jtadams

RTA is pretending that it can use an efficient rail system as the backbone of a hub-and-spoke system, a tried and true approach that works in many places, except that WE DON'T HAVE such a rail system. Downtown is the only hub, only a bit of it is reachable by rail, only a small fraction of the population lives near rail, rail doesn't run well except during peak hours, and it generally now takes two vehicles and an unpredictable amount of time to even get downtown to transfer to your next two-vehicle trip segment. Oh . . and, given that Clifton Blvd. is one of the most densely populated and transit-oriented streets on the West Side, probably second only to the Gold Coast which is in the same general area . . . was it really any surprise that demand on the 26 line would greatly increase, or that RTA would end up paying much more money to provide crappier service to Lakewood? Everyone understands the need to cut costs, but this plan seems poorly thought out, and, as a result, unlikely to achieve this or any other worthwhile goal.

Why must RTA (and hence taxpayers) deal with the union in the first place? Why not make an "take it or leave it" offer, and if it is not accepted, hire qualified drivers from the general public instead?

OK, I will preface this with "in my opinion." I realize that others' definition of "rapid" and of "success" may be radically different and perhaps even opposite of my own. And I do appreciate that even modest improvements to service on Euclid were better than none at all. And I will overlook that tens of millions of dollars were spent to gain these modest improvements, with no prospect of a return on that investment in our or anyone else's lifetime. But 35 scheduled minutes (and often 45 actual minutes, or more), to serve barely 7 miles?? The scheduled time is 12 miles per hour. A good runner can run faster than this. Compare this to the 51, which covers over 21 miles in just over an hour, without the benefit of timed lights, freeways, or offboard fare collection. Or even the 3 bus, whose longest scheduled time is 42 minutes, to start and end at roughly the same destination, in spite of significant congestion at both ends, stopping at every other block, and having no advantages over, and no pretense at being other than, a local bus. I won't mention that the 55, 77, 39, and all of the Park & Rides also manage far better average speeds, since these do benefit from using freeways for some or all of the trip and that is not possible for the Euclid Corridor. But the following could be done, and would help a lot. Separate the service into local and express services. The express service should have far fewer stops - no more than 2 per mile outside of downtown and U/C. It need not run as frequently as now but it should be very predictable and reliable. The local service can make more frequent stops. Fix the lights. Express buses outside downtown should NEVER have to stop at one.

BRT isn't a replacement for rail, and the Health Line is not BRT (it is BT, certainly, but the "R" part is missing). Having said this, there are places where BRT may be useful and even appropriate. Both Clifton Blvd. and the median of I-90 West have the potential for true, cost-effective BRT service, and several other freeways could be reconfigured to allow BRT in medians or on marginal/frontage roads. So I would not want to rule out the concept completely. We may need it sooner than most people realize.

It's been discussed. I live in that general direction and would love to see it. However, my understanding is that in the current economic climate, cost would be a huge issue, plus the need to share tracks with substantial freight traffic as well as somewhat declining population density as you continue northeast. But what might make sense, when real energy prices start to increase (they haven't yet, but trust me, they will), is something more akin to commuter rail: end the current Red Line at Windermere as now, but then run self-propelled locomotives of some kind out along existing track toward the direction of Mentor, with stops every 2-3 miles. The "population density" argument seems bogus to me given that there is almost continuous urbanization and industrialization along the entire Cleveland to Painesville corridor, and the transit options that exist along this corridor (28, 39/239, and Laketran) have been quite successful and popular, and both population density and demand seem likely to me to increase over time.

Exactly. Other second- and third-world transit systems provide a MUCH more friendly user experience, in all these respects, and often on a tiny fraction of a first-world budget. Not every improvement needs to cost millions of dollars, and there is a lot we could learn from others that have been forced to do more with less, because the need to do so is not going to go away anytime soon, if ever.

The 12 bus takes about 30 minutes from Shaker Square to Public Square, and stops several dozen times including at the very long light at E.55/Woodland/Kinsman. The rail trip shouldn't take any more than 15 minutes max, if the track were in decent condition. It's only about 6 miles. It's not like there are tons of grade crossings - there are none on that stretch, and it's not like people are holding up the train to pay the fare on the train since the inbound train is pay on exit.

I'm happy that the 39 and 239 were partially spared (I'm sure service will be less frequent and more crowded, but that still beats no service at all). I do feel bad for others who will be impacted much more than myself. And I still get the feeling that we are degenerating into a "patchwork" of unconnected, unrelated, uncoordinated routes rather than a unified system with an integrated overall design.

