jtadams

Agreed, but, in truth, the line would have benefited city residents as well, PROVIDED that: (a) the combination of farebox and other revenues made the service at least revenue-neutral, or even better, best-case, helped to subsidize the more traditional urban transit; and (b) reverse commutes would have been served as well, which, even in 1985, was already an established need. Probably via transfers at Windermere and some degree of feeder bus service within Lake County, which did not then exist, but in rudimentary form (LakeTran) does exist today.

I get yelled at every time I mention this sort of thing, but I'm going to anyway since I believe it to be part of your answer. I ride the trains only occasionally, usually only if going to or from downtown or U/C. Usually on weekends. But in the past couple years, I've *rarely* have a positive experience. Apparently they are always doing track work. On Saturdays. During the day. While the trains are full or very nearly full. The single-tracking produces long delays and makes trip planning close to impossible. Example: a couple weeks ago. Wanted to get from U/C to Triskett. Had to settle for West 98th because of emergency track work. Needed to get a ride from there, whereas from Triskett we probably could have walked. But the worst part is that the train took more than 45 minutes, not the scheduled 27, to travel between these two stations. While the replacement of trains with shuttle buses between West 98 and Triskett was announced, the 18+ minute delay was not. Had I known, we'd have used the HealthLine and 26 to reach exactly our destination from exactly our origin, and, even with the ridiculous Public Square construction delays, it would likely have been faster than the entire trip (with walking from Severance Hall and needing a ride from West 98) turned out to be. Or we could have just driven and it would have been faster, and cheaper as well (because I had 3 kids with me). This is not how you sell a transit system to people who have a choice. Mind you I'm not talking about just potential riders; I'm also talking about the many more people paying the taxes that subsidize, or used to subsidize, having a halfway decent quality of service. It's also not how you get people *without* a choice to and from their jobs, without them getting fired for constantly being late, or fined for overstaying their time at the day care, or screwed out of getting to see their kids' concerts and recitals and volleyball matches because they missed their connecting bus that only runs every hour. I realize a lot of folks at RTA, probably the vast majority, are doing the best they can with very, very minimal funding by historical standards. But if you want to understand and perhaps address at least one of the reasons why people aren't riding the trains - the fact that for most of us, time is money and we can afford to waste neither - then here are a few suggestions, which I believe could be implemented with very minimal cost. 1. Track work should be done during times that are relatively convenient for riders. And it should be announced. If there are going to be delays - and they must be predictable, to some degree, because I can predict one just about every time I use the Red Line on a Saturday afternoon - announce those as well. 2. NextConnect does a reasonably good job of predicting when a bus or train will depart from a given location. It says nothing about how long the trip is going to take. That would be very useful information; I presume it should be reasonably easy to gather, at least on those few lines that still run with some frequency; it would help people to time transfers, and to reduce the percentage of the time they must wait an hour or more for a connection, possibly in the rain or cold or withering heat or in a less than safe neighborhood.

Exactly what we did. Even in 2012 the housing market was such that we needed a fair amount of time to find the right house. We ended up paying a little more than we hoped, but it has been well worth it. FWIW, it's a couple streets west of Bunts and just south of Detroit, and aside from some very minor issues that I attribute to proximity to bars and a high school (mostly people being loud or looking for someplace to sleep it off), we are very happy here.

I'm somewhat awed that after more than 30 years you remember all of this detail. I didn't. I did take one ride to Euclid from downtown, on what I believe to have been one of the first few trips. I have little recollection beyond this. What I don't get is why, in spite of this very successful demonstration, proving that there was significant demand for commuter rail to/from the northeast suburbs, it was never seriously considered. The "extend Red Line to Euclid" doesn't count IMO as this would be much more expensive than commuter rail and therefore a non-starter given today's budget constraints. The huge difference that most people don't seem to understand is that you need MUCH less infrastructure for a self-propelled diesel or diesel-electric car. No overhead catenary, no third rail, stations only every few miles or so, if that. And we already have well-maintained track to and from many of the population centers in northeast Ohio. It is of course controlled by freight railroads, but freight traffic has declined substantially in most places, so I would think they would be willing, if not eager, to cooperate. Labor costs should not be much different than for existing park & ride services, but the potential exists to recover much more of those and other costs at the farebox, since people are generally willing to pay much more for reliable commuter rail services than for the services RTA currently offers (including park & ride, which is grossly inferior to commuter rail since it sits in the same traffic one could just as easily drive in). If I had the kind of money to be able to invest in another limited proof-of-concept, I'd do it in a heartbeat. And I'd probably do it on exactly that corridor - Cleveland, Collinwood, Euclid, Willoughby, Mentor. The Cleveland-Lakewood-Westlake-Avon-Lorain route might be more lucrative but also a lot more work and money to set up, chiefly due to the numerous at-grade crossings in Lakewood.

