jtadams

If you want more funding from rural parts of the state, you need to convince them that it is in their own interests to supply it. You need to convince the legislator from Beeblefrack County, which means convincing the farmers from said county, that their well-being is directly connected to ours. That the main markets for their agricultural products are urban areas like this one, and that urban areas require a certain minimal amount of transit, generally proportional to their size, to become or remain economically healthy. That if Cleveland dies, so does a large part of their market, thus a large part of their livelihood. And that Cleveland is not unique even within Ohio in that regard: other urban areas, including suburban counties, need transit options in order to thrive and perhaps even to survive. The likely response will be that if Beeblefrack County decides to get onboard with funding urban transit, and its share of that funding ends up being $X, there had better be a return with a net present value of at least $X, preferably significantly more. If it were to return any less, even $X-1, then it'd be better for them to oppose it. To be blunt, the only way that is even remotely likely is if it ends up attracting significant outside investment, so that rather than merely slowing the decay and death of urban Ohio, that decay is halted and reversed and Ohio's cities including Cleveland become strong, vibrant hubs of commerce, economic development, and progress. And transit alone is not going to solve that problem. It can help, but it must be part of a bigger plan, a bigger vision, one that understands the gravity of the problem we now face: that if we do not do what is necessary to promote economic growth, and if we do not have the courage to remove obstacles to said growth (including the unchecked power of corrupt governments, corrupt unions, subsidized polluters, and many others), we will not survive, and our rural/agricultural friends not only will have no incentive to help us, but they probably will not survive either . . . like the rest of us they will be forced to move to where the growth and jobs actually are. Bottom line: no one wants to pump money into a dying project, so the question should not be, "how can we reduce the impact of the proposed transit cuts in 2010" but rather "how can we reverse the economic decline of Ohio's urban areas?" The answer will undoubtedly include transit in some form. It will probably be much better for transit than the disaster we're facing now. It will probably be more market-oriented, so we will need to be thinking less in terms of "how can we get more $$ from the state" and more in terms of "how can we build an enterprise that is efficient, effective, and contributes greatly to the well-being of the entire region, so that those who use and fund it will consider it a good investment?"

I can see how these might be problems, but not insurmountable ones. Obviously not all lines are suitable for through-routing, but today's lower ridership levels, bigger buses, and lower overall levels of service should mostly eliminate "part 1" of the problem, and when (hopefully) conditions improve in the future, once we approach 15 minute headways again, schedules become less important. As for "part 2," not every trip needs to be through-routed. It'd be fine for most 51 trips to end at Public Square in the AM and not become 39s . . but all 39s in that direction would start out as 51s. The opposite would presumably occur on the other rush hour, and during most of the day (non-peak), through-routed lines should generally have similar headways since neither direction serves significantly more trips than the other, and you want to pair lines with similar headways to begin with. I do understand that there are some VERY problematic signal timing issues on some routes. I'd guess that the 28 has some of the worst of them. Lights in East Cleveland are timed to encourage ticket revenue, in blatant violation of state law, and the 28 suffers greatly from this. A few days ago it took me about 15 minutes to DRIVE (a car, not stopping to pick up or drop off passengers) from Windermere to Euclid and Noble. That is a distance of about 1.5 miles, and a healthy person could easily walk faster than this. This also was at night. It was not due to traffic, as there was almost no traffic; it's just that every light is timed so that either you speed to make it, or run it, or else you wait for the full length of every light in sequence. West 117, and virtually every major road in Parma, have had similar issues in the past, although that might have improved since I'd last traveled that way.

Through-routing and crosstown service could improve RTA service considerably, especially if service levels in general must be reduced, but the trend now seems to be in the opposite direction, and I'm not clear on why. Remember for instance when they combined the 3 and 26 to allow more single-bus rides? I thought that was a great idea and should have been expanded. (For instance, the 39 and 51, 1 and 22, maybe eventually HealthLine and 55). But instead we've seen the 22 route get split into 22 and 52, with the 52 likely to be eliminated. Same thing with 14 and 24, 25 and 12/13, etc. And they threaten to end the little bit of direct downtown service on the 7, 9, 32, 75, and even 39 (off-peak) that exists now. They already eliminated direct downtown service on the 28. This is a big county, and many suburb-to-suburb commutes by bus take 2-3 buses and sometimes 2-3 hours each way now. Fewer longer routes mean fewer transfers, fewer missed connections, fewer delays, and fewer (but longer) layovers. The need for these things gets more and more significant as service levels continue to be reduced. With the proposed changes, not only will many people be forced to take 2 or even 3 buses just to get downtown, but many suburb-to-suburb commutes that are practical today will become impractical or even impossible, including mine (Euclid to Brooklyn, currently 90 minutes via 39 and 23, soon to be 3+ hours via 30 + Red Line + redesigned 23/79 + 15 minute walk). Insofar as budgets will allow, everyone in densely populated areas of the county should be able to take one bus - or, at worst, two buses or trains one of which runs very frequently - to get downtown. Schedules should be adjusted so that, particularly in off-peak hours where there is little traffic but very infrequent service, all buses arrive downtown on time, and (again insofar as practical) no buses leave until people have had time to make their connections. Headways have already increased to an hour on all but very frequently used routes, and it is absolutely unacceptable to have to wait an hour - and maybe be an hour late for work - due to a missed connection. Through-routing doesn't completely eliminate this problem but it does lessen it greatly since far fewer people need to transfer at all.

