on Woodland near E. 30. (Chose to run a red light rather than find out why a group of youths of unknown intent, right in front of a public housing project, were converging from different directions toward my car.)

I concur that at least Detroit/West Blvd./West 101/Berea/Cudell RTS is awful. Lanes shift without warning nor any marking close to being visible at night. People tend to left turns long after their right of way has expired. Continuing on West Blvd. through the intersection, in either direction, requires knowing which lane to be in long past the point when changing lanes is possible. Usually folks turn wherever they want from whichever lane they want. I don't know the answer to this one, but if any of the others are this bad, I can understand why they might be death traps too.

In what way would you consider these to be poorly designed streets or segments of streets, as opposed to others in and around town?

Pre-HL, I always wondered why they could not route 7/9/28/32 express service down Chester or Carnegie. Stopping only at the few points intersecting other lines (E.105, E.79, E.55, CSU). I would not mind making that transfer so much if the HL were truly as reliable, frequent and fast as it was planned to be, but, largely for reasons beyond GCRTA's control, that was never to be.

I don't know that most of the places that have 24/7 service here, including East Cleveland (where I was born) or Lakewood (where I live now) are what most people think of as "the suburbs" although technically they are. I'm pretty sure all of these areas have population densities comparable to Cleveland proper. Whereas, say in Chicago or New York, at least pre-COVID, you would have Metra or LIRR/Metro North/NJ Transit service to places that were not only suburban but almost rural in character, pretty close to 24/7, although not necessarily frequently other than in rush hour.

Then maybe they could choose not to enforce the laws against smacking disruptive people upside the head? Seriously. As recently as when I was growing up, that was what happened. If someone sufficiently disturbed the peace, no one would call the cops. The people being disturbed would handle it. The usual result would range from a mild cussing out to a moderately severe beatdown, depending on the severity of the offense and how many times it had been repeated. Today of course that would be instant lawsuit, if not arrest for assault or battery. So why the selective enforcement? Why is it effectively legal to disturb the peace, but not legal to restore it by the most efficient (and, considering the alternative of heavy fines or imprisonment, also the least cruel) means possible?

At least 3 of these, all on the West Side, are mixed-race neighborhoods, and arguably so is Broadway/Slavic Village. Nonetheless, this is incredibly sad. These are all busy city streets, and most of them have 25mph speed limits, which, if followed, would make fatal crashes uncommon. Perhaps these limits, as well as impaired driving laws, need to be better enforced?

Miles & 131st is a pretty forlorn area, even for the southeast side. Is there any thought to how this might spur some badly needed economic development? Aside: What if there were a modest but visible police presence, preferably using officers from the neighborhood (which I advocate in all cases) who could develop more of a rapport with the community than typically exists now? What if then people felt safe enough to start building small businesses and cleaning up vacant lots and such?

Must respectfully disagree. I live near Franklin in Lakewood, and there are frequent issues, especially after it becomes Hilliard west of Warren Road. Visibility at many intersections is poor, and numerous T-bone type accidents happen. My wife, an excellent driver, hit a lady a few years ago who'd stopped on a side street, looked, and then went, never seeing my wife, and too suddenly for her to have reacted in time. Fortunately everyone was OK, but no one was going more than about 15mph at the moment of impact. The outcome could have been much worse. The police told us that this is a common problem on this stretch of road; visibility is the biggest problem but can't really be fixed because houses are built too close to the street. Speed is the one factor that could be controlled. I detest artificially low speed limits, and rely on this road to go almost anywhere, so lowering this limit would inconvenience me. Nonetheless, IMO, no part of Franklin or Hilliard within Lakewood or Cleveland city limits should be posted at more than 25mph, and that should be enforced.

I like the idea of extending the WFL to the eastern section of downtown, especially if it then loops all the way back to E.34. But it's an even better idea if the whole system gets converted to light rail first, because, then, at least westbound Red Line trips could use the new loop just as easily as the Green and Blue. Maybe eastbound too if there is some safe way these trains could change directions and tracks after stopping at Tower City. Some stations on all three lines serve as park & ride lots. Providing a one-seat trip from those stations to within a half mile of most of downtown seems like a huge win, and a great way to get people at least partially out of their cars and into trains again. Of course, this presumes a level of growth and capital funding that isn't really on the horizon yet, but, if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that the future can be unpredictable, and, hopefully, this works in both ways (e.g., things can get unexpectedly better, not just unexpectedly worse).

