jtadams

I'm not talking about general rowdiness, which, yes, every rider will encounter from time to time. I'm talking about I have a friend who was beaten badly at the W. 117/Madison station and another at W.98/Cudell. I've also seen the news reports. I'm aware of the gangs that operate in those areas. I still go to those places at night. The question is, should I bring my 11 year old and very un-streetwise son into those same places late at night? If I didn't have another choice, maybe, but I do. So no. I'll probably take the Red Line there, and a bus to come back to the station.

My child would be coming with me, all of the stations we might use have a gang presence, and we'd be coming back fairly late at night. So I'm not concerned about how many people didn't have an issue. I'm concerned with how many people did. Since I know about half a dozen people personally who did, recently, and I myself did as well in decades past when I used these stations a lot more than I do now, my "subjective" concern is quite important in this case, and probably the deciding factor in whether I will ever make use of RTA with my children when I don't have to. My responsibility as a parent to keep my child safe is infinitely more important than my wish to advocate for and use transit wherever possible.

If I do that, and discover that something is wrong, I have other options, including driving in. Most of RTA's customers do not have that option. If they have to be someplace on time every time or else get fired, they get fired. IMO this isn't acceptable.

Very depressing. ?

I absolutely hate, hate, HATE to even have to ask this. But is Red Line service still reliable and safe enough that I could get my 11 year old and myself from Triskett to Tower City within about 45-50 minutes of arriving at the station (this would be late afternoon)?

NO idea what to do about the 271 corridor. There are sufficiently large pockets of employment and residential centers, but also very un-dense residential space in between, and significant (by NE Ohio standards) traffic issues to boot. I know that if we had enough resources, I'd want to run a circulator or something of that nature up and down all of at least Richmond, Lander, and SOM Center, and also the major east-west corridors connecting them, between roughly Wilson Mills and at least Harvard. Some of these (east-west) already have limited service, but not nearly enough. But to make them genuinely usable, and then add north-south service, we're talking about probably at least a few dozen buses, and twice as many operators. The resources to do that simply don't exist. We're struggling to just barely keep the service we have now. As for service frequencies, the decline of the 32X and other Heights routes is unfortunate, but not atypical. Most except the very most important routes seem to me to have seen similar decline. Making them, IMO, unusable to most folks and particularly the transit-dependent. IMO, service frequencies less than every 1/2 hour during the day make transit service too unreliable for the people who need it the most. Particularly given the need to transfer at least once and usually twice in order to complete most work-related trips other than downtown or UC, and the heavy reliance of many routes that terminate at rail stops upon the rail system delivering trains on time. I'm probably one of the most libertarian people you have on this forum. And even I believe that we have to find a way to better fund public transit, or else we risk losing even what little we have right now, and un-doing the promising trend of TOD in the places where it's happening now.

OK. Time for some fun (maybe?). Image we did have 10x the current level of funding. For simplicity's sake, let's pretend all that funding could be used for our choice of either capital or operating costs. What could we do with that? My first thoughts, in no particular order. Note that the intention is not spend money willy-nilly, but to improve expand the system to the point where, when factoring in all measurable externalities, it begins to operate at a profit rather than a loss for the region as a whole and especially the city of Cleveland. (a) Catch up on all the deferred maintenance issues, since that maximizes the revenue minus costs going forward. (b) Offer frequent, rapid, and reliable service on a well-known set of corridors, with the goal of making a carless lifestyle possible on those corridors. (N.B.: Also work with local and transit police to reduce both the reality and the perception of violent crime at stops and stations to near-zero.) © Work with state, local municipalities, etc. to allow traffic signal prioritization and therefore *true* BRT on various appropriate corridors, starting with the three we already have (Euclid, Clifton and W. 25) and expanding as needed. (d) Start whittling down the numbers of major employment and residential centers in the county that are greatly undeserved by transit. (e) Build the Red Line extensions to Euclid. (f) Build some sort of true rail loop in and around downtown. (g) Look into working with adjacent counties, NOACA, etc. to re-establish commuter rail in places where it makes sense. Other folks' thoughts??

In general: yes. But especially transit-dependent people to and from those jobs for which they are most likely to be qualified. Meaning, in many cases, reverse commutes. Given that we are broke and that no one seems to know how to fix that, we need to concentrate, IMO, on serving those who have no alternative. I've long advocated extending service in middle-class suburbs for a lot of reasons. I still do. But middle-class and wealthier riders can't be the priority. Not now. They have other choices. The transit-dependent, by definition, do not.

Whoever negotiated the union contract should be fired. A city with this degree of poverty and this level of brokenness in terms of transport in general, and transit in particular, cannot afford to pay union workers not to work. Perhaps the same thinking holds true for giving people golden parachutes. For sure. At a very minimum, there needs to be some level of accountability. Sometimes, paying someone to shut up and go away is better than the alternatives. Sometimes it is not. As a public agency, I believe taxpayers are entitled to understand GCRTA's decisionmaking process and the data that fed into it, and then to take appropriate action if it was clearly unwarranted.

