For the first time since the era of Ronald Reagan, the launch of MTV, and the arrival of the first woman on the Supreme Court bench in Sandra Day O’Connor, RTA is looking at the possibility of new rail cars.
It was in October 1981 that Cleveland’s transit operation welcomed 48 Italian-made Breda rail cars to its fleet. Four years later, 60 Japanese cars hit the Red Line.
Now, more than four decades later, after dozens of cars aged-out of their rail life, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority is eyeing a long-awaited technology update. On Tuesday, the RTA’s Board of Trustees welcomed the conceptual design of a new state-of-the-art car fleet, produced by Siemens in Sacramento, that could pull up to stations as early as 2026.
“It’s a long time coming—it’s like Christmas for the RTA,” CEO India Birdsong-Terry said at Tuesday’s meeting. “Forty years is, like, most people’s careers. It’s a whole generation.”
The new cars, which will cost $393 million for the eventual fleet of 60, will carry, members of RTA’s procurement team said, a feature list one might expect after decades in technological advancements. The initial 24 cars—based on the Siemens S200, which already runs in similar form in San Francisco and Calgary, Canada—are why Tuesday’s meeting felt more like an Apple keynote speech than a conference about drain cleaning or downed service routes.
The proposed list of bells and whistles, which are still in a concept phase, beat RTA’s old Breda cars in nearly every facet—from increased standing room to bike racks, ADA access to bigger windows, quieter rides to more accurate stop signage, heated windshields, easier-to-clean vinyl seats and an ice-cutter pantograph. The list goes on.
Yet, what could be the hugest kicker for the Siemens fleet is that the initial 24 cars eyed by RTA will be designed to operate on both light and heavy rail. This means that such cars will, by inclusion of different door access, by able to drop you off on the street in Shaker Heights and at the three-and-a-half feet high platform at Tower City.
Not only will this one-size-fits-all design cut down the (already) high cost, COO Floun’say Caver said, but it could lead to the creation of four new transit “patterns,” or, one might say, four new lines altogether. Caver even took the liberty to suggest the colors: Purple, Brown, Gray and Orange.
“We will increase the rail route flexibility and customer access of our agency,” Caver said. “So we will now be able to create trips that we could not create before.”
That is, of course, if the RTA garners enough funding in time.
While RTA’s aiming to grab the first 24 cars, for a price tag of $124 million, in its first round of train replacement, a lot of the funding talk Tuesday focused on the bigger picture of updating the entire fleet, which would require 60 heavy/light rail cars in sum.
Since the first request for proposals in January 2020, RTA has been figuring out possible funding sources on the local, state and federal levels. As of Tuesday, according to Caver, RTA has some $67 million committed to the 60 cars, along with $157 million awarded, mostly from its so-called Rolling Stock Reserve Fund—a revolving $7 million/year from the city’s General Fund—and a slew of Buy America grants from the Federal Transportation Administration.
Still, $168 million remains without a sure funding source, which RTA is banking on the FTA and the Ohio Department of Transportation to fill. Birdsong-Terry and Board Chair Rev. Charles Lucas both said they’re confident RTA will reach the $393 million mark to roll out the new Siemens fleet, after modifications and testing, in three or four years.
Yet, Chris Martin, the head of Clevelanders For Public Transit, wonders if RTA, which has been known to lose tens of millions of dollars a year, will use its new cars at a rate to combat its criticized delays and, as is the case now, a month-long, complete shutdown of half the Red Line. (Which totally contradicts, Martin quipped, its “ride the RTA” adverts for the Guardians’ Opening Day.)
“People choose transit when it runs frequently and reliably. New railcars will go a long way to making the rapid more reliable,” Martin said in a text message. “On the other hand, RTA plans to purchase only up to 60 new trains, while it was 69 today and 108 at its peak in the 1980s. This makes one wonder with what frequency RTA plans to operate its new fleet.”
If the RTA is right, and it does deliver the Siemens fleet from concept to line in four years, then such update will mesh nicely with Cleveland’s slow density climb, and the core’s wishful new image as a 15-minute city.
The idea, Birdsong-Terry said, is that a phalanx of shiny new cars will encourage a wave of transit-oriented development surrounding RTA stops. Kind of like, she recalled thinking of her previous job at the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority, the $2 billion that went into Nashville over the past decade.
For many on the board, talking about the 40-year gap, seeing photos of the rusted Bredas, knowing that the current Red Line dysfunction is the fault of cars near the end of their days—all of the discussion seemed to have a wake-up effect.
Especially to those like Valarie McCall, who joined the Board of Trustees in the early aughts, who relayed a story of, when joining as a member, she realized “these were the same cars I rode on as a kid.”
“We should never be in a situation where we go 30, 40, 50 years without having a plan for replacing cars,” McCall said. “We are into new technologically advanced rail cars, which means that we cannot afford to be in a situation if we were in before where we don’t advance.”
Because, McCall added, “Technology is going to change.”
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This article appears in Mar 22 – Apr 5, 2023.
