LifeLongClevelander

I believe that the continuing of full-time telework has hurt ridership for Laketran's Park and Ride service. I know that a large number of riders were Federal Building workers. I am not familiar with the service from the Market Street lot (#10), but the Wickliffe lot (#12) has dropped as well.

Bibb did name one trustee and attempted to name another, but there is far more that he could do. Being the mayor, he could be far more vocal about the sorry state of affairs of the system and he hasn't. His voice could bring far more attention to the problems and start applying pressure towards making changes. Even if he was able to name all four of Cleveland's trustee members, it is still a minority of the 10-member board. The one other notable statement about RTA made by Bibb was during his mayoral campaign and how buses traverse Public Square. If he felt that altering bus routes through Public Square would "fix" many of RTA's problems, then that is truly disappointing.

Birdsong has had her nearly three years on the job. More than ample enough time, even with multiple maternity leaves, to see the continued failures of RTA and her top subordinates. As @KJPhas stated after witnessing lame excuses put forward by those subordinates at meetings and seemingly accepting them, RTA is staying locked in another round of incompetent management. She has ample time to review the actions and get rid of the incompetence left by Calabrese. If she truly wanted to make meaningful changes, they would have been done. Even on those multiple leaves, she could have been working on a viable plan for the future. It doesn't stop with Birdsong. Obviously, the board of trustees is perfectly content with the death spiral of RTA and those who the trustees should be answering to are content with the pathetic state of RTA as well. Nothing will happen from the county's viewpoint as long as lame-duck Budish is around, but Bibb really hasn't said anything much about RTA, nor has the county's mayors held their fellow mayors on the board accountable, either. Occasionally, a mayor or two will make noise about a threatened lack of bus service (like the mayors of Highland Heights and Mayfield Village did), but that is it. The local mayors only care about their little pieces of the county and that is it. As long as the trustees accept and welcome RTA's complete failure as well those who are responsible for naming them to the board, RTA will continue to wither away to irrelevance.

Birdsong will be at the rudderless helm of RTA for at least two more years. Based upon past history, the board of trustees will "reward" her for navigating through COVID and buying into the fallacy of her doing a "good job". The "reward" will be similar to what was done for Calabrese: contract extension, bonus and/or pay raise. Repeating history all over again, they will ignore all the problems that have grown bigger and more out of control. If something does go bad, somebody will be thrown under the bus to take the blame. The only way that Birdsong exits is that she sees a brewing disaster and wants to get out before you-know-what hits the fan. With the problems that have persisted and have gotten worse, it is highly doubtful that her managerial "experience" at RTA will land her a bigger or better job at another transit system. The insanity of the situation is they keep on making the same bad decisions without changing a thing while expecting a different outcome. Federal-level control needs to come in and take over. Cannot help but wonder what the Federal people who were involved with getting the rail car bid re-advertised think of this mess.

RTA's system does not have many major stations on its limited rail system; nowhere near the number of stations that the New York, Chicago and Boston systems have. As such, policing them in a manner where they don't become homeless shelters reeking of vile odors should not be an issue. For RTA, it is quite manageable if they chose to do so. The problem is that they have decided to do nothing about it, just like they deal with many other problems. For a system that lacks credibility as a transit system, it is indicative of the bigger problem where in the minds of the general public, RTA has become irrelevant. As such, the death spiral continues to speed up.

