The bad news is that the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s fare increases and service cuts are now in effect. Beginning yesterday — Sunday bloody Sunday, indeed — standard one-way fares were bumped from $2.25 to $2.50, all-day passes went from $5.00 to $5.50 and the monthly passes have shot up considerably, from $85.00 to $95.00. Full list of fare increases (including Park-n-Ride and Paratransit), here.
The fare increases are the first such increases in seven years, and represent but one invasive prong in a multi-pronged effort by RTA to dry the tears of its weeping budgetary ducts. The increases, in fact, are only the first in a two-tier implementation strategy. In the current vision, fares will be raised again in 2018, but be forewarned: Given the potentially calamitous couple of years on the horizon, due to the restructuring of Ohio tax law, RTA may yet tinker with that vision.
Gird your loins and listen to this hot bit of perspective: In 2018, after the second round of increases, the monthly RTA pass will cost $105.00 for a regular rider. That’s only $11.50 less than an unlimited 30-day MetroCard in New York City, and $5 more than a monthly pass on Chicago’s expansive CTA system.
RTA CEO Joe Calabrese has said that as much as 10 percent of current routes and hundreds of jobs could be cut to balance the books when the authority loses $4.5 million in 2017 and $18 million in 2018. (Read the Plain Dealer’s Ginger Christ’s thorough breakdown of the wobbly financial outlook here).
For now, about 3 percent of routes have been axed or modified to save money on fuel and shave precious minutes off loops, thereby maximizing efficiency.
But the fare increases and service cuts arrive at shall we say a sub-optimal time: The city purports to be soul-searching while it amasses “baseline data” about traffic patterns on Public Square. There, RTA buses are bewilderingly no longer welcome.
Mayor Frank Jackson, who’s latest idea is building a $2 million dirt bike track in Kinsman, has decided that he’d prefer if the $50 million Public Square that was designed specifically for bus traffic didn’t allow buses on Superior after all. Anyway, the city’s gathering intel about how severe the pain in the ass will be. And every day they do, RTA’s losing more money.
What a year to be a sentient creature in Northeast Ohio! Paddle onward we must!
This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2016.
There should be cuts in the RTA executive offices which parallel the slices in service.
Serious question: how does a Public Square closed to bus traffic effect ridership? All the routes that are planned to stop in the Square currently stop just outside of the Square. Is the implication that people who would normally pick up a bus in the Square won’t walk to W3rd & Superior to pick up the same bus?!
If you’ve been to Chicago or NY, transit services don’t stop IN Grant Park or Central Park and subsequently divide them. They stop NEAR them. In Cleveland, it would actually make the more sense to have the central downtown routes stop on Prospect behind Tower City for easy transfer to the Rapid (since a shared station with Rapid isn’t really possible).
For the record, keeping Superior closed through Public Square was what the plan should have been. It’s what the initial plan WAS, whether you’re talking about 1800s or with this latest redesign. Just ask the architects what plan they originally pitched and what they wanted to do prior to RTA input. But just like in the 1800s, the public transit interests trumped the public space interests and the park was divided. And as typical, Frank and City Council were so short-sighted that they didn’t fight for anything….until now. Well guess what, Frankie? You’re too late. That ship sailed 2+ years ago. The entire thing was built around a stupid road through the middle of it, and to change it now is ridiculous. Not quite as ridiculous as the city paying to build a dirt-bike track, but close. It’s done. Come back in 40 years and we can talk change again.