I was looking around at some of the abandoned projects and some of the threads about proposed public transit in Cleveland and realized that we’ve never had a thread about the Cleveland people-mover. While I don’t have any recollections of this from when it was happening, I still think it’s interesting. So here’s what I was able to put together on lunch yesterday when UO was down.

 

Ever since the Van Sweringens convinced Cleveland to put the Cleveland Union Terminal on the southeast edge of downtown, some form of loop around downtown to move people from the transit hub to their workplaces, retail, and to a lesser degree, downtown homes, has been a necessity to Clevelanders. This loop around downtown was been serviced by streetcars till the 1950’s and busses since then.

 

In 1954 voters approved a $35 million bond issue to build subway, but the proposal was killed by Cuyahoga County Commissioners, County Engineer Albert Porter, and downtown merchants that feared the subway would transport people away from their shops on Public Square. For maps and more info see http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,2726.0.html

 

In the mid-1970s the Urban Mass Transit Agency of the Department of Transportation tried to find cities willing to test a new concept of unmanned vehicle it dubbed the “Automated Guideway Transit” though most people called it a “people mover”. The UMTA was already operating one test of the concept in Morgantown WV, and Cleveland was one of the cities that requested under the administration of Mayor Perk to be involved in the study. Transportation Secretary William T. Coleman Jr. described people movers as affording “the city a unique opportunity to connect pockets of economic activity in a dispersed downtown core, to link up urban components and rejuvenate the downtown area.”

 

The proposal submitted was estimated at $52 million dollars. 80% of the funds would come from DOT and 20% would come from the newly formed RTA. Estimates for operating costs were about $1.6 million per year.

 

Cleveland’s proposal was for a 2.2 mile elevated loop that would hold unmanned vehicles on a one-way track. The counter clockwise loop was to start at the public square entrance to Tower City, go east on Euclid Avenue till E 13th, turn north on E 13th to Chester, go west on Chester to E 12th, take E 12th north to St. Clair, go west on St. Clair to Ontario, travel south on Ontario to Rockwell, at which point it would curve around the west side of Public Square and return to the front of Tower City.

 

 

While the prospect of free money for the project from the Feds and the support of the Mayor’s office were huge bonuses in the project’s favor, it wasn’t without its detractors. In his book “Making Equity Planning Work” former city planning director Norman Krumholtz brags about the role he and his staff played in killing the project. In the course of the fight over the people mover he recruited County Commissioner Robert Sweeney, County Auditor George V. Voinovich, and City Councilman Dennis J. Kucinich to his view that the project was “federal boondoggle” and a “Disneyland contraption”.

 

Among the reasons they disliked the project was that it would indirectly hurt bus riders. The thinking was that if RTA supported the people mover with operating funds, it would have to cut operating funds elsewhere, and that most likely meant bus routes which at that time provided 87% of RTA’s ridership.

 

In addition, to quote Krumholtz, “it would provide a rationale for expansions and extensions of the RTA fixed-rail system to other corridors in the Cleveland region” which “were contrary to the transit needs of…the transit-dependent population of the city whose interests we were determined to serve”.

 

He also argued that the people mover would actually take longer than a bus route to move people around downtown. However upon closer examination of the times he quoted in this argument, it becomes obvious that he took advantage of the one-way aspect of the people mover. For example in interviews he gave in the 1970s and in his book, he quotes how long it would take to get from Tower City to the Justice Center. By bus he estimated 3 minutes, on foot 5 minutes, and by people mover 12 minutes. However he neglected to point out that the people mover would get from Tower City to anywhere else on its route in less than 12 minutes.

 

Perhaps the most effective reason that people opposed the people mover though was aesthetic.

 

Krumholtz and the city planning office argued very vocally that the people mover would cast too many shadows in a city that is already gray and overcast for much of the year. He also tried to point out that the loop passed in front of some of the city’s most significant architectural landmarks such as Tower City, and the Cleveland Trust Bank, and through Public Square and the Burnham Malls.

 

There was also distrust in the estimates for the cost of building the project as the people mover test project in Morgantown WV had come in more than $50 million over budget and many people feared that a Cleveland project was doomed to the same fate. In addition there were some questions as to the suitability of the vehicles for Cleveland’s weather, as Morgantown’s vehicles initially didn’t operate properly in cold weather.

 

In 1977 Dennis Kucinich was elected mayor and returned $41.8 million of federal money in person by check to President Carter, and the people mover project was officially dead in Cleveland. Houston, St Paul, and Los Angeles which also had been considering people movers eventually declined federal money as well. Detroit and Miami then took advantage of the UMTA funds to build their people movers. Both ended up over budget and getting lower ridership than was originally forecast. Indianapolis, Jacksonville later built people movers, and several other cities have talked about it, but with separate funding approved by congress in 1997. There are also people movers in a handful of airports, on the Vegas strip, and in Irving TX that were not paid for with UMTA funds.

