“Cleveland Rail Shutdown Unavaoidable,” the All Aboard Ohio headline reads (italics mine).
“One or more of these rail lines would have to be shut down and run by replacement buses,” it claimed. And taking a bus along either route would be far less desirable, with commute times estimated at two or three times the length of a rapid transit train.
But without, at the very least, a huge injection of funds — All Aboard Ohio has policy suggestions as well — the trains currently in use will simply break down. The average lifespan for a rail car in the RTA’s fleet is 25 years. And even though RTA upgraded some of its train cars to prolong their lives by 10 years, the average age of the RTA train cars is now 33 years. Many of the oldest cars have been relegated to the train yard at Brookpark station where “usable parts are cannibalized to keep the rest of the fleet operational.”
It’s a bleak outlook, but RTA calls the All Aboard Ohio piece “absolutely false.”
“It’s no secret that public transit is underfunded, both nationally and throughout Ohio,” said RTA CEO Joe Calabrese in a written statement to Scene. “RTA’s Blue/Green Lines are a 100-year old community asset, with the Red Line 60 years old. We have absolutely no plans to abandon these irreplaceable assets.”
An RTA spokesperson invited us to look at the infrastructure upgrades currently in place, roughly $10 million per year on new stations like Cedar-University and Little Italy-University Circle on the Red like and the soon-to-be-opened Lee-Van Aken Station on the BLue Line.
“The popular Brookpark Station is under construction now and will open next summer,” RTA said. “Replacements for the East 34th Street and the East 116th Street rail stations are currently being designed, with planned construction starting in 2016.”
As for All Aboard Ohio’s predictions regarding the aging fleet, RTA says it has spent $30 million over the past 10 years prolonging its fleet’s life. The target date for replacement is, and has been, 2025.
“RTA is currently studying whether a single rail car fleet can replace what is now two different and non-interchangeable rail car fleets,” the spokesperson told us. “If so, the current 108 rail cars can be replaced by approximately 70 rail cars, offering a significant financial savings while providing operational and service flexibility.”
This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2015.
Going to see a price increases in fares I would say.
As long as RTA wonderfully caters to the RNC’s beautiful people….don’t worry, everything will be fine — because Captain Click and Special Ted Diadiun will command their bloggers to tap out this great news.
“RTA is currently studying whether a single rail car fleet can replace what is now two different and non-interchangeable rail car fleets”,the spokesperson told us. “If so, the current 108 rail cars can be replaced by approximately 70 rail cars.”
What the flood?
For starters, this means that they’ll also have to either rebuild or replace a whole lot of platforms if they’re gonna go the single-fleet route…the Blue and Green lines use the low-platform LRV-type Breda cars from Italy…while the Red Line has the high-platform heavy-rail transit cars made by Tokyu (sp?) of Japan.
RTA would either have to raise the height of the Blue and Green stops…or lower the ones on every Red Line stop between the Airport and Tower City, as well as all the Red Line platforms from E. 34th to Windermere. They’d need maybe 40 fewer railcars but would have to make extensive modifications to many station platforms, so the savings would be eaten up by the new construction costs. Make that reconstruction costs.
Most of the larger US transit systems don’t have the problem of dealing with two different and non-interchangeable rail car fleets. Boston does, and it’s a hassle. Chicago and New York do not.
As soon as I heard about the single-fleet possibilities, I knew that plan meant a good deal of trouble down the line, strictly because of the way the system itself now exists physically…and there definitely will be.
Chuckles the Clown
….and today we’re hearing about the continued ripples coming out from this story. Not good, my friends, not good at all.
Does anyone know the reason that RTA runs two styles of train cars? Seems like a no-brainer that this format would eventually be more difficult to operate.
After inspecting the tracks on the Red Line, I gave management my report: no more than 15 mph on any section is safe. Outcome: pink slip. Same went for the Green abd Blue Lines. They replaced a ton of track on the East Side, and it’s still shit.