The series of mind-boggling things listed here recently leaves me with no question that RTA is dying a slow death. The system had a once in a generation or multiple generations chance to reverse its free fall in ridership. Gas prices that neared $5.00 a gallon stared to lure new riders from their cars and start using mass transit once again. All that RTA needed to do was to put its best foot forward. Make the stations desirable to use. Get the homeless out of them and clean out the reek of bodily fluids. Have people believe they are safe. Spend the time and money to get equipment clean and reliable. Insure that controllable delays are kept to a minimum. Do track work where shutdowns and single-track operation are done overnight and low traffic weekends. Have running times as close as possible to schedules so riders can expect to get to their destinations on time, if not early. What did riders get? Homeless using stations as their personal shelters and bathrooms. People don't feel comfortable where when hearing threats directed at them. Breakdowns are commonplace. Schedules are meaningless. Equipment needs cleaning badly. They probably do the track maintenance during the day as it is "cheaper" than doing it on nights and weekends. They save overtime money by not working the extra hours on repairing and cleaning as well. Have to wonder that as gas prices have started dropping significantly, how many new RTA converts have already left the system? If gas prices again surge, based upon the negative experiences, how many would rather deal with the pain at the gas pumps instead of the pains on the senses and overall unreliability? One has to ask, what has Birdsong done to correct the problems? Talk of the replacement of the worn out rail fleet has stopped. Are top level managers too concerned with maintaining "good" budget numbers rather than providing good service. Supervisors are more concerned with convenience of access for their coffee and pastries instead of making sure stops are easy to use by riders. The entire situation screams that from top to bottom, as long as they get their hefty paychecks (wondering if bonuses are being shelled out), this sort of dysfunctional system operation is perfectly acceptable. For the existing passengers and potential new ones, be darned. The Federal Mass Transit Administration needs to dig into this situation, not just to oversee and provide guidance on rail car procurement contracts. The system most definitely needs a complete managerial cleaning house. Birdsong has been on the job for almost three years. COVID cannot be used as an excuse for the problems. She needs to be relieved of her duties immediately. The old guard leaders left over from Calabrese needs to be shown the door as well. With the many years the old guard has had in controlling hiring, most if not all of their managers can go too. There are many excellent and "driven" leaders and managers at other transit systems who should be brought aboard and given the POWER to clean up RTA. This is RTA's last and only hope to survive, if it isn't already too late.

After everything that has gone on, Mayfield wants nothing to do with the Browns. As for the Browns letting Mayfield use the injury as a reason, they might as well. There were questionable play calls made and they could have also overruled Mayfield in his desire to play, unless an injured Mayfield was better than a healthy Keenum. If that was the real mindset, it doesn't say much for the opinion of having Keenum on the team in the first place. Finally, a good part of the offensive line was a mess last year. When both starting offensive tackles were either out and lost considerable playing time forcing the team to go with six different tackles, that did affect play. It didn't help an injured quarterback to face increased pressure. Chubb missed three games and Hunt missed nine games. The receivers due to injury and other "issues" didn't help the situation either. In 2020, a healthy Mayfield and a pretty much intact offense (they were better without Beckham than with him) went to the playoffs, and beat Pittsburgh. If it weren't for the fumble by Higgins against Kansas City, the Browns would have been in the AFC Championship Game against Buffalo--with Mayfield at the helm. What is not to like with those results?

I just mentioned it as that what others have been speculating in the sporting world concerning the Bauer comparison. As for a Rothlisberger-type suspension, the whole "climate" of sports has changed and despite how clueless the Browns ownership is, they should have known better. By going through this whole debacle, the organization has shafted themselves: public opinion of the deal is awful, severe salary-cap limitations for four seasons, ticking off other organizations for raising the salary bar for quarterbacks league-wide, especially if the suspension is lengthy, they have traded away excessive draft capital and will all of the rest of the team be able to deliver what they have done in the past. If 2022 was "the year" for the Browns, if Watson is gone for most or all if it, the window may slam shut next season.

The way the contract was set up, it was expected that Watson would lose some time for the 2022 season. This is why the contract is for the veteran's minimum in 2022 and back-loaded for the remaining four years. Comparatively speaking, the financial hit would be "minimal" for the 2022 season for any games missed. Now, if the suspension is substantially longer (some have referenced the Trevor Bauer two-year suspension) and goes into part if not all of 2023, Watson would be out a A LOT OF MONEY.

Overtime will greatly increase the salaries of the Cleveland Police Officers, but at what price? Burnout? Fatigue? Mistakes caused by burnout and fatigue? Those can be heavy prices to pay and there comes a time, no matter how nice that paycheck is, the need to cut the stress and get out may become an overriding value.