I'd love to have the streetcars back someday, but for now, I'd settle for regular, reliable, and frequent bus service. Of course this doesn't fully solve the problem, but at least it is a baby step in the right direction. If I understand what you're saying - and please correct me if I don't - rail in some form would demonstrate an investment in future transit service, and the closest thing possible to a guarantee of continued service since operating costs in theory are lower than capital costs; this guarantee is much more likely to spur repopulation and redevelopment than increased bus service which could just as easily be reduced again. And I agree; it's just that if we couldn't get rail on Euclid Ave., which more desperately needed it than anyplace else, which could have funded it more readily than anyplace else, and which already was disrupted to nearly the same degree that an elevated or underground heavy rail line would have required, all simply to have a slightly faster #6 bus, then it's going to be a VERY hard sell in the current economic climate to get true rail, or anything better than good bus service, anyplace else. It's just endemic to our current culture, however unfortunate or short-sighted it may be, that people want what they want NOW, not later; they are unwilling to invest even in themselves, much less their families and their communities. That's the problem that I really don't think I can solve unless energy prices reach and then exceed, for a protracted time, their inflation-adjusted historical highs from the 1970s. I don't want that to happen, for a lot of reasons, but I think it will, and I think some good will come along with the bad, possibly including the rail and the TOD that should result.

I'm not saying it was a "chicken and egg" problem then, but rather that it is now. High energy prices will almost certainly reverse the "mass exodus" problem, but not overnight and not without substantial pain. But there is evidence from other cities that rail, done well, does spur transit-friendly development. Our existing rail doesn't do this because frankly it was not designed to. The Shaker lines were designed to maximize land prices because that's what the Van Swearingens wanted; the Red Line was designed to be as cheap as possible and thus re-used existing ROW, which served areas that were mainly industrial at the time and are largely abandoned now. That does not mean that rail DONE PROPERLY would not have the same benefits here that it has elsewhere. Even the HL seems to be a catalyst for planned redevelopment projects in Midtown, although its service falls far short of what I'd consider true BRT, much less what could have been achieved via grade-separated rail.

I don't question anyone's hellish experiences on RTA . . . I do question whether those experiences are truly necessary, in light of the fact that, supposedly (in this particular case), three separate bus lines serve the site in question on half-hour intervals. Obviously that did not happen in this particular case. Why? Maybe a bus broke down or something. If so, why? Aren't they maintained on a regular basis, so as to make unplanned outages exceedingly rare? They certainly aren't, in my experience. Sure, travel times are hard to predict, but why don't the schedules at least try to take that into account? When the W. 14th entrance to the Innerbelt was closed it took months if not years for the 23 schedule to be adjusted accordingly. Experienced riders knew the northbound trip would always be about 10 minutes late, and planned accordingly, but how would someone new to that route or to the area - or for that matter Google Transit or RTA's own trip planner - possibly know that, if it wasn't reflected in the schedule??? And yes, 327, you exactly "get" my reasons for wanting more crosstown, through-routed, and longer-distance express service. It's hard enough to plan a trip involving two buses or vehicles. It's next to impossible to plan one with more, at least without taking a half-day off work or more, which most people can't afford to do more than rarely if ever. And it's an excellent point that Cleveland and the inner suburbs were laid out during the streetcar era, and thus inherently designed for TOD. To the extent that these areas still have a population density comparable to that in the past, there IS potential for high transit use, but there's also a chicken-and-egg problem in that people will not ride until acceptable service is offered, but acceptable service can't be offered until there's sufficient ridership, and so forth. Something has to break that cycle. My guess is that it will be higher energy prices and a resulting return to a more urban, dense, and thus transit-friendly pattern of business and residential development. I wish we didn't have to wait for something so dramatic and so potentially devastating to so many people's lives for this to happen, because sustainable, transit-oriented development has numerous benefits, to everyone, above and beyond the mere fact that it saves energy.

Holy crud . . . . . Metro has excellent transit service, by Cleveland standards at least: the 20A, 35, and 81, all of which run at least every half hour during midday. If you can't get to Metro and back from downtown in just over an hour, at any time of day or night, then something is terribly, terribly wrong. Can you provide more details, including the date and time, and maybe someone at RTA can investigate?

