Planners hope to ride the rails to bike-hike trail

Monday, January 03, 2005

Tom Breckenridge

Plain Dealer Reporter

 

Planners want to build a vital spine to Northeast Ohio's growing network of bike-and-hike trails with a 72-mile link between Cleveland and Youngstown.

 

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It could also be a major asset and beneficiary of the proposed Western Reserve Heritage Area.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, Democrat of Niles, is pursuing a $250,000 study by the National Park Service to determine whether a 14-county region of northern Ohio qualifies as a heritage area.

 

As an outsider who recently toured the rural Western Reserve I most certainly think this area should be recognized as a very distinctive cultural landscape.  It really is that special, IMHO.

 

 

That must be the old Erie Railroad branch from Leavittsburg to Cleveland, that carried the last diesel commuter-train service in Ohio (Youngstown to Cleveland) until 1976 or 1977. I rode it a few times when I was growing up in Warren. I've noticed on my return visits to NE Ohio that the tracks have been gone for years, east of Aurora, but I didn't know the right-of-way still exists.

 

I am VERY in support of this.  I think that any outdoor recreation we can develop is as important as downtown revitalization in making Cleveland an attractive place for young educated people to live.  This, the canal corridor, and our existing metroparks plus the tail expansions that the city and county would like to see will go a long way towards making Cleveland a very attractive place to live- if we market it well.

I oppose it as it would block plans for restoring commuter rail service between Cleveland and Aurora. It also would remove that route from further consideration for the Ohio Rail Development Commission's Ohio Hub System of 110-mph intercity passenger rail service between Cleveland and Pittsburgh via Youngstown. I suspect these would have a greater impact on economic development, reducing traffic to/from Sea World/Geauga Lake, and provide inexpensive city-to-city transport in an era of tightening energy supplies. There are only so many available rail rights of way, whereas bike paths can be built next to any road.

 

And, despite what bike path advocates claim, such trails do no preserve rail corridors for the future. I've never seen a trail get converted back to a rail line. Once it becomes a trail, it will stay a trail, and be lost forever as a rail corridor.

 

KJP

.... that carried the last diesel commuter-train service in Ohio (Youngstown to Cleveland) until 1976 or 1977

 

Wow!  They had commuter passenger rail in Cleveland area as late as the 1970s?

 

Did they use those Chicago-style bi-level gallery cars? 

The Cleveland-Youngstown commuter rail service ran until Jan. 19, 1977. It had been operated by Erie-Lackawanna until Conrail absorbed E-L and five other Northeast U.S. railroad companies on April 1, 1976. Conrail proposed to terminate the commuter service (plus lots of other commuter services in the Northeast) unless local or state funding was offered to keep it running.

 

At the time, the federal Urban Mass Transit Administration (now the Federal Transit Administration) had a pool of funding for affected state departments of transportation to tap for continuing to run commuter services that Conrail wanted to discontinue. Since the Ohio Department of Transportation didn't have a rail division, the responsibility for applying for the UMTA grants (yes, free money) fell upon the Ohio Rail Transportation Authority, whose charge was planning a network of bullet trains for the state. ORTA said running commuter trains wasn't part of its responsibility, although it did want to reactivate Cleveland Union Terminal (beneath Terminal Tower) for a high-speed rail system. So, it didn't request the UMTA grant and the commuter service to Youngstown died.

 

That death also meant the removal of the remaining tracks in Union Terminal and when the Tower City Center plan emerged in the 1980s, no consideration was given to preserving railroad service because there was nothing left to preserve. So the track level at Union Terminal was redeveloped with an extra parking deck wedged in where passenger trains once ran. In other words, ORTA's refusal to accept free federal money meant the loss of the rail station they wanted to use. If you walk farther back into the parking area, you can still see the rails in the pavement that were used for the commuter train service.

 

This is what the commuter train to/from Youngstown (with enroute station stops at East 55th, East 93rd, Lee Road, North Randall, Solon, Geauga Lake, Aurora, Mantua, Garrettsville, Warren, Niles, and Girard) looked like one summer afternoon in 1972, as it departed Cleveland Union Terminal.

 

 

Here's a 1951 timetable for Erie's passenger service out of Cleveland, which included the Cleveland-Youngstown commuter service, as well as other trains (most of which were daily).

 

 

And, I'd thought some of you might get a kick out of this page from the same timetable as above.

 

 

KJP

Oh..ok, looks like they where running conventional streamlined coaches.

 

I was thinking about something like this:

 

I suspect there is a "hidden history" of commuter rail in Ohio.  The old interuban lines, of course, but also mainline railroads providing these services.