Having the cash and just sitting on it is not being a responsible fiscal steward. It has been common knowledge that Cleveland underpays its officers. Having them bolt to higher paying jobs in the suburbs only hurts the city. Not having enough equipment to clean the streets in the winter year after year is negligent, especially when the money was available to expand the snow fighting fleet. Not having enough fire engines, ladder trucks and EMS vehicles puts lives and property at risk. So does having a vastly understaffed police department, fire department and EMS division. Crime victims, people who don't see clean streets in a reasonable period of time or those who wait excessive times for safety forces to arrive don't care about the size of the city's bank accounts. It wasn't like something totally unexpected came along for the city where they were hit with a massive wave of employees departing over a short period of time. No calamity took out large numbers of city equipment. These situations were building for many years and Jackson did nothing to reverse it. The income tax increase gave him ample money to build up the equipment fleets and improve staffing, but he did nothing. Bibb is left to fix the mess. In normal years, expanding fleets and replacing outdated equipment takes time. It will only take longer with the supply chain issues. As for staffing shortages, that is a whole different problem to overcome, especially in low-paying, undesirable workplace climates.

RTA doing an excellent job with single-track operation is good to hear. There also may be an underlying alternative reason behind adopting this mode of rail maintenance. RTA has been facing bus shortages. They simply may not have enough buses to spare for bus replacement for rail operations.

The final option that is selected needs to be completely unified with equipment and operations of the rest of the system. In this case, it needs to high-platform rapid transit. It offers operational flexibility. Equipment on the new line can be interchanged with equipment on other lines. No special, dedicated unique equipment that cannot be used anyplace on the system. Have the equipment be standardized so that it can be serviced at the same facilities used by the existing system. At some point in the future, should the new line be used as a new routing or other expansion of service for existing lines, it can. Just because the new line isn't a subway there is no reason that equipment that runs in the subway cannot run on a totally surface line. Light rail will be an "orphaned" type operation that will have too many limitations. As for BRT, it won't have the capacity that a heavy rail operation provides.

Both the #22 and #26 ran articulated buses. Could be the "economics" of running a 60-foot bus with few passengers cannot be ignored. I know that RTA has fixed prices for diesel fuel, but if the contract is expiring, it could be a huge added cost, plus those longer buses do require more maintenance that a standard bus. The mechanics could be pushed to the limit with keeping enough buses on the road. The putting of surplus downtown trolley-type buses on regular routes is another indicator of equipment issues.

One thing that sometimes gets overlooked is between West 6th and West 9th, that was the site of Cleveland's Civil War-era passenger station. Even after the Terminal Tower opened, not all trains used the new as a passenger station. I would like to see extra space at the Tower City platform level used for potential RTA rail system expansion.

It has been stated that the punishment of Trevor Bauer, with MLB suspending him for 2 YEARS, could very well have a bearing on the suspension for Watson. If that is indeed the case, the draft picks for 2022 and 2023 could be very high first round picks. All he is turning out to be is a public relations disaster, cost a lot in draft capital and a boat anchor on the salary cap. Definitely a really bad pathetic joke.

In my opinion, it would be extremely expensive to route trains into the Terminal Tower and have that facility serving regular passenger trains again. It would be far better served to put some of that money into a new and better Amtrak Lakefront station. I know that per the Amtrak Connects US map for Ohio, the connection from the lakefront line to the southeast already exists. All of the other connections are already in place. Yes, it would be nice to see passenger trains return to the Terminal Tower, but it probably isn't financially feasible.

When a mall or shopping center starts using incentives such as no rent and only a percentage of sales, it is an indication that it is starting to show serious declines in traffic. It also a strong sign that other potential retailers are not lining up to fill potential vacancies.

