Cleveland RTA: Heavy and Light Rail System

shlustig wrote:The Euclid Corridor project has been a monumental bust. The construction period successfully killed off almost all retail. It was an urban renewal project dressed up as a transportation project. RTA thought that the Bus Rapid Transit would enable it to kill the east end of the Red Line, but that hasn't happened. As it is, the leading Cleveland English-language daily paper just did a feature on the failure of the Health Line to meet the expected running times.

BRAT strikes again. I coulda told them it wouldn't work.... maybe this will be the last misguided BRT project in the US. We can hope.

The Waterfront line should be usable for special events at the stadium, I would think. Do they run specials?

CHTT1 wrote:The leading "English language" daily newspaper in Cleveland? That's an odd way to describe the Plain Dealer.

I got a chuckle out of that too. A comment like that brings to mind cities like Montreal or Miami, both of which I have visited this year.

On a more serious note I too am greatly disappointed with the Waterfront Light rail, although in fairness the decision to raze everything for redevelopment was out of RTA's hands. They did the best they could to nurture some through ridership to the lakefront office buildings but, as mentioned above, people prefer to walk or take the smile "trolley" from Tower City. Dependence on a single station for downtown commuter distribution has been a problem for the Rapid since day one.

Also, was Euclid Avenue really bustling with businesses before Health Line construction started? My first trip to Cleveland was in 2008 so I wouldn't know.

Wingnut wrote:
Also, was Euclid Avenue really bustling with businesses before Health Line construction started? My first trip to Cleveland was in 2008 so I wouldn't know.

Hardly, but then part of the "Health Line" hype was it was going to turn lead into gold, and oh, rebuild Euclid...

Storefront shopping has been in deep trouble since Terminal Tower was turned into Tower City, and several other downtown indoor malls were built. Add Cleveland's decline even pre-crash, and you have a predictable outcome.

I have only recently discovered this blog. I have reviewed several comments about Shaker deed restrictions.
My family lived in Shaker for 4 generations between 1928 and 1989. When I was in college I wrote an extesive thesis on the development of Shaker Heights which is in the hands of the Shaker Historical Society. I transferred all rights to it several years ago. The paer has been cited as a source by many writers subsequently. I agreed never to publish in order to access certain papers then closed to researchers.

In re deed restrcitons, a few comments are worth noting.
1. There are two sets of deed restrctions.The origianl set go back to 1900 and can be found in property developed by the Vans in both Cleve;and Heights and Shaker Heights. The original restrctions contain no reference to any excluded group such as blacks or Jews. Such specific exclusions were not uncommon then.
The second set of restrctions were established in 1927. These contain the so called Van Sweringen consent. They govern about 90% of Shaker Heights and all of Beechwood and Pepper Pike. The Shaker deeds were redeeded in 1927 at the request of the Van Sweringens and at their expense and contain this provision.

2, The reason for the additon of the consent goes as follws.

When the Vans sold property on their developments they retained the right to approve the buyer but did not reserve the right to approve a resale. It would be true that often the origianl consent was used to exclude certain groups albeit in arbitrary ways. Certainly Jews and Catholics lived in Shaker in the 1920s albeit it in no large number. The Vans were not anti semetic or anti catholic so mch as responding to the prevailing attitudes of the time. There was an increase in nativism in the 1920s as the gates closed to immigrants and eastern Europe fell apart. It used to be said JP Morgan would dine with Jewish bankers before his death while his son would not. Perhaps a sign of the times,

In rhe mid 20s rthe Vans had two unpleasant and expensive experiences. The first was a farmer east of Shaker who refused to sell his land at a price they considered fair. To get even he subdivided the land and sold it to blacks. Around the same time an owner on lower Huntington Road sold hs home to a balck MD and the neighbors were very unhappy. There were some unpleasnat episodes and the Vans bought the MD out at a high price. Reflecting the reality of the times, the Vans decided to add the Van Sweringen consent. That provied that for the next 99 years the company would reserve the rigjt to approve subsequent resale. In the absence of the company's future existence, the restrction provided for the approval of 4 of 5 adjacent homeowners.