Strap, when the METRO was built in the 1970s the Washington area had a population just north of 3 million and was smaller than Cleveland-Akron at the time. It wasn't that densely populated at all and traffic wasn't that bad except for the bridges into downtown. OTOH there was a regional consensus to get it built. I don't ever expect to see a transit consensus like that for NE Ohio or SW Ohio in my lifetime. Of course the Feds, Va. and Md. all played a part in getting it built. The folks at the statehouse in Columbus don't seem to want transit either. That's a very good point, but I still don't think the situations are comparable. Rail is typically planned and built to accommodate projected future needs, not current ones. The DC region in the 70s was almost guaranteed to grow in terms of jobs, income, traffic, and congestion, while Cleveland shrank substantially since then, and is likely to shrink further until the reasons for our economic decline can be admitted, addressed, and corrected. Even I would not advocate trying to build a full-scale metro system here. No matter how much I might like to have one, it would be a poor use of the money compared to, say, properly protecting, educating, and training Cleveland residents so they can eventually participate in the local and national economy, and enhancing the bus and rail systems we already have as part of doing so. For transit to substantially improve, we need to get the economy growing again, and better transit, even if it can be argued to be a necessary precondition to that happening, is not a sufficient one. Other things need to change as well, those things cost money too, and I think it is very reasonable to try to prioritize those transit improvements that are the most cost-effective, which I do think might include regional/commuter rail, but probably do not include bringing back a dense rail network anytime soon.

That is part of why I think that commuter or regional rail might make sense in our region, even if pervasive local rail might not. I believe that rush-hour commuter services to and from places like Mentor, Akron, Lorain, or Elyria, possibly with 2-3 stops in between, might well be viable, if we could negotiate for use of existing rail infrastructure and figure out a funding solution that works across multiple counties. (Which, IMO, should include a very high level of farebox recovery; if this service is as useful as I think it should be, then I don't think people will mind paying $7-10 for the roundtrip, maybe even more, since they'd be saving at least that much in gas, parking, and time.)

Not quite the same concept. Morgantown's system appears designed for a different function, connecting several disparate college campuses, uses very small vehicles, and is branded as PRT ("personal rapid transit"). It appears to do that somewhat unique job very well. I believe the 1985 experiment here was intended as a proof of concept for bringing back something much closer to traditional commuter rail, which had already been gone in Cleveland for decades even then. This service ran briefly on a fixed route on regular rail tracks, shared at the time (and still now AFAIK) with freight trains, but I believe it used a rubber-tired vehicle comparable in size to Red Line cars, and it was self-propelled, not powered by a third rail or catenary (I do not remember precisely how - it was over 30 years ago - but I'd guess probably diesel). All this is from memory BTW, and mine is not great, but others on this forum were there also, and may have more accurate and/or detailed recollections. What I think would be awesome would be a vehicle that could run seamlessly on both rail and road (for collection/distribution on surface streets, but making the main haul on rail). I'm not aware of anything exactly like that, but I'm also not aware of any reason why there couldn't be.