Another thought: the existing RTA AnswerLine could be a much more useful resource, and eliminate much of the need to post schedules everywhere, if it were easier to figure out a stop number, for instance by looking at it. I'm not sure how the AnswerLine works now if you know that number, but ideally, you'd give that, and it would figure out everything else it can (your location, route number(s) serving that stop, probably your direction of travel unless the stop serves both directions, etc.). It'd ask for whatever it needed to know and didn't, and then immediately give you the next few departure times, possibly with a few additional options afterward such as arrival times for major destinations, transfer/connection information, return trip information, information for a different date/time, or maybe even the ability to request that a connecting bus wait for you (within reason) if your bus is running a few minutes too late for the connection. I'm not sure how much of this the system already does, but I know it'd be far more useful if the stop numbers were posted someplace easy to see. Then instead of a schedule that might frequently change, you just post something like this. I'm using for my example the 34/94 stop at Shaker & Green since it has both multiple routes and multiple directions - most would be much simpler. Dial 216-621-9500 anytime for Departure/Arrival Information and more! For fastest service press 8 and then immediately enter one of the following Stop Numbers: 34990 for General Information or one of the following for the next few Departures: 34991 for 34 (Green/E.200) Northbound 34992 for 34 (Green/E.200) Southbound 34993 for 94 (E.260/Richmond) Northbound 34494 for 94 (E.260/Richmond) Southbound 34495 for 67A (Shaker Blvd.) service to Downtown Thank you for choosing RTA! Probably, all you'd need to do would be to start phasing in the stop numbers, and reprogram the VRU a bit. Note that as in my example above, stops with many routes or possible destinations could have multiple stop numbers, to save time. Most stops would have just one or two. The system should be smart enough to figure out what it can from the stop number, and ask the caller only for whatever information it doesn't already know. You want to make this experience as fast as possible, to minimize not only user time and frustration but also your phone expenses. So don't make people pick a language; instead publish separate numbers for English and Spanish. Probably a separate # for paratransit as well. Don't make anyone navigate a complex menu if all they want to do is get the next few departure times. Answer with, "Welcome to RTA! If you know your stop number enter it now, or press 0 for more options." Also, there should be a # that people can text the stop number to, and get a response back by text.

Regarding schedule posting at stops: it'd help if, whenever possible, buses could run on regular intervals that are divisible by 60. Much easier to say, "10:30, 10:50, then every 20 min. until 3:50, then...." as opposed to having to list each time separately. If a bus doesn't run frequently enough for such a scheme, then it probably won't be as big a deal to just list all the times separately (there won't be as many of them).

If I were redesigning RTA from scratch I would recognize that downtown commutes, local trips and longer-distance work trips require very different kinds of service, and target very distinct groups of users. I'd definitely bring back the distinction between local and express service, with the former dominating in the city and inner suburbs and express service (including some longer-distance, crossdown, diagonal and circular routes) dominating everywhere else. I'd find a way to make express service a viable and even preferable alternative to freeway travel, and at least during peak periods I'd make sure NO ONE ever felt a need to drive downtown. LA Metro seems to have the right idea here, while GCRTA seems to be moving in the opposite direction for reasons I completely fail to understand.

That does not appear to have happened at most of the Red Line stations, esp. on the East Side. On the West Side, many stations are surrounded by parking and/or industrial sites that could not be easily be redeveloped. So TOD in the Flats area, while desirable, is not inevitable. In fact, if I were a developer, I would consider the existing transit service in the area to be a liability, not an asset, since the WFL does not even run all day during the week, and the area is only modestly served by existing bus lines. The trolleys are supported by corporate sponsorships which could disappear at any time leaving the area with almost no coverage at all. I'd want, as a developer, legally binding guarantees to bring back the WFL and to guarantee some minimal amount of additional coverage (probably trolleys + existing 22/26, 55, etc. would suffice if guaranteed not to disappear).

Possibly dumb question re: 7/9/32, and perhaps in a perfect world 28 as well (which used to come downtown during peak hours): Given that the main reason they come downtown, or used to, was that a large majority of riders were going downtown, and that it's best for cost as well as all other purposes to make that happen as quickly as possible . . . Also given that, in spite of improved light timing etc., Euclid still is a narrow and very busy street: Would it be an option to route these buses down Chester or Carnegie instead, possibly shaving 5-10 minutes run time off each trip? Probably stopping only at major destinations and transfer points, not every block or two, since local riders have the HL, 8, 4, 38, etc. which do stop frequently? I know that in a perfect world we'd want to leverage the HealthLine as much as possible. But it is still, in my view, an improved local bus service, not true bus rapid transit as comparable to for example the Pittsburgh busways. The HL stops at frequent lights. It also picks up or drops off every few blocks. If a bus were behind one coming straight downtown without needing to stop much, it'd be blocked by a HL vehicle pretty much the entire way. Putting 7/9/32/28 down Carnegie or Chester would allow a proper separation between express and local service, and, in my opinion, improve both. So why isn't this option being considered? Aside from ego, am I missing something obvious?