 

RTA attempted to provide transportation to many of the potential riders of the people mover in 1996 with the creation of the waterfront line, but after its first year, its ridership failed to meet expectations for reasons that we've discussed to death in half a dozen other threads.

Info and photos about Jacksonville's people-mover

 

Jacksonville's downtown is fairly spread-out and stretches to both banks of a large river, their main convention center is several blocks in one direction (too far to casually walk), and the main branch of a local community college is several blocks in the other direction. Given that, I think the people-mover idea had some merit there, although a modern streetcar probably would have been more appropriate and certainly less expensive. The proposed service area in Cleveland looks far more compact, and I think a grade-separated people-mover would probably have been overkill.

 

Useless trivia fact: For whatever reasons, Jacksonville rebuilt their original people-mover system into a monorail when it was expanded across the river. Their old people-mover trains are now in service at O'Hare Airport in Chicago.

^As many times as I've been to and through Jacksonville, I've never had the time to take a ride on their people mover, but from maps it does seem to make a lot of sense. And if they could get most of it paid for by the federal government, I can't blame them for building it.

 

I have mixed feelings about Cleveland's plan. I certainly understand why it got killed, the routing itself wasn't the most useful (you could walk the route almost as fast) and I agree with the aesthetic arguements made about it. I am saddened though because I think it had the potential to spin off more downtown improvements, and new rail lines. Had this been built, we might have gotten commuter rail back into Tower City, and new light rail lines.

 

If we were going to have a people mover, I'd much rather see it go all the way down Euclid to University Circle. Then it would be useful, and since it wouldn't get stuck at traffic lights, it could probably go faster than the Healthline, and wouldn't require bus drivers.

 

 

Considering the amazing impact Detroit's People Mover had--and by amazing I mean setting back transit 40 years--Cleveland didn't miss out on much.

My feelings are mixed on a People Mover for Cleveland.  There's always be some limitations since all Rapid riders have to transfer to be distributed around downtown.  Still, I think it could have worked, esp had planners chosen a backdoor loop (not right thru Public Square in front of Tower City, May's and Soldier's & Sailors.  Then again, I think the arguments against the 'ugliness' and architecture-destroying nature of PM was overblown because, if I recall, opponents used the way-outdated image of the Chicago L...

 

Miami, by far the most extensive and successful big-city PM shows that the modern pillar/viaduct architecture is not that intrusive and, in fact, tends to make downtown look modern and hip (and we know downtown Cleveland, in spaces, can feel old 'n tired (even though I adore the bulk of our old "character architecture".

 

Considering the amazing impact Detroit's People Mover had--and by amazing I mean setting back transit 40 years--Cleveland didn't miss out on much. -- Kingfish

 

Not a good analogy...  Actually, like Miami's PM (which uses rubber-tired cars as opposed to Detroit's light-rail trains), Detroit's PM was supposed to connect to light rail lines up Woodward and Gratiot to the northern suburbs and distribute LRT passengers thru downtown, like Miami's.  It was never contemplated to have the standalone loop Detroit has, today.[

Considering the amazing impact Detroit's People Mover had--and by amazing I mean setting back transit 40 years--Cleveland didn't miss out on much.

 

A big reason why the Detroit PM was built was to circulate passengers from existing and proposed commuter and light-rail lines. There already was a busy South East Michigan Transportation Authority's commuter train service which linked Pontiac, Birmingham, Royal Oak, Highland Park and Hamtramck to downtown Detroit at a station next to the RenCen. The commuter trains began in 1931 and continued until 1983, several years after Detroit committed to building the PM. A year later, in 1984, Amtrak's commuter train service from Jackson, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Dearborn to Michigan Central Station stopped running (its intercity trains to Chicago continued, however).

 

The people mover started operation three years later, in 1987. Ooops....

 

 

A SEMTA commuter train in the 1970s near Pontiac...

 

 

 

SEMTA commuter train equipment awaiting their next assignments in 1980 in Pontiac....

 

i was going to say, there was no commuter rail in detroit when the pm opened. i remember when some of us went to check it out on opening week. we were like eh and went on to st andrews/shelter like a bunch of good goth college kids  :laugh:

 

i think the pm in detroit and miami are pretty cool. i'm glad cleve never built one, but as mentioned i suppose it would have been ok if it had a different route like behind public square and other buildings, but even then i dk about that either. the earlier subway plan or dual-hub would have served the cleve much better.