I like the concept. It might be a tough sell, but, IMO, that is far more for political reasons than on the merits. On the merits, I truly believe it could work. We're really talking about commuter rail, and with the possible exception of, say, Beachwood/Woodmere, Independence, Solon, Westlake, maybe Lakewood, we're also talking about beyond Cuyahoga County and thus not funded by the county sales tax. Nonetheless, I think the popularity of the park & ride services attests to people's willlingness to use transit when it is genuinely convenient, and, in this particular case, even if it does turn out to be on average a little bit slower than driving. Rail would be faster than driving, and we have lightly used and/or unused rail infrastructure all over the area. That railbus concept they demoed in 1985 was very much along these lines. It was a self-propelled vehicle using existing rail infrastructure, with stops in Euclid and Mentor. (In real life, it could have been Windermere, Euclid, Willoughby, Mentor, and if demand warranted, extended to Painesville, Fairport, and beyond.) I'm not sure why it was abandoned. I realize Chicago is a far larger and richer city than our own, but what they do is IMO adaptable to here. Trains in the medians of many freeways. Both heavy rail within the city proper, and commuter rail (Metra), stopping less frequently, throughout the metro area, with connections to each other and to an extensive bus network. We don't have the greatest example of heavy rail (mainly due to location; the Red Line would be GREAT if people still lived or worked near it in large numbers). We do have a decent bus network, considering the sparse funding available, it can be expanded if funding improves, and we can build the commuter rail relatively cheaply, since the existing rail infrastructure could be cheaply adapted this use, IF we used some form of self-propelled vehicle. In that case, since we wouldn't need a third rail or overhead catenary, we could start small, say a few trips during rush hours in both directions (to serve reverse commutes), and scale up when and if demand grows to warrant it. So what am I missing? Aside from politics, why couldn't this work?

Even if that is so, it often takes a lot longer than 20 minutes to *drive* that distance. A train that could reliably make the trip in less time than that would save time over driving, which is exactly what needs to happen in order to win over busy people whose time is very valuable. Many people in Chicago take the train because, when they drive, they see it zipping past them in the median of the Dan Ryan the Ike or any number of other expressways, whilst they are stuck in heavy traffic. The train saves them time. It is much harder of course for a bus to do that, or, for that matter, a train that runs where no one wants to live or to work. But not necessarily impossible. So, going back yet again to the idea that transit must save people money and/or time in order for them to willingly choose it, our challenge is to find a way to make this happen for as many potential riders as we possibly can.

Not true at all, especially in this case. First. Walking distance was not an issue. My friend's parking garage was further from the Winking Lizard than the WFL station at E. 9th. Second, the waiting time for the WFL was nil because of the RTA "Next Train" feature I used on my smartphone (the same, btw, could have been accomplished with the paper Blue/Green Line schedule). We arrived at E. 9th 2 mins before the train arrived. Three, what anti-rail hitmen fail to factor in is all the time and aggravation saved by riding the train, in this case the WFL, as opposed to sitting in traffic (and burning extra stop 'n go gas) and searching for a parking space which, even late last summer when, in it's fledgling rebirth, the FEB would have posed for us on this particular warm, Friday evening -- a scenario that is likely to be repeated, ad infinitum, into the future given the likely growth of both the size and likely popularity of FEB. Your experiences help to make my point, which is not that transit is always the worst choice in terms of the value of time, but that people with a choice tend to choose it, or not, depending in large part on whether it is a good use of their time. In your case, it was. In the general case, it often is not. Our challenge is that if we want transit to succeed, to grow, to become an ordinary part of urban life, we need to change that. BTW, the Chicago CTA is experimenting with some new technologies and protocols designed to reduce bunching of buses, which, if successful and if adaptable to our system, could *drastically* improve the reliability of RTA's services, especially on busy and important lines like the 26, 22, 14, 10, 1, and HealthLine. The short story is that we now have technology, such as inexpensive cellular communications, that we didn't until around a decade ago, and this technology can be put to use so as to greatly reduce the problem. This is just one example of the kind of progress I believe we need to aggressively pursue, so that the positive and cost-effective experience you described can be available to more and more people, for more and more types of trips, not just downtown.