http://www.riderta.com/nextgen A lot to like. There's a pretty clear shift away from rush-hour commute service (for instance, direct service to Park & Ride lots is mostly gone) and toward improving service for the transit dependent (e.g., extending coverage to Tri-C West Shore, and what looks like better reverse commutes, and of course improving frequency on core routes). I think that's a good thing, however mildly inconvenient it may be to some (including myself - the current frequent service on Clinton Rd. would become once an hour - but it hardly generates the numbers to justify more). It was brought to my attention around a year ago that the Park & Ride services were money pits. They were probably greatly underpriced. I do notice that service to most of those lots is still there, just not necessarily via direct freeway service. People with a choice are likely to drive instead. But, given very limited funding, I'm more concerned about making sure people who don't have a choice are adequately served. Perhaps the P&R services can come back in the future when and if the local economy improves sufficiently. One concern, that I'm sure will force some modifications to the plan. Euclid, home to many transit-dependent and also one of the more distant of the inner suburbs, doesn't have direct downtown service except during rush hour, and I imagine that transferring from the 10 to the most practical connecting line (probably the Red Line or HealthLine) is going to make it about a 100-110 minute trip from, say, 260th and Lakeshore. 28 to Windermere won't be much better. I think Euclid is one of a handful of places that really does need regular freeway service, such as the 39 offered before it was largely replaced with the 30.

That would be awesome, but also much more practical if combined with efforts to avoid those missed connections in the first place.

Quiet here. Any thoughts on the proposed redesign as it stands currently? I've seen a few news articles, but with no links to any actual documents, that I could find at least. One observation if I might: No matter what, we're going to have infrequently running services on non-core routes, possibly more than today. That's necessary if we're to have better service on core routes as well as even slightly expanded coverage to job and other sites not served today. Is there technology that could make it safer to ride infrequently scheduled routes? By safer I really do mean safer. Missing a connection when the next one is an hour or more away might mean risking a job, risking injury from exposure during winter months, and attracting unwanted attention at night or in questionable neighborhoods. Keep in mind that few people will be riding on infrequent routes if they truly have another option, so, almost by definition, those who do ride are already vulnerable, and I would prefer to make them less so, not more, if I can help it. One thought that keeps bouncing around my mind: a smartphone app you could use to request that a specific connection be made as reliable as possible, perhaps by delaying the departure of the next vehicle by a few minutes if necessary, perhaps by trying to run a minute or two ahead of schedule if one is on a frequent service, perhaps in some cases even by presenting the passenger a different route that might be slower but more reliable under the specific conditions that exist at that time. I know you can't really speed up or slow down a bus or train by very much without causing cascading problems down the line; however, I can't count the times I missed connections downtown by less than a minute, or how many times I made connections only by chasing and flagging down a bus that had already pulled away and hoping someone saw and had mercy on me. ? So I'm not saying wait a half hour for a bus that broke down or caught fire or crashed into a pickup truck; what I'm asking is, particularly with regard to the very infrequent services, how can we make it at least a little more likely that connections to and from those services will be made and not missed?

OK. Forgive me for yet another analogy. But the feds just offered you that same $5,000, but a condition of that grant would be that you have to spend $50,000 that you otherwise would not have to. Would it be wise to take that money? It just doesn't take sense to me. Federal money always comes with strings attached, and it is always wise IMO to make sure that the strings don't end up costing you more than taking that money is worth.

Valid points, but I think mine still stands. If you were given, say, $5000, to supposedly last you for two years, wouldn't you try to try to budget and plan accordingly? Wouldn't you also have taken into consideration that your expenses might be a good bit lower in the very near term (drastically less ridership, allowing significant reductions in service with less pain than those reductions would usually cause)? Now, maybe GCRTA did. I'm not privy to the thought process nor all of the information they would have about fixed versus variable costs. Maybe they truly did the best they could. It just seems odd to me for it to be gone so soon.

Just in case anyone's day didn't already suck. ? How do they manage to spend 2 years of stimulus money in barely 5 months?

