[PRCo] Sad news about Cleveland's trolley line

[Bob Rathke]

>From the Plain Dealer:


RTA's Waterfront Line on a downhill track
Posted by nbye August 11, 2008 05:53AM
Chris Stephens/The Plain Dealer

RTA's Waterfront Line runs under the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) 
Bridge toward a stop at Settlers Landing in the Flats before heading toward 
Lake Erie. The route loops back after reaching the Cleveland municipal 
parking lot off South Marginal Road.
• Graphic: "Ghost train" may become scarce


CLEVELAND -- When the Waterfront Line opened 12 years ago last month, 
Cleveland was caught up in the optimism of a comeback city.

A new baseball stadium and basketball arena were still in the honeymoon 
phase. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum had made its debut the year 
before, and the Great Lakes Science Center would open in about a week. 
Planning was under way for a new football stadium.

Construction covered the city, and crowds did, too.

The timing seemed right for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority 
to extend its rapid system for the first time in a quarter century.

The 2.2-mile extension of the Shaker/Van Aken rapid line was supposed to 
ease congestion in the Flats -- party central at the time -- and make it 
easier for visitors to reach the new lakefront attractions.

When VIPs hammered golden spikes at the Waterfront Line's groundbreaking, 
supporters believed it would eventually attract more than a million riders a 
year.

The line met that goal the first year, attracting 1.1 million riders between 
July 1996 and June 1997 -- but never again.

The drop in interest mirrored the unexpected decline of the once hugely 
popular Flats.

Annual ridership on the Waterfront Line averaged about 613,000 between 1998 
and 2000.

By the next year, ridership had fallen to about 426,000. Since then, RTA has 
stopped staffing stations along the line and says it no longer keeps count.

These days, Waterfront Line trains frequently glide by empty, or with only a 
few passengers. Some have even nicknamed the line the ghost train.

"It's never reached its potential, that's a fact," said Michael York, deputy 
general manager of RTA operations.

York said no one expected the Flats and other developments along the route 
to suffer as much as they did. Additionally, a large office building and an 
aquarium never were built along the line as proposed.

Now, RTA wants to cut all but rush-hour and special-event service on the 
line, in addition to discontinuing or reducing dozens of bus routes, to help 
prevent a $20 million budget shortfall next year.

Last week, hundreds of angry riders jammed RTA hearings day after day to 
complain about the proposed cuts in bus routes and community circulators. 
Fare increases also are on the table.

But so far, there has been little, if any, public outcry about reducing 
service on the Waterfront Line. In fact, reaction has been just the 
opposite.

Many riders say they see the $74.4 million investment, which included the 
cost of land and related road work on the line, as a drain on resources that 
helped lead RTA to its financial troubles.

Most of the work on the line was paid for by RTA, with help from the state. 
The authority repaid a loan for the project in 2002 and retired bonds last 
year.

Steve Gannis, a rider from Lakewood who's upset about RTA's proposal to 
eliminate community circulators, said service cuts on the Waterfront Line 
should have been made years ago.

"You don't have money to waste on extravagances when you're raising fares 
and cutting [basic] services," he said.

The line costs about $625,000 a year to operate and maintain, according to 
RTA's latest estimates. More than half of that -- $353,800 -- is spent on 
salaries and energy costs and other operating costs. The remainder is used 
for staff and supply costs for maintaining the tracks and stations.

RTA says it expects to save $314,243 by cutting service hours on the 
Waterfront Line.

The rails will stay in place, awaiting another wave of optimism, this time 
for developer Scott Wolstein's $522 million plan to overhaul the east bank 
of the Flats.

The project includes plans for an office tower and possibly another 
corporate campus.

"You're talking about a few thousand workers in those buildings alone," 
Wolstein said.

And some residents in the more than 400 planned apartments, lofts and 
condominiums are likely to take the line to get to work downtown and in 
University Circle by transferring to the new Euclid Corridor route, he said. 
"It'll be a selling point to residents, no doubt."

RTA promises to rethink the Waterfront Line schedule in a couple of years 
after parts of the development open.

While current ridership is a mystery, the line remains useful and passengers 
still exist, General Manager Joe Calabrese said.

Chief among them are the crowds heading to special events downtown and to 
the 10 or so Browns home games every year. RTA believes about 7,300 people 
use the line on an average football day.

Other regular riders include downtown workers who park at the municipal lot 
and people who take the line to the East Ninth Street stop and walk up the 
hill to government offices.

Krystal Griffin, who lives a couple of blocks from the line and rides it to 
work, said she's glad to hear RTA doesn't plan to cut rush-hour service.

The Waterfront Line, which costs $1.75 in cash to ride, is convenient, she 
said. "And it's cheaper than paying for parking."

Hunter Morrison, Cleveland's planning director through the 1980s and '90s, 
said he's confounded by the fate of the line. He and others figured major 
development would quickly spring up around the stations, sustaining a steady 
supply of passengers.

"I go to Portland, Chicago, Seattle, and they've been pursuing 
transit-oriented development for 15 years," he said. "What's wrong with 
Cleveland?"

Morrison said RTA is not to blame for the line's low ridership. "RTA can 
only do so much. The other players [developers and residents] need to act."

But Norman Krumholz, a professor at Cleveland State University's College of 
Urban Affairs, criticized the line from the beginning.

He said it doesn't traverse dense enough concentrations of housing and 
employment.

"It was ridiculous to begin with and continues to be truly absurd," Krumholz 
said. It is either virtually vacant or overwhelmed during special events, he 
said.

Calabrese and York of RTA say that pursuing the Waterfront Line was not a 
bad idea and that they look forward to better years ahead.

"Twenty, 30 years from now I think folks are going to look back to the '90s 
and think, 'Those planners were pretty smart to put this here,' " York said.

Plain Dealer computer-assisted reporting editor Rich Exner and news 
researcher Tonya Sams contributed to this story.