You just touched on an additional problem that I'm not sure all transit advocates fully understand. The value of the time spent, not just riding, but also waiting, transferring, walking to/from one's destination. For anyone gainfully employed, the value of that time is fairly substantial. Successful transit systems minimize this time by attempting to offer the most frequent, predictable, and reliable service possible, including efforts to minimize both bunching and unnecessary transfers (yes, I know they are competing goals and improving one often risks worsening the other). Our challenge, should we choose to accept, is to figure out a way to do that, despite the unpleasant reality that funding increases probably will not happen anytime soon. We need to employ every possible means at our disposal, including technology, creativity, cooperation (with cities, for light timing/pre-emption, for example), compromise, and long-term thinking and planning. If we do not accept that challenge, then, eventually, transit becomes largely irrelevant to anyone with a choice. I don't pretend that it will be easy, simple, or painless. But I do believe we need to do our darned best, and hope and pray that our darned best is good enough. If not, then driving continues to be, for those who do have that choice, not only faster, but, factoring in the value of time, substantially cheaper in most cases as well.

Missed this but I want to see it. Portland is the gold star transit system in the U.S. However, even with its reputation, Portland has seen budget issues and stagnant to declining ridership numbers. I suspect this has to do with fare increases and a bad economy. The Streetcar Line recently closed 5 stations due to the line running slow. Even if the ridership numbers do increase, Portland's transit share of commuters has been stagnant to decline. Must not be keeping up with the area's growing population; more people getting in cars than on the train. The Pearl District is nice, but an expensive place to live. Something both CIN and CLE need; ORT in CIN with its streetcar and Detroit-Shoreway in CLE with a light-rail extension. I'm less familiar with Portland's system than most of the larger ones (NYC, Washington, Chicago, LA). I do know it is excellent relative to the city's size, but not quite sure why it would be considered the "gold star" system as opposed to any of the others. Am I missing something? Thanks!

Found it. Here's the front and back of the ticket... I rode on one of the trips (I think there were only a few?) from downtown to what's now the Euclid Park & Ride. I don't remember it well - I'd have been in my late teens - but I was definitely there, and definitely hopeful that more would come of it eventually than it actually has thus far.

Very interesting. I wonder if it would possible to guesstimate the demand for some of the lines that are essentially commuter rail, by initially running buses along those same or similar routes.

I think that with some refinements this could be made to work in a relatively equitable fashion. There would have to be some way to adjust for the fact that prime areas (say, 9th and Euclid) are far more valuable and should at least arguably pay more, as opposed to, say, a $5 per day lot in one of the outer suburbs. And as the article points out, the tax must not be punitive in its intent nor its effect, or it may drive businesses out of the city. The idea is to offset the costs imposed by those driving into the urban core. That is one of the very few equitable reasons, IMO, for any tax. It should go as far as possible toward furthering that goal, but no further.

Worthy goals. I would love to hear more details on how they could be implemented. I found the focus on "job sprawl" interesting as it is an often-overlooked aspect of the chicken-and-egg problem of de-urbanization. I am curious about how it could be addressed given the perverse tax and political incentives already in place for it to continue. Every locality wants jobs, not for their own sake but for the tax revenues they would bring. And in spite of the huge infrastructure improvements that will eventually be required. I think part of the key here is the word "eventually." The benefits, political and otherwise, are realized relatively soon, whereas the costs and resulting blame are delayed until some other poor schmuck is in office. Regionalism? Has worked elsewhere, but the crime and corruption in the city of Cleveland (both real and perceived) have made this a non-starter for generations. Changes in Ohio tax codes? These have been explored in other contexts (e.g., to reduce the disparities in funding between city, suburban, and rural school districts) and again have not been politically viable. So what would be? How do we incentivize job growth in places that are at least potentially transit-friendly (the urban core and inner suburbs)? I can't help but think that some of it has to involve addressing the reasons - both real and perceived - why people, and businesses, choose not to voluntarily locate there today.

I don't have a quick or easy solution to that problem. I wish I did. Educating ourselves and others about what's going on is probably the most practical thing we can do in the short term. At the highest levels, what we have in this country - a massive economy driven almost entirely by unsustainable personal, corporate, and government debt - cannot continue forever, by its very nature, and, at some point, there is going to be a "reset." Things will change, because that which is unsustainable, by its very definition, eventually must. And when they do, we may get an opportunity to have real input, and to make real changes, which we really don't have at the present time. The intense centralization of our economy, and the world economy as a whole, is one of those things I expect will change. Bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington and the boardrooms of multinational megacorps will suddenly find themselves with far less power than they have now, since they can no longer borrow unlimited quantities of money at negative real interest rates. They will be reduced to making do with what they have or can produce or acquire by lawful means, just like all the rest of us. At that point, I think our cities, our region, and every other, will suddenly find itself with a great deal more in terms of opportunities to make or to break our own destinies. If one understands that this is very likely to happen, in some form, sooner or later, then I think it wise to consider what we will do when that time comes. I've given it a great deal of thought. I'm not expecting anyone from Washington, nor for that matter Columbus, to swoop in and save the day. I never did. I expect that we, the people and businesses and institutions that make up our region, will ultimately be the ones to decide our own fate.