You're not mistaken. That's exactly why I (and others) brought that up. The #9 will connect with the Healthline at Cornell and Adelbert, so that transfer is already intact. The #s 7 and 32 do not go to Euclid, so getting to the Clinic, Midtown, CSU, or eastern downtown becomes a giant pain in the @ss. The ideal situation, if the 7,9, and 32 MUST be cut off in the UC area is to loop all of them to E. 105th and back since a fair number of people transfer to/from other buses at E. 105th. Regardless, RTA needs to figure out a way to connect the 7 and the 32 with the Healthline. If we absolutely must end before downtown than E. 105 is as good a point as any . . . frequent connections to one of the better north-south routes, the 10. (I was about to say the 50 too, but . . . ) :( However . . . the further west we go, the more useful the service becomes. If we're going to E. 105 anyway, why not the other end of the Clinic (E. 89)? If there, why not to E. 79 or E. 55 where we can transfer to the industrial areas off St. Clair and Quincy (yes, some people still work in industry)? If there why not E. 55, then CSU, then downtown? THAT is why I think the whole idea is crazy. You still have to carry those passengers anyway, and thus have to run the Health Line either more crowded, or more frequently. Thus you probably are not saving nearly as much $$ as you think, and you're virtually guaranteeing that many of them will abandon RTA. The cynic in me wonders whether maybe that's part of the plan: make the cuts not as painless as possible, but as pain-FUL as possible, in the probably misguided hope that they'll go screaming to their state reps for more $$$$, instead of the much easier and probably more fruitful option of just getting in their cars and accepting that RTA is no longer relevant to them. And I'm sorry to have to keep bringing this up, but if you want a regional system, not just an inner-city one, you really do need to give people in the 'burbs a reason to continue (if not expand) the funding they are providing now. If anything you should be reaching out to the outlying counties, via NOACA, and trying to find efficiencies and economies of scale that would engender possible support through the entire region for a genuinely regional, and regionally funded system.

What "new schedule" would this be? Nothing's been published, or even decided, yet. Please don't make judgments based on supposition until the facts are available. It doesn't matter what the schedule is. Let's assume no cuts besides those proposed, no headway changes, no increased volumes or crowding and no resulting delays. Pretend that other than ending the 32 at U/C everything is exactly as it was before. Say Joe Rider is coming from Cedar and Lee. He'd have reached CSU in about 30 minutes before. Now he will have to do one of the following: (1) transfer at U/C, Red Line downtown (15 minute trip + average 7.5 minute wait) then trolley or Health Line to CSU . . probably closer to an hour, not 50 minutes; (2) walk from U/C to Euclid, then HealthLine downtown, average wait negligible but which will actually take much closer to 30 minutes to CSU, not the 20 scheduled, during rush hour - again, close to an hour trip including what in bad weather would be a significant walk; or if he is really fearless, (3) transfer to 8 at U/C, exit around Prospect & 21st give or take, and hope he doesn't die. Of course 8 only runs every 40 min. and likewise will take close to 1/2 hour to reach CSU, regardless of what schedule says, and it travels through some of most dangerous parts of town. In short you have just eliminated any fast and reasonable way for him to get to where he needs to go, except for driving. Ditto for hundreds of thousands of others including me. You also have eliminated any reason for any of those people to continue to support the countywide sales tax, RTA's main source of funding. Note that ending 32 at Euclid rather than U/C Station as proposed by others would at least remove the ice-encrusted walk from option 2 making it almost bearable. And careful through-routing plus small tweaks to many of the other proposals would make some of them bearable as well . . . typically by minimizing the need for additional transfers. But every one I've proposed has been laughed into oblivion, so I'm not quite sure what I can do to constructively help. Hopefully others can present those ideas, or better ones, more persuasively than I've been able to.

I'll second that . . . it at least gets UC-bound riders most if not all the way to their destinations; the UC RTS is just too far away. On the other hand many riders are continuing downtown or to the West Side, so you do want to stop at a real RTS (preferably UC or Mayfield/120th, not Superior, which is a bit too dangerous) as well.