Well, right now the fleeing from police is pretty much out of control. We could have ZERO chases, but when the criminals take off at a high rate of speed, bad things will happen. They can crash without being chased or they make a clean escape to commit more crimes. There aren't any guarantees that either way there will be anybody will be hurt or worse. If helicopter units are so expensive, then why have them if they aren't being used other than rare instances? It would be "cheaper" to have rentals when needed. For all anybody knows, the ones who flee at high-speed may start thinking of not having their high-speed getaways if the odds of getting caught go up significantly. And when they do get caught, the penalties need to be stiff. Right now, they have little fear of getting caught. As for the Columbus PD helicopter crew, that incident should have their last flight in that unit and faced serious disciplinary action. To base what any city's helicopter usage should be based upon an incident in another city is foolish. The only thing that should come of that is to "spell out" out the Columbus incident is the example that was made out of those officers.

It is extremely unfortunate that your employee was injured and could have been killed due to a police pursuit. There have been many situations that have been documented where the police either break off pursuits immediately or shortly starting one, yet the drivers of the vehicles in question decided not to slow down. They flee at high rates of speed even though they aren't being chased and still cause bad or even tragic accidents. Who is to blame then? The bigger question is why has fleeing from police become a real life video game? If they are fleeing at high speed, either being chased or not, what have they done to warrant it? It does seem to appear that many carjackings and such have been carried multiple times by the same repeat offenders. One thing that may help, if Cleveland can get its act together (like keeping maintenance contracts active and equipment available) is to have the helicopters active. Generally, these chases are at night. It seems that a least one helicopter needs to be airborne during the hours of highest risk. It also means that the unit needs to be expanded. Drones are good, but they don't have the abilities that staffed helicopters provide. Cleveland shouldn't have to fall back on a county or highway unit.

Those 16 year-olds don't have to worry about getting up early to go to school. Their "schooling" is coming on the streets. It would be interesting to find out what other crimes that were committed with that car.

Most certainly it was ownership and management. With the Internet, it is completely possible to put out a respectable and quality online publication. Here, ownership has permitted most of the experienced talent go, either by laying them off, letting them go to other markets or retire. Most of the remaining people are inexperienced and probably waiting to jump to a better publication. The dwindling readers are "rewarded" with syndicated columnists, stale stories that are left for days, un-updated recycled pieces, sloppiness/errors and filler fluff. Sounds just like a repeat of the Sears/K-Mart merger, just in print media.

Why bother. Pretty much a regular occurrence. Just pull up the standard replacement notice of Red Line service and put in the dates. No thought processes involved. Same goes for printed notices on stations. Run off a few hundred at a time and enter the dates when they need to post.

The worst example of journalistic negligence that I have ever seen from cleveland.com concerned the incident of a drunken teenager riding on a HealthLine bus several years ago. Transit police were called when the bus was near to Cleveland State University. At the same time there was a large group gathering at the school. They converged on the two officers, demanding they turn over the drunken teenager to them. Those officers had no idea who the teenager was, nor who comprised the agitated crowd. As the crowd converged on the officers, they chose to hold them off with pepper spray. They did so to protect themselves and the teenager. Eventually, EMS arrived and he was turned over the the EMS crew. Yet, in the completely irresponsible reporting on the incident, cleveland.com decided to use a picture of Tamir Rice in the article. It equated what happened to him with the tactics used by RTA Transit Police to disperse the crowd in a safe and responsible manner. What would have been written by that publication if harm came to the teenager if the police surrendered him to an unknown crowd? The uproar of protest by all sides, even those who did not support the police, against the linking of Tamir Rice's picture to that incident caused cleveland.com to replace his picture with a generic mosaic from some piece of art. That sort of gutter-level journalism has no place anywhere.

In my previous post, I omitted the almost cyclical repeating of old, out-dated stories concerning old shopping malls, eating establishments of the past, former retailers and so on. The bigger issue is by keeping, old and stale articles, re-use of articles that haven't been updated, multiple daily columns by the same national writers and over-reliance on police blotter filler, it is an an obvious attempt to cover up how woefully void of relevant content they have on their site. This is sad commentary on how badly this publication has degenerated.