In reply to Foraker: 1. Choice, all else being equal, is always a good thing. More transit options outside urban cores would be nice. But we are starving for choices *within* those cores. That's what concerns me more at this point. My position is that in the absence of subsidies for roads, cars, etc., users of which insofar as possible should IMO be paying the true market cost of the infrastructure they use, choices would improve. It's very likely that more intercity transit services would become available. It's still very unlikely that areas of low population density would ever be served by transit as well as they are now by private auto. We know from other countries' experience, as well as our own, that some degree of population and employment density are necessary in order for transit to be cost-effective. By geography, most of the U.S. is rural. But by population, most of it is urban, suburban, or exurban. In the absence of bad policy (and the long history of bad policy that has led us to where we are now), the choices available in the marketplace would reflect both facts. 2. Things like tolls, congestion charges, etc. are, IMO, acceptable measures to limit congestion and to encourage users of scarce resources to pay something more closely approaching the true cost of the infrastructure they use. It is far more equitable that users pay, than for them to force others to do so. This is equally true of roads, bridges, buses, trains, or any other publicly owned resources. The only difference is that transit is typically subsidized very little compared to roads and cars. That should change, either by subsidizing both equally, or even better yet, returning most that money to the taxpayers and allowing competitive market-based mechanisms to solve the problem in ways that centrally planned societies cannot. 3. It does *not* have to be a zero-sum game. It can be win-win. The right economic choices result neither in stagnation, nor boom-bust cycles, but rather in sustainable growth, which, over time, allows the pie to expand, and for everyone to get bigger and bigger pieces even if their share of the pie doesn't change. We need the vision and the courage to aim for sustainable growth that truly does rise all tides. Transit is a necessary part of that vision for our city, and for all cities save for, perhaps, the very smallest. Cars and roads are *also* a necessary part of it, but they should not be subsidized at the expense of transit (nor vice versa).

The left and right are very frequently guilty of this (albeit in different areas). I try not to be. Part of why we're in this mess is that market distortions created by one government intervention are typically "fixed" by others, which need to be "fixed" by still others, and so forth and so on, until even the pretense of personal or economic freedom is no longer plausible, and the whole argument becomes about which brand of authoritarianism people prefer, not whether or not the authoritarian approach makes sense in the first place, which is more or less assumed. I would suggest exactly the opposite approach. Systematically find and root out those interventions which led us to where we are now. That is easy to do with transit. Undo the subsidies for automotive travel, including but not limited to bailouts, military defense of oil-producing regions, etc., and transit automatically benefits, without doing anything to purposely make automotive travel more difficult other, than asking drivers to pay their own way, as they always should have in the first place.

Many people, in fact *most* people outside the cores of the most densely populated urban areas, have no choice but to drive. You want to make their lives harder in order to make yours easier? To delay, and perhaps murder, people who need those roads to reach doctors and hospitals and accident sites and other places they need to be? That doesn't make you a good transit advocate. It makes you sound like a jerk who shouldn't and probably won't be taken seriously. If you pit 200 million drivers against 20 million transit users, and make it clear that only one or the other prevail, TRANSIT LOSES. Every time. If you want to make transit better, find a way to do that that is win-win for everyone involved.

Welcome back! Lakewood does it for me, being reasonably kid-friendly, with lots to do, relative lack of violent crime, and multiple transportation options (driving, walking, biking, transit). It's close to the city and also quite affordable.