3. To this day the Van Sweringen consent is in force. The courts and subsequent civil rights law only apply where there are specific exclusions of blacks or other groups. This goes back to a Missouri case in 1949. The Van Sweringen Company went out of business long ago but the mayors of Shaker Heights, Beechwood, and Pepper Pile act as successor trustess and always grant the consent and the buyer pays a a small fee. The reason this is still done is to preserve the deed restrcitions which in many ways form the basis of the zoning laws of these communities.

4 Someone has noted in an earlier posting that many people who were close to the Vans were Catholics and it also true that the land on which John Carroll University was given to the Jesuits by the Vans. Likewise the then Catholic Bishop of Clevleand Joseph Schrembs lived at the corner of Eaton and Shaker Boulevard in a very handsome residence for many years (circa 30s and 40s).

5 The actual practice in Shaker Heights of discrimination was generally arbitrary and in a light handed way for the most part. Certainly by the 1950s the Jewish population was significant. On the point of a Catholic Church, the Catholic population was small but the real concern was that some church would be built not in keeping with the architectural norms of Shaler Heights. St Dominic Church was built in 1946 and is a Georgian design based on a Bullfinch design in New England, It is compatible with Plymouth Church ( the Vans church) and Christ Church. It could just as easily be the First Presbyterian Church in many communities.

If one were to fault the Vans it would be that they were overly ambitious and over built. It is often said they should have never have gone East of Green or West of the Mississppi. When I visit downtown Clelveland I sometimes think the whole Terminal development was two big by a factor of 3. But that is the result of the Vans being too optimsitic and ambitious. In some ways OP Van Sweringen could not walk away from a deal. He never learned to say no, which is often the undoing of developers. If they had never bouht the Missouri Pacific RR or gone east of Green they would have died wealty men and not broke.

Probably few men changed the face of so much land or shaped the development of a city as much as the Vans. Their achievements are still remarkable.
Joe Blake

from the Wall Street Journal:

Cleveland Sees Plunge in Population

How long will it be before GCRTA closes rail lines or converts rail to BRT?

Joe's posting was very enlightening to me and confirmed some of my own experiences living in Shaker during the 1950s, as well as the reminiscences of a Jewish friend who lived in that area from the 1920s onward. I did a book on the Vans a few years ago and generally came to the same conclusions, although without Joe's excellent research and documentation. A lot of erroneous stuff has been written on this subject, and I'm glad to see the record set straight. I hope the historical society makes his thesis accessible.

As was true of J. P. Morgan, the Vans regularly dealt with Jews in business (particularly the Kuhn, Loeb banking house that controlled the Missouri Pacific at the time the Vans bought into it). They probably had their own personal prejudices, but, like Morgan, they were pragmatic businessmen.

Herb Harwood

Bill R. wrote:from the Wall Street Journal:

Cleveland Sees Plunge in Population

How long will it be before GCRTA closes rail lines or converts rail to BRT?

It all depends on the funding base, since this is a public sector operation. In the day of private enterprise interurbans and trolleys, ridership mattered, since the fare box was the only way to pay both operating and capital costs. So don't worry about a contraction of the system. Population and ridership declines would only matter in the private sector.

Bill R. wrote:from the Wall Street Journal:

Cleveland Sees Plunge in Population

How long will it be before GCRTA closes rail lines or converts rail to BRT?

Conversion to BRT will never happen. Well, not in our lifetimes.

Now that oil is expensive and drivers are expensive, it's no longer an economically rational thing to do. Rail's cheaper to operate than buses. It's more expensive to *build* but they already have it built.

