urbanlife

Certainly the CircleLink is. Not sure how that works, legally. It did before the walkway over Ontario/Prospect opened. The casino also runs regularly scheduled buses from the suburbs to downtown. They used to be daily and offered multiple daily trips on most routes. But not anymore. I think they get around the legal issues by making the fare part of using the casino -- ie: you pay $15 fare but you get tokens/chips that you can use inside the casino. However, if you don't use the chips/tokens, that's up to you. If you use it to ride from Canton to Cleveland to take the Rapid to the airport and then fly away on vacation, that's not their concern.... http://www.lakefrontlines.com/tours/casino-one-day/horseshoe/ I don't think there are any actual legal restrictions on private companies/groups operating transportation services, public or otherwise, except for the normal operating permits, insurance, drivers, vehicles, etc. that would be necessary. In fact, RTA has on some occasions promoted the creation of private partnerships to operate a service, for instance when many of the community circulators were eliminated, and as pointed out on this thread there are probably a 1/2 dozen currently operating this way in Cuyahoga County, if not more. The rule everyone seems to be addressing, only goes in the other direction: RTA can not compete with private charter operators under FTA's "Charter Bus Service Rule." This prevents RTA from operating a specific shuttle service where it would potentially take away business from a private charter operator - it doesn't apply to regularly schedule service. For example, the Browns shuttles that RTA used to run no longer happen, even though RTA could provide the service, people used it, and it generally made money. See rule description here: http://www.fta.dot.gov/15740.html RTA can also negotiate with all registered charter companies in the region to provide a specific service, but I don't know if they have a current agreement or generally just abide by the restriction with the occasional waiver or exemption applied. Some of the upcoming RNC related transportation activities may require a waiver or agreement if RTA participates outside of normally scheduled service.

Are the ridership summary reports posted somewhere on the website? I looked at the board page and the media/news page, but it doesn't appear that any of the meeting handouts are online. The monthly reports (provided in paper copy if you attend a board meeting in person) provide a good summary of what is going on, including the context of ridership, and should be available as a PDF somewhere to post.

the sign looks good, but it looks like the honey locust street trees didn't make it. i don't understand why every project seems to cut down trees and start from scratch. a nice tree canopy, even from honey locusts, makes a huge difference in how you perceive the street.

this gets a bit at my concerns with the project - are they proposing to eliminate capacity anywhere else because of these changing traffic patterns? it seems to me that if we need this blvd, that we should also be identifying a roads or lane miles to take out of service. lets say of the 3 mile project, 1 mile is an existing road that is bring improved. ok, but this is also adding lanes, so there might be 2 or 3 total lane miles added. then for the other 2 miles that are being added to the system at 2 lanes wide (4 lane miles total), there should be strong consideration of removing 4 lane miles of deteriorating or excess capacity. take a lane off carnegie and calm it because many will choose the OC now, same for chester. remove some roads somewhere so that there isn't an increasing burden on a decreasing local population to pay to maintain the new and existing infrastructure. i haven't studied the plan in great detail, and certainly it is perhaps easier said than done, but imo, we shouldn't be adding overall road capacity to a shrinking or slow growing region.

It looked like it was along the bulkhead yesterday.

I thought they bid it out but everything came in high, so it went back to the drawing board for some value engineering before being rebid.

they are widening it 1 foot - requiring all new curbs and aprons along the Cleveland portion.

regarding timing improvements to the 55... it boils down to the city traffic engineer installing and coordinating the traffic system with pre-emption. If it is anything like what has happened along Euclid Ave, then there probably won't be a significant time savings. Since RTA doesn't control the traffic lights, it is probably one of the reasons they are hesitant to imply or predict any time savings on the route. IMO, RTA must be much more aggressive in its stance on the signal pre-emption/priority, along the lines of "If you want our money and our project management to get your street repaved, then we want functioning signal pre-emption/priority for our buses. Otherwise, we will take our money/project management/etc to another deserving project in our service territory." Instead, they seem to turn the other way and throw their hands up. Each bus at rush hour could equal 30 cars taken off the road - it only makes sense to move them along. One simple solution would be to turn over control of this short corridor to the Lakewood traffic engineer who has figured out how to get all of the lights in lakewood timed/sensed up pretty well that traffic moves nicely...until you get to the Cleveland portion, and then it is almost a guaranteed stop at a few of the lights before hitting the shoreway.

