I was alerted to this graphic by a blogger I read often called Joe.My.God. and it comes via 2nd Ave Sagas. As a person who has driven in Seattle, LA, NYC, San Francisco, and Chicago, I can tell you that traffic is horrendous! In NYC and SF, it is not a surprise that so many make use of public transportation, as it can be faster, easier and cheaper to do so than to drive. In the case of San Fran, it is one of the greenest cities in the nation. The biggest polluters in any city are by far the buildings. But cars, and their over usage cannot be ignored as a contributing factor to pollution, global warming and air quality. Furthermore, a great public transportation system allows for dense urban growth and promotes cities with less reliability on commuters. It can also do wonders to prevent urban sprawl.
What does this have to do with NE Ohio? Cleveland is built to promote the suburbs. Downtown may have plenty of living space these days, but what about shopping? Furthermore, our construction and promotion of rapid transit and the bus system as a way to move suburbanites to the city center instead of as a way to connect neighborhoods leads to less access of residents to other parts of the city. At a time when we need to increase ridership and encourage people to drive less, lines are being dropped from the RTA scedule and weekend and evening service limited or eliminated. Why? There are less people living in the city who want to go downtown on the weekend, and that is how our system is set up.
Do not agree? That is fine, but I will cite specific examples of where our service is lacking. The rapid lines are built to go from the airport and the East side into downtown. Unless you live right on the rapid line, you cannot reasonably use it get to the airport on a regular basis, and many of my colleagues travel regularly on business. You are actually encouraged to drive and park there, or worse be driven and picked up, making each trip doubled. The “Heart Line” a multi-million dollar investment by RTA to connect University Circle and corresponding hospitals to downtown is a colossal failure, in my opinion. It does little to connect residents from surrounding neighborhoods to anything. The rapid line that goes near the waterfront (which I have yet to actually see in service in the last 5 years) runs to Browns stadium. It does not connect any eastside locations to downtown and their seems to be no plans to increase access to any waterfront development by way of rapid transit. If I want to go from Brooklyn Center to Detroit Shoreway to catch a movie at the new Capitol theater, I can probably walk there faster than using public transport. We want to have a strong urban core, a vital downtown, dense urban neighborhoods, and a green city. Using the chart above, the three cities who have the highest use of public transportation for getting to work, all seem to be achieving these goals. At least anecdotally, there is some sort of connection. It seems to me that until we get RTA on board to rethink “business as usual”, we are missing out on a key element of success.
And I would like to see our city leaders hopping on board the RTA to get to work. How much more parking would there be downtown if half of our town’s govenment employees carpooled or rode public transportation?
So, how do YOU get to work?
Tags: Cleveland neighborhoods, RTA
Loved this graphic.
I wanted to discuss a few of your points about our own public transit system, however. I couldn’t agree more that our metro area has been all about the suburbs, and as such, it is not possible to provide the level of bus/rail service one can reasonably have in a more dense area.
I cringe, though, when people start using the HealthLine as an example of failures. First, it was a major investment IN the city – a part of the city I’d think is worth saving. Second, the #6 was the highest ridership route and continues to be the highest ridership route in its current form.
Don’t we want investment downtown? In Washington, D.C. it was decided that the Orange Line would go through the heart of Arlington, VA instead of along the median of I-66. People fought against it and some businesses were displaced. But 40 years later, Arlington is one of the most vibrant and transit-friendly areas in the city. They won an award for Great Streets last year by the American Planning Association.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/08/AR2008100803547.html
Is Cleveland scared to look long-term? Is a bus that carries 4 million people a year really a failure?
I get annoyed when people blame RTA for land use decisions. We are supposed to be a team. Without unlimited resources and some pretty insane insurance, it’s just not possible to have buses go into shopping plazas with 100,000 sq. ft. of parking out front. If parking was in the back or on the side of these types of places, with setbacks much closer to the road, everyone would win. And because all public transit is subsidized, it is impossible to do more with less when funds disappear.
We need to change the Ohio constitution to allow gas taxes to be used for operating costs. Even Michigan changed their laws a few years ago to allow for this.
And one aside about the rail stations. Every one of those stops breaks my heart. So much potential for healthy, sustainable development. But alas, we do not have the market for such a thing right now, and so we have dozens of park and ride commuter lots. I dream that some day we will figure out how to build scale-appropriate communities around the stops.
Thanks Robert. Very interesting. It boils down to having new Infrastructure that promotes public transport and changing attitudes. Love the Graphic.
Thanks Toni!
I agree with everything that you have said. The Health Line being a failure is purely my own opinion (though I am not alone). The problem I have with it is not the investment, but I feel that the money was not spent very wisely. The line is beautiful and the bus stops and buses very nice. I consider it a failure when the money spent on making ti a “fast line” didn’t seem to work, that the ticket dispensers did not operate when they were installed, and that the line doesn’t go farther east. I will retract some of my words, because I was unaware that the line went as far east as it did. However, they spent too much money on it, when now they have to cut or eliminate other bus lines to pay for the Health line being built. I have ridden the health line and it certainly was not any faster than it used to be. I admit that i haven’t ridden it lately and hopefully they have worked out all the kinks. I want an investment in new public transport, but skip some of the bells and whistles if you cannot keep up the bus and rapid lines that are already in place. The entire city IS worth saving and an investment in any part of it is good-I just don’t think that this investment was the wisest use of funds. But like I said, this is just my opinion. I have not studied the numbers and seen how much ridership has improved with the installation of the project. Euclid looks fantastic, though I worry about what happened to the retailers who could not survive construction, and the universities rapidly tearing down buildings to make the rest of the corridor look better….
But what do I know? I hope that I am completely wrong and that the whole project turns out to be a huge success.