I'm not necessarily anti-union, but I am pro-freedom. In an optimally free society, workers would have the right to join a union or not to, but by the same token, employers would have the right to deal with that union or not to. Neither group would be permitted to threaten or use violence against others. It would then be in the interests of both parties to work together in a reasonable fashion, because, if they did not, either one could go elsewhere. For example if RTA were unhappy with the ATU's terms, for whatever reason, it could dump the ATU at the end of the current contract, and hire drivers from a different union or from no union at all. It is very unlikely in that case that RTA could be forced to employ drivers it knows to be unsafe, or to pay drivers significantly higher wages than what would prevail on the open market. While ATU would no longer be able to demand those kinds of unreasonable concessions, it could focus on issues more similar to those for which unions were formed in the first place. For instance it could help drivers more effectively address the issue of unheated buses in winter and uncooled ones in summer, and allow drivers to speak to that issue, or others involving worker safety and health, with a single united voice. I really do believe that many of our problems, including most of those between labor and management, originate from the prevalence of violence (direct and indirect, threatened and actual) in our society, and the equivalent loss of freedom. Indeed, the very need for subsidized public transit probably stems from this as well; if we had not subsidized highways and oil for 50+ years, cities would be designed much differently and in a much more transit-friendly fashion.

OK . . maybe this'd be a good segue into a rail question. Given the heavy usage of the 28, the Euclid Park & Ride, and the various Laketran services, and the relatively easy availability of funding for capital improvements, as opposed to operating costs - might this not be a good time to look at the feasibility of extending the Red Line eastward, along existing ROW between Stokes to one of: (a) Euclid P&R; (b) Wickliffe or © points further north/east, possibly in cooperation with Laketran, since this would duplicate and in fact greatly improve on some of the service they currently offer? I do remember the "bus on rail" POC that was done in this corridor about 15-20 years ago and if it made sense then it certainly would seem to now - especially if greater strides could be made toward automation and therefore reduced operating costs. The ROW is certainly far more lightly used than it was at that time. Because many 39/39F/239 users do have cars and would consider driving to local P&R lots, this improvement might potentially alleviate some of the congestion and/or permanent loss of ridership that the threatened 39 and 239 changes would otherwise cause.

Is GCRTA's fare recovery percentage in line with other comparable transit systems inside (and outside) the U.S.? What about its labor costs? I think those answers would be illuminating. My understanding is that the former is unusually low, and the latter unusually high, and if either of those things are true, then they suggest a possible course of action that might not require eliminating transit as an option for most NEO residents.

I'm having a hard time understanding why RTA's cost structure makes it impossible to cover the cost of operating a full bus. Fuel costs, adjusted for inflation, are not dramatically higher than in the past. Yes, subsidies from the sales tax are down, but why does a line like the 39, or any other line that carries 60+ riders per trip, need to be subsidized in the first place? Isn't this evidence that RTA's cost structure is unsustainably high?

A lot of people will strongly object to the proposed changes to the 39, because: it is packed, usually standing room only and sometimes not even that, every time I've ever ridden it (including peak, midday, evenings and weekends) It serves a densely populated, working- to middle-class suburb with many transit-dependent individuals Rerouting via the 30 would more than double the trip time to downtown for most riders No other service duplicates most of the 39 route, no nearby parallel service exists, no other buses to the northern section of Euclid go downtown, and the only other buses that do go downtown are more than 2 km away and in isolated and unsafe areas. Middle-class riders will not be willing to transfer at Stokes, especially at night (I do sometimes, but don't feel particularly safe, and I lived near there for much of my life). There are better ways to reduce the cost of the 39 service while impacting far fewer riders (see below). I would propose the following steps to reduce the cost of 39 service particularly at the few points where it is not heavily used: Consider eliminating nonpeak service through Bratenahl, where usage is light and few riders are transit-dependent. Consider changing some or even all nonpeak 39 trips to the 39F route. Riders between E. 140 and E. 185 are already served by the 30 route and many could get a quicker drip downtown than they have now by taking 30 or 37 north to E. 185 then transferring to the 39F. Consider eliminating nonpeak service east of roughly E.266 (the last of the highrises). The 94 could be rerouted to travel east on LSB rather than west, to provide a similar level of service between E. 260 and Shoregate, which is not heavily traveled. Consider bringing back express fares. It's almost universally agreed that higher fares disrupt people's lives less than the kinds of draconian reductions in service that we're talking about here, and I for one would gladly pay more for 39, 39F, or 239 service if that were the only alternative to losing it.