I would say it's a cement street But if you look closely at the utility cutouts and sewer grates, it appears they are all set 1 inch above the concrete. My guess is that most of this area will have a final surface layer of asphalt put on top of the concrete base - similar to what has been going on at ontario and carnegie.

there is still quite a lot of finishing work to do, including adding the protective fencing. they just opened it to 2 way traffic as soon as possible.

it is supposed to "express" into downtown, but the route 2 bridge is closed to trucks and buses, so it has to detour onto local streets and use detroit-superior bridge. it is however a shame that there is limited 55 service on nights and no service on weekends on this route, although there is some service nearby with the 26.

I feel like the digital destination signs are the most important think tbh. I say this because if you sit in quite a few red line trains the destination sign is either blank or white so this will solve that issue and a digital stop sign within the car like the healthline would be beneficial for riders as well and shouldn't be forgotten about to bring the cars into the 21st century. Also you said it will have the same color scheme as the Blue/Green line so will the outside be painted Grey/Blue as well? I think digital destination and digital stop signs would be huge improvements, I think it has more to do with the old(er) technology that is on the trains that isn't planned for an upgrade making it harder to accomplish and probably some short staffing in actually figuring out how to implement on RTA's cars with the current equipment. This project does not touch the exteriors, they remain stainless steel.

biker16 - i agree with you about this being a copout, however the resistance to the vertical racks runs deep across multiple departments, so it will take some effort - such as your proposed diagrams - to overcome. there is also some debate about foldable seats. the healthline was originally going to have a dedicated area for bikes and strollers and at the last minute foldable seats were added as well. in practice what has happened is that the seats are folded down at the first stop and if you enter the healthline with a stroller or bike anywhere but the first stop, you must ask a sitting passenger to move. the feeling now is that it is better not to even have a seating option so that the space remains available. i will share your designs.

no time soon. smartcard was always phase II of the ticket vending machine and new bus fare box roll out. rta hasn't accepted phase I, so the design, testing, etc. for the smartcards hasn't even started and won't start until the other issues are worked out - screen flows and rusting machines are the most visible customer issues, but there are maybe a half dozen other back end data, communications, remote updating, and equipment issues as well. in theory smartcards could go quickly once other machine issues are resolved, but seeing as it has taken more than 4 years and initial issues aren't resolved, it may be a while.

yes. 1 car is currently being outfitted and then will be tested for comments and then all red line cars will be have interiors redone. - basically it will be the same color scheme as the blue/green line cars with gray walls/ceiling, dark gray flooring, and use the same or very similar seats to the blue/green line cars. - all new windows - all fluorescent lights will be replaced by LEDs with new plastic lenses - some seats will be removed at the ends of the cars to provide additional space for wheelchairs/bikes/luggage - trashcans are being added to the cars - working on possibly having digital destination signs in each car, but communications problems between cars and limited weathertight connections between cars may prevent this - no plans to update speaker system or to add a digital stop sign within the cars, but this may change there may be some kind of public display in the next few months to get rider feedback before all of the cars are done. expected timeline was over the next year to complete the project. overall, it should look and function much better. any word on hanging or vertical bike racks on the redline cars? when will the mock up be avialable for viewing? vertical bike racks are probably not going to happen for 2 main reasons: 1) the way the structural elements are behind the panels make it difficult to mount a hanging rack without expensive retrofit 2) serious concerns about rain/snow/mud etc. on the walls of the cars there was an expressed commitment to provide more space for bicycles and to provide some kind of a rack/tie down mechanism that will secure a bicycle. these haven't been developed yet, but will be similar to something that is used often in Europe or the more basic caltrain tie down i expect a car may be made available in a month or so for viewing.