Technically, the E-L service wasn't a true commuter rail service since it didn't offer weekly or monthly "commutation" discounts or passes. And, on that score, no railroad offered such a service in Ohio. There were, however, trains on many routes out of Cleveland (to/from Euclid-Painesville-Ashtabula, Berea-Elyria-Oberlin-Norwalk, Bedford-Macedonia-Hudson-Cuyahoga Falls-Akron, Bedford-Hudson-Ravenna-Alliance) that operated on what could be called "commuter schedules." Cincinnati also had some railroad services like this, but surprisingly Columbus did not.

 

KJP

I oppose it as it would block plans for restoring commuter rail service between Cleveland and Aurora. It also would remove that route from further consideration for the Ohio Rail Development Commission's Ohio Hub System of 110-mph intercity passenger rail service between Cleveland and Pittsburgh via Youngstown. I suspect these would have a greater impact on economic development, reducing traffic to/from Sea World/Geauga Lake, and provide inexpensive city-to-city transport in an era of tightening energy supplies. There are only so many available rail rights of way, whereas bike paths can be built next to any road.

 

And, despite what bike path advocates claim, such trails do no preserve rail corridors for the future. I've never seen a trail get converted back to a rail line. Once it becomes a trail, it will stay a trail, and be lost forever as a rail corridor.

 

KJP

 

Ah... I didn't think of that.  I'd have to see an analysis of the impacts of these two ideas side by side, I guess.  Although I disagree that a trail can be built along any old road.  Land acquisition is difficult and expensive.  Its unlikely that those hurdles would be met to create a true bike trail, as opposed to a striped off berm.

Consider State Route 43, which parallels the rail line between Cleveland (from near East 93rd) east to Aurora. East of there, Pioneer Trail Road and State Route 82 parallel the rail line all the way into Warren (Leavittsburg, actually).

 

For the Cleveland portion of SR43, does Miles Road need to be as wide as it is? Or can it be narrowed somewhat to have a dedicated bike lane cordoned off with those concrete parking "curbs" or whatever they're called that you see at places along the Metroparks' roads? As a cyclist, I would feel safer biking around people, rather than along an isolated rail line that runs behind businesses.

 

Farther east, a bike path could easily be built next to the rail line through North Randall and Bedford Heights, where the old North Randall rail yard used to be. It's plenty wide through there and would avoid the deviations that SR 43 takes in that area (plus having to cross busy roads).

 

Once you get to Solon, the bike path could return to SR 43. It could be built next to the road, which has an easement for widening it to four or five lanes (if you have commuter rail, you may not need to widen the road!). See SR 91 in Mayfield Village and Willoughby Hills for a good example of a bike path along a state road.

 

East of Aurora, using Pioneer Trail Road might make sense as it is a lightly used road and would bring you into Mantua. From there, the trail could use the abandoned portion of the rail line to hook up with the existing trail that links Hiram and Garrettsville. While commuter rail wouldn't likely extend that far out, high-speed rail would, but might need a new right of way since the old Erie-Lackawanna corridor is very curvacious here. East of Garrettsville, return the Western Reserve Trail next to SR 82 for the rest of the distance into Leavittsburg. Between Leavittsburg and Youngstown, there are multiple abandoned railroad rights of way for both the bike path and high-speed rail.

 

I just would like both the rail and the trail interests to coexist so that neither squeezes the other out. With the "peak" in Peak Oil forecast to occur in the next 0-30 years, we need to make smart choices rather than take the path of least resistance (literally!) that fail to take into account long-term repercussions.

 

KJP

Money problems...from the Warren Tribune Chronicle:

 

 

Trail lacks funding

By JOHN GOODALL Tribune Chronicle

 

WARREN - Lack of local matching funds is preventing Trumbull County from applying for a state grant to finish its portion of Great Ohio Lake to River Greenway bicycle path.

 

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http://www.tribunechronicle.com/news/story/0110202006_new03trail10.asp

 

From the 1/12/06 Youngstown Vindicator:

 

 

Officials will seek funds for bike trail

The two phases have a price tag of $1.54 million.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

 

WARREN — Trumbull County Planning Commission officials are drafting a request to county commissioners for funding to proceed with phases of the Greenway bicycle trail just north and south of Warren.

 

Alan Knapp, planning commission director, and planner Julie Green are asking for $80,000 — which would provide matching money needed to get state and federal grants needed to construct two phases of the path.

 

For more info, click the link

 

[email protected]

 

http://www.vindy.com/content/local_regional/286209915665190.php