Whoever negotiated the union contract should be fired. A city with this degree of poverty and this level of brokenness in terms of transport in general, and transit in particular, cannot afford to pay union workers not to work.

The only stats I could find (couple years ago) said the Waterfront Line carries a few hundred riders per day. Lexington Av. line in NYC carries over 50,000 riders EVERY HOUR. More than a million daily. I'm not suggesting we abandon the WFL. I am suggesting we find a way to make it worth *not* abandoning.

We have a winner! Killing a lot of ridership though, especially suburban, and, very possibly, support within those 'burbs for any kind of tax increase. Consider the old #25. It served what is now a thriving neighborhood on Bridge Ave., plus a struggling and now largely deserted one on Madison between 98th and 65th, as well as giving residents of southern Lakewood and Rocky River their only option for a single-seat ride downtown, or less than a double-transfer ride to any point downtown other than Tower City. Or the #30/39. I don't mind having to transfer at Windermere aka Stokes except at late night, but even I won't do it at night. And the 55 minute trip from Shoregate became more than 90, much of it standing room only last time I tried (a year or two ago . . may have gotten better since, or worse). Some of these mandatory transfers may make sense, but these, among many others, did not. Keep in mind that there have been safety concerns at many train stations, including West Side ones which were targeted by local gang wannabes a couple years back. This will deter those who have a choice pretty close to 100% of the time. Also, I always though the 7. 9. 28. and 32 could have been routed down Chester, making limited stops, rather than Euclid where those and the local #6 always interfered with one another. (Transferring to the HealthLine back when we had traffic signal priority wasn't a terrible thing, but now that that is gone . . . ) RTA now offers attractive service to the suburbs *only* via the Park & Rides, which I'm told is about the least cost-effective service, besides paratransit, that we have. I promise you that if you want support from other than the transit-dependent, then, in general, you're going to have to give them a better reason than what they have right now.

Almost every tax in practice is regressive. It is mainly the already prosperous who write all laws including tax laws. But transit benefits downtown property owners more than most others, by significantly lowering the cost of commuting downtown, and hence the wages and salaries people are willing to accept in order to work there. I would like to see some of this benefit captured somehow. As a libertarian, I believe that if there must be taxes, they should be levied on those who benefit insofar as possible. But there is one additional consideration. People not served or benefited by transit are going to be MUCH less likely to support any tax increase that hurts them specifically. If you're going to levy property *or* sales taxes countywide, or even region-wide, you had better have a plan for making those taxes benefit them as well. I'm thinking (a) big increase but coupled with (b) big improvements in service, particularly for the 50% who allegedly have a choice and choose to ride RTA anyway. A hotel, parking, gasoline, or downtown-oriented tax, insofar as these things are possible under Ohio law, is a lot simpler to sell.

Like Nashville, there's a Koch-funded group emerging in Cleveland to block any attempt at boosting local funding for RTA which continues to lose funding to sprawl, state funding cuts.... Jason Sonenshein may be behind this. He's the guy who was an organizer for the campaign that killed Cleveland's red light cameras and is a local libertarian. The location of their phone bank was the local field office for Americans for Prosperity, the group funded by the Koch brothers. Here's there Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/events/230614064349640 I'm a pro-transit libertarian, however odd that may seem. I believe transit in some form is essential to the proper functioning of any city, even those that were largely designed around cars (e.g., L.A., Atlanta, Houston, but *not* Cleveland). But I also am aware that if you put government in charge of sand in the desert, pretty soon, you're going to have a shortage of sand. :) So I favor solutions that are at least in large part funded privately, and/or through capture of the positive externalities that transit creates (e.g., the existence of cities). In our particular city, I acknowledge that bus and BRT services can be added when needed even after a period of neglect, but rail infrastructure has to be maintained or else it tends to go away forever. That's why, as I'm seeing every traditional source of funding for transit dry up, I am starting to feel very protective of our little rail network, such as it is. Any future I can envision will need it, and especially the one I prefer, the one in which better and more courageous leadership makes Cleveland an increasingly safe and attractive location for businesses and jobs and population to return. That may sound far-fetched, but it's happened elsewhere, in places like Boston and New York and Philadelphia. My commitment to freedom does not stand opposed to transit in cities like ours. If anything, it acknowledges it as an absolute necessity.

The problems still have to be fixed. If you think sprawl is bad now, wait until our rail system dies, and, with it, downtown Cleveland as well as the handful of successful TOD projects along what rail we do have. That is not a distant possibility. It seems more likely at this point than not unless something changes very dramatically. And I don't know that the Cleveland area survives without its urban core. We need to preserve at least the core of RTA, and particularly the rail network, no matter how lean times may be (or how much worse they may become). For all its problems, transit is a huge part of what is keeping millenials in or near downtown Cleveland as well as the handful of other neighborhoods that remain relatively safe. Otherwise, Cleveland proper has no future, and as Cleveland goes, likely so does the entire region. I'm not disagreeing with you. We have a huge challenge ahead. But the stakes are much too high IMO for us to give up, or even to wait for Mr. Calabrese to retire.