Simple. You take your once-per-hour crossdown bus like your 94, transfer at Richmond. Then wait for the 7/9/32. Transfer to HealthLine. West side bus originates from transit center at Prospect and 22nd, so walk a block through deep slushy mess. Catch your 22 bus which no longer goes all the way to Fairview Hospital so you now have to transfer to 52 . . oops, wait, wasn't that supposed to be eliminated? I guess there may be some way to connect to 75. Miss a single connection and the trip which was scheduled to take "only" 3 hours actually requires 4 or more. As the hours and hours go by, you start to realize that if your time was worth even what you could make flipping burgers, you'd have been better off on a taxi. :( I'm exaggerating a bit for impact, but not much. Earlier in my life, when I had lower-paying jobs that required suburb-to-suburb commutes, I routinely spent 3 hours a day on the bus. Many of those commutes are no longer possible on RTA. It won't even be possible to get downtown from many parts of the county within a reasonable amount of time once the proposed cuts come through. And sayonara getting from Euclid to Brooklyn - my current commute, except when I can work downtown - anytime other than maybe rush hour. If you can get to and from downtown in a single trip to/from just about anyplace, then just about any commute requires 2 buses more or less. If you have to transfer just to get downtown, and again at least once between downtown and your destination, then many commutes hypothetically require 4 buses, not 2. That is not acceptable, and it is not necessary in order to reduce costs. Keep at least the downtown trips, and, if necessary, reduce frequency of rapid / healthline service to match. Same for proposed killing of 39, 55, etc. Otherwise you have just eliminated not only most of your transit-dependent ridership, but also any incentive for people in the 'burbs, who are now unable to use transit for any reasonable purpose whatsoever, to continue to support the countywide sales tax.

Municipal corporations, like all organizations, act in what they perceive to be their own interests. Our region is divided into many separate municipalities, and none of them typically see that, all other things being close to equal, what's good for any of the others is good for them as well, and vice versa. That is why you generally want an organization whose interest is, specifically, region-wide cooperation. At one point, the county might have served that purpose, but given how corrupt it has become, even by government standards, and also given the fact that our region spans more than one county (5 to 13 depending on your source), the problem is much bigger than that. NOACA was, as I recall, organized to serve exactly that purpose: to promote coordination and cooperation among the various communities that make up northeast Ohio. I just wonder why we never hear from it, why it does not appear to have an impact on these kinds of issues.

Isn't that what NOACA is supposed to be for?

My bigger concern is that the announcements, whether automated or not, need to be correct. For a blind rider or one unfamiliar with the area, a grossly incorrect announcement ("Tower City, Downtown" when one is actually at Lander and Mayfield, or East 55th and Cedar) could be disastrous or worse - certainly worse than none at all. As for the language/dialect issue, I have mixed feelings. Several dialects of English are widely spoken and understood within RTA's service area. All are, more or less, mutually intelligible among native English speakers, though not necessarily people from other countries or regions. Given that many RTA riders and drivers are African-American, and that the English dialect generally spoken by African-Americans is perfectly understandable by most others in the region, I have no problem with use of this dialect on local services that aren't likely to be used by visitors from outside the region. However, AAVE / Ebonics / Black English may not be as well understood by people outside the region or those for whom English is not their first language. I can figure out what "West One Fiddy" means but a visitor from Japan or South Korea, or even from Akron, might not. This may not be a huge percentage of RTA's ridership, but their perceptions of RTA will influence their perceptions of the entire region, and hence the economic growth that both RTA and the region as a whole desperately need. Hence, I do lean toward use of standard American English, or the closest thing possible, for automated announcements . . not because it is "superior" to others or vice versa, but because it is understood by more people than any other dialect.

One advantage of rail over bus, which we will squander unless we develop it fairly quickly (since today's low interest rates will not last forever), is the potential for automation and therefore for greatly reduced operating costs. As I see it, we have a potentially once-in-a-lifetime to build MEANINGFUL capital improvements which will ultimately increase the benefits, and reduce the ongoing costs, of transit operations. In an environment when capital is expensive, it simply doesn't make sense to build rail in a dying region. But right now, capital is very cheap. The time is right, right now. It might never be again. I'm well are of the fact that ATU will oppose automation and I understand their position; in their place I'd be leery of it myself. But in the end, it might very well be what saves the system and helps save the region. Imagine if there were largely automated light rail systems in the median of every major Cleveland area thoroughfare, if commuting by rail were easier, faster and cheaper than by car. Fewer jobs for ATU bus drivers but far more for the economy as a whole since we wouldn't be wasting so much of our lives and our potential economic output sitting behind traffic lights and freeway backups.