I agree with Cudell--there are already quite a few recently rehabbed apartments there, and plenty more land to build new. I feel bad for those pioneers on the other side of the tracks on Detroit--they need some neighbors! Cleveland needs to get the crime and gang issue resolved around Cudell. Transit riders exit at W 98th with Cudell across the street or I should say the now infamous Cudell. I lived at 98th/Detroit several years and a major appeal was using the Rapid for work and night classes downtown. Tons of Section 8 then so I can't imagine how bad it is around there now. The area is being colonized by several related gangs. I will transfer there when I have to, but it is very rarely IMO a pleasant experience, and not one I'd even attempt if I weren't somewhat able to take care of myself if necessary.

The Red Line barely leaves the city except for East Cleveland and possibly brief crossings of the Lakewood and maybe Brook Park borders. It was designed mainly to shuttle people back and forth between the residential, industrial, and downtown areas of the city proper. At a time when the demographics were different, but not drastically so, not along the East Side portion of the Red Line at least. What truly is different now is that the kinds of lawlessness that are now routine were not tolerated back then. Not within the Black community, not in Little Italy, not anywhere.

The western and central areas of Lakewood are the safest, but I've lived at the east end of Lakewood for 19 years and it's not unsafe. There have been bad years of crime spurts but only in one year (2005) was it very bad. As in any densely developed neighborhood, all it takes is one bad neighbor (who usually doesn't stick around long) or a bad apartment owner (who unfortunately sticks around longer). But the only way to put out the brush fires is to stay vigilant, stay involved and act fast. I call the police the moment I see or hear problems so that it creates a record for the city. Repeated complaints targeted at the same address get noticed and the city will address nuisance neighbors or nuisance apartment owners. I've also gotten to know my council persons and each mayor and gotten them to know me, hopefully in mutual respect. I parse my complaints among my praises to them so that when I complain, they will hopefully be heard. I'm emotionally and financially invested in Lakewood and I will defend it. I notice a LOT more of that kind of citizen involvement in Lakewood than other places I've lived, and I think it makes all the difference. I can't think of anyplace in the area I'd rather live, at least not on our budget and not without giving up the walkability, access to transit, and relatively central location within the larger region. Now, enough of a sustained spike in crime could force me to reconsider. But, precisely because I believe many Lakewood residents do have the sense of pride and commitment to their community to not tolerate that sort of thing, I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

I don't like Mr. Limbaugh's style and I agree with significantly less than half of the positions he takes. However, both of these, while overstated and overgeneralized as is typical for him, are at least partly valid. The economy is a mess, and Obama does deserve some of the blame although far from all, and there are plenty of folks on the left AND the right who feel themselves entitled to more than they would be able to produce and/or negotiate, even collectively, in a relatively free labor market. I think most of us here understand that transit if done right can significantly improve an urban economy, although there are impediments not directly related to transit that need to be removed for it to be successful. For instance, both the reality and the perceptions of inner-city crime need to be addressed, which, IMO, would require things that piss off the left (scaling back or preferably ending "gun control") as well as those that would piss off the right (scaling back or preferably eliminating the "war on drugs," and probably also scaling back subsidies for roads and fuel). How does transit help with the problem of able-bodied people who refuse to work? Well, in many cases, the preponderance of entry-level jobs really are difficult or impossible to reach via transit, and they don't typically have other options. The person who can collect either a small dole by doing nothing, or a slightly larger paycheck (if that) by taking unreliable, slow and late buses for 5-6 hours a day (as I have in the past), is not entirely unreasonable to choose the former. Better transit attracts jobs, which attract people, who attract more jobs, which attract more people and so forth. This is essentially the process by which both urbanization and economic growth occur in modern societies. But the lack of transportation options short-circuit the process for those most in need of it, and, ironically, the workers that small and medium-sized businesses need the most of as well. The resulting suburban/exurban sprawl is completely unsustainable and is a drain on everyone, but, again, especially the poor, who find that most of the jobs end up in faraway places they cannot reach. Transit done right is win-win-win for everyone involved, helping lift all tides, but especially those most in need. That is why even as a libertarian I strongly advocate for it, albeit in a form a bit different than many other transit advocates (e.g., I believe it should be largely private, but then I believe roads and gas and many other things should be largely private as well, not subsidized, leaving both on a much more level playing field on which I believe that in cities transit would be a clear winner).