The irony today is that the stark urban/suburban divide no longer exists. While separate political entities, there is no clear, obvious demographic or economic distinction anymore between adjacent parts of Cleveland on one hand and Lakewood, Brooklyn, Parma, Garfield Heights, East Cleveland, or Euclid. Much more of a continuum. All of these communities have significant transit-dependent populations which they didn't in the past (20-25 years ago), but none of them generates nearly the tax revenue (sales or otherwise) that they did then. The obvious question we should be asking, but aren't, is this: is RTA's cost structure sustainable when, even if we did get substantial funding from elsewhere in the county, the county is simply not as affluent anymore, nor as densely populated?

That is genuinely surprising to me. But I suspect that a bus stuck in traffic is earning very little money. What I am thinking is more along the lines of buses to Red Line stations, not all the way downtown; and, as needed, sufficient security that these stations both are, and are perceived as, being safe. And perhaps the articulated buses which I assume have lower operating costs per seat. I assume these would be much lower cost. Having said all that, I'd have been willing to pay $8-10 for my roundtrip ride on the 239 when I used it to go downtown 10-ish years ago. The only reason I didn't is that RTA never required me to. I'm a lot more broke now and could not make my current commute in less than 5x the time it takes to drive. But when I could have, I would have. I imagine there are others who both could and would right now. Enough to matter? That part I don't know. Express buses in NYC cost $6.50 last time I checked. Each way, not round trip.

And, yes, in some respects I may seem to compromise my libertarian principles in some of these ideas. But we have to start not where we'd like to be, but where we are, which is the result of 70 years of highway-focused transportation policy. I'm open to suggestions, from anyone, in how we can get from here to a world in which transit is a viable, sustainable, and attractive option, first of all for those who need it and secondarily, but still importantly, those who have a choice.

Agreed except that there is not just one market here, but at least two. (a) The transit-dependent; and (b) middle- to upper-middle-class commuters. The maximum fare that each market will bear is obviously much greater for the latter than the former. Perfect world: you try use the latter to subsidize the former.

I agree, and I could see it being done a few different ways. (a) Charge significantly more for downtown commuter service, e.g., park & rides. (b) Bring back express and local service and charge significantly more for the former. © Provide timed and guaranteed services from even more distant park & rides that specifically divert traffic off the freeways and to the Red Line. E.g.: pick up in Medina, drop off at Brookpark, but make sure there's a train there or within a few minutes of being there. Charge appropriately. And, finally, (d) work with welfare, social services, other sorts of agencies, to provide subsidized RTA passes to those on public assistance. (MUCH rather pay to get these folks to and from jobs, both for their sakes and my own, than for them to continue to remain unemployed.) I think based on the experience of other cities that good transit service for downtown commuters could be made more profitable (or at least be done at less of a loss) than it is currently, if you charged them *just* less than it would cost to drive, while making it more convenient and reliable than driving. To do so would require leveraging the Red Line. But to fail to do might result sooner than people think in there being no more Red Line. Part of the benefit is that hopefully you reverse the "death spiral" and start to actually capture revenue from middle-class commuters, which you can then use to subsidize transit for those who can't afford to pay enough to recover 100% of operating revenue at the farebox.

How do we know it was the fare increase, and not the service cuts? It's my understanding as well as my experience that the latter are *far* more toxic to ridership than the former.

Increasingly, at least in more enlightened places, rideshare will fill in the "last mile" connecting increasingly sparse but hopefully higher-frequency bus (edit:) and rail routes with homes and businesses beyond walking distance from those routes, but easily within a very short drive. RTA should be COOPERATING with rideshare services, not seeking to tax them out of existence. I think this is a nice idea, but real world, at least in Cleveland, they are just going to use the rideshare for the whole trip. I don't see very many people using rideshare for last mile. Maybe if ourcity was a lot denser and auto traffic was difficult, but its the opposite. *Second read maybe that's why you used "enlightened places" Well, rideshare can't compete with buses on cost, at least not yet; nor with rail for quick access to any congested places where rail does in fact go. It makes sense to me to use it for the first/last mile and to use a longer-haul transit route for the rest, IF that route is reasonably convenient, frequent, and reliable.

By "labor" I presume they meant "qualified labor with the ability to actually get to their jobs reliably and on time." While is a little concerning in that both sites are served by reasonable transit options (#1/39/28/239 and #19/41/others I may not be familiar with respectively). It could be taken as, quite bluntly, a vote of no confidence in RTA. I hope that was not the intent. Not because there might not be some truth to it. But because Amazon's management consists of sufficiently intelligent and forward-thinking individuals that if they think RTA is a lost cause, then there is a very good chance that they are correct.

Increasingly, at least in more enlightened places, rideshare will fill in the "last mile" connecting increasingly sparse but hopefully higher-frequency bus (edit:) and rail routes with homes and businesses beyond walking distance from those routes, but easily within a very short drive. RTA should be COOPERATING with rideshare services, not seeking to tax them out of existence.

That is Marxism, not freedom. Marxism is unsustainable. Crying about that won't change it either. We have to learn to live in the real world.