Aside from the concern that civilian fare collectors might face some degree of harassment, I think maybe it's an idea worth pursuing. A great step toward a free-fare system, and one by which the feasibility thereof might be determined, might be a reduced-fare system, where regular riders would be incentivized to buy weekly or monthly passes in some form, and perhaps, via RFID or some similar technology, automatically checked on boarding. Similar to Amazon's automated stores where they basically do a more elaborate version of the same thing. It's not 1980 anymore, and there are numerous technologies that could help us out. I don't know that you can require advance purchases, but if there were a quick and easy way to make them via cell phone, without necessarily having to have a bank account (many of the transit-dependent aren't going to), it could be very strongly encouraged, by making it much cheaper than paying cash on boarding, which slows everyone down, etc. Note that if we had even a small amount of additional funding, we also could try to reverse the "death spiral" by offering more frequent service along major corridors plus more reliable service to the places we can't serve frequently. A bus every 45 minutes or every hour wouldn't be nearly so bad if one could be reasonably assured that it would arrive on time and make its connection to the next bus that also runs infrequently, and so forth and so on. I actually think this is much more important than lowering fares. A free bus isn't worth that much if it strands people for an hour in the freezing cold or in a sketchy part of town.

Also FYI I'd like to see fare evasion treated as a civil rather than a criminal matter, at least for first offenses. I think I've stated this here before. Many of the offenders are younger people and I don't want them having a criminal record for such a relatively minor thing, if it can be helped. But harrassing/intimidating/robbing/beating passengers, drivers, etc.? That's another matter entirely. I have no patience for that sort of thing.

Starting to hear calls (including in the Scene article above) about cutting funding for RTA police. Seems to me that the very opposite would make more sense, albeit I'd rather they focused more on safety in general, and less on fare evasion. Thoughts? I for one think there is far too little police presence, not too much, at any RTA facility other than Tower City. I also think that the CPD, while reasonably competent for the most part, already lacks both the staffing and the training to double as transit police. But maybe I'm wrong? I've rarely encountered problems on RTA buses or trains per se, but have been hassled quite a bit at some of the Red Line stations, and also have had friends robbed and badly beaten in several of them. If the security situation deteriorates, then so will discretionary ridership as well as support for local funding options. I'd much rather see it improve instead.

My take: A unified fleet always seemed to me to make more sense, presuming the stations can be retrofitted accordingly. We don't have the ridership, now or in any foreseeable future, to require more than the capacity that light rail can offer. We can and do run light rail cars on the same tracks as heavy rail now, albeit, by necessity, with separate platforms to accommodate the height and width differences. Converting the Green/Blue/Waterfront lines to use standard heavy rail cars would be a lot of work and expense, compared to converting the Red Lines to lower and wider platforms (to accommodate the more narrow light rail cars). So if we're to have a unified fleet, which I think is ideal, light rail simply makes more sense than heavy.

FYI, Shaker Square to University Circle can be done easily and quickly via the 48/48A. I'd way rather transfer to that than to overshoot, then still have to do the 10-15 walk between the UC station and most of the CWRU campus. The 48/48A takes you at least a bit closer to most of it.

Yeah, I'm an eeevil racist for reporting what I saw growing up. Thank you for that. It further confirms that in the eyes of the stupid, weak-minded and criminal, EVERYONE is racist, except of course for themselves.

Generally I'd agree. There were exceptions. I was almost one of them when shrapnel from a car bomb landed a few feet away from me on Waterloo Road in the mid-70s. (I was a kid, and had no idea what had just happened until hours later.) But in general, yes, the old Mafia tended to go after each other, and not civilians, and (generally) not even uninvolved family members. They went to some lengths to avoid civilian casualties, and the heat that would result from both law enforcement and, as you mentioned, from their own families. The relative lack of morality and intelligence of today's bangers and thugs is remarkable, but perhaps not surprising, given the devastation to poor and minority families that resulted from the economic climate and vicious "Great Society" programs from the 60s forward. Fatherless kids rarely fail to get into trouble, especially when they are raised to believe, not entirely without justification, that they are unlikely to have anything resembling a decent future. I'm not amazed that more poor and minority (and other) kids get into trouble nowadays. I'm rather quite impressed that so many manage *not* to do so.

What does GCRTA need to do to survive up to several years of mass coronavirus hysteria (real or imagined, and I consider it a combination of both)? Demand and revenue are both likely to be way, way down, and there is very little that can be done about either. Is it time to mothball some of our service, redesign what remains carefully so as to preserve mobility for the transit-dependent, and hope for better days in the future? Kind of like our near-perpetual Cleveland sports team "rebuilding years," except hopefully with better medium- to longer-term results?

Understood, but it does look like there is significant money set aside for rail car replacement, which seems like a pretty big win. Am I understanding correctly?