If Cleveland had one of the neighborhoods served by one of its rail lines *completely* empty out -- the Waterfront Line is most likely -- then the line might be closed as an irrelevance, but that is more likely to happen to the bus lines. I would expect an enormous number of bus route closures before the Shaker Heights lines or Red Line would close.

neroden wrote:If Cleveland had one of the neighborhoods served by one of its rail lines *completely* empty out -- the Waterfront Line is most likely

IIRC the Waterfront Line is now down to weekend-only service because the Flats entertainment district is gone. But the R'n'R Hall of Fame and other tourist attractions are still there, and so is the Cleveland Browns stadium. Probably few out-of-towners use the Waterfront Line to reach those places, but it's handy for area residents who are most likely to use it on weekends.

Red Line Stop moving???

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/real ... f=business

To get residents and visitors to and from the arts district, the Regional Transit Authority is planning to move two existing rail stops on the city’s 19-mile Red Line closer to Uptown, nearby Little Italy and Case Western Reserve University at a cost of nearly $30 million.

Oh? To where????

They plan to move the East 120th station to Mayfield Road. Which makes perfect sense since it is a lot closer to the heart of Little Italy than E 120. http://www.riderta.com/majorprojects/e120/

Also - they plan on rehabing University Circle Station. http://www.riderta.com/majorprojects/universitycircle/

I learned about Cleveland's rail transit first-hand, originally as a kid taking the Red Line from Brookpark to Jacobs Field in the 90s and a decade later when I went to school at CWRU and used the Red Line to get downtown to the same stadium. I never realized just how unique and downright interesting it was while I lived in Cleveland, even though I rode it frequently. This thread has a wonderful collection of information and is fascinating to read. Now it's just the CTA for me...the Orange Line is the closest to Cleveland I can get (rail transit built along abandoned and in-service freight lines).

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/04/ ... utType=amp

RTA selects maker for new railcar fleet, funding still uncertain

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority unveiled Tuesday the likely manufacturer of its new rail fleet – a big step toward replacing its aging rail cars after four years of delays and setbacks.

But the transit agency still doesn’t know if it will have enough money to buy the first batch of railcars.

RTA’s Board of Trustees, in committee of the whole on Tuesday, voted to advance a nearly $164 million contract with vendor Siemens Mobility, Inc., to build up to 24 new railcars to replace the existing Red Line fleet within the next four years. RTA has most of the money it needs for those cars, but is still about $7 million short.

And that contract represents only a portion of the $393 million needed to eventually replace all of RTA’s railcars, on the Blue, Green and Waterfront lines.
...

---Sounds like a bit much....would be better if they co-op with a another transit agency for the same order. Like Buffalo that also has low platforms dowtown and high platforms in the Subway.----
“The rationale for that replacement was that our trains were experiencing structural loss from corrosion, that there was a lack of readily available parts, and that the cost of rehabilitation of the fleet would far exceed the replacement cost,” Caver said.

The GCRTA Rail Car Replacement Project Team recommended the selection of Siemens Mobility Incorporated as the preferred vendor for the project Tuesday, along with a request to award a contract to purchase up to 24 Siemens Model S200 rail cars, and an option to purchase a total of 60 rail cars in the future.

The project is expected to cost $393 million, which includes the cost of the cars, infrastructure and railroad changes, and spare parts. The board is expected to vote on the project at it April 18 board meeting.

RayT wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:45 pm ---Sounds like a bit much....would be better if they co-op with a another transit agency for the same order. Like Buffalo that also has low platforms dowtown and high platforms in the Subway.----
“The rationale for that replacement was that our trains were experiencing structural loss from corrosion, that there was a lack of readily available parts, and that the cost of rehabilitation of the fleet would far exceed the replacement cost,” Caver said.

The GCRTA Rail Car Replacement Project Team recommended the selection of Siemens Mobility Incorporated as the preferred vendor for the project Tuesday, along with a request to award a contract to purchase up to 24 Siemens Model S200 rail cars, and an option to purchase a total of 60 rail cars in the future.

The project is expected to cost $393 million, which includes the cost of the cars, infrastructure and railroad changes, and spare parts. The board is expected to vote on the project at it April 18 board meeting.

Agree, if agencies have similar stock, they should work to get savings from ordering together.
Like Baltimore and Miami did with subways.