Credit: Sam Allard / Scene
UPDATE (2/21, 10:20 a.m.): RTA CEO and General Manager Joe Calabrese announced at a board meeting Tuesday morning that if all goes according to plan, buses will be allowed on Public Square at last by March 6, one day before the FTA’s final deadline.

Buses were spotted, and so was Frank Jackson, on Public Square Monday morning in what were presumed to be safety tests.

It seems buses might finally be arriving on Public Square. If Jackson relents, and Superior is opened, the city and RTA will be spared a costly legal battle to determine who pays a substantial sum to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), and the $50 million redesign of Public Square would at last officially open as intended. The design concept, with exclusive bus lanes on Superior, has been prohibited from full actualization by a very stubborn Mayor.

The FTA, in a letter dated Feb. 17, gave the RTA one final extension, until March 7, to open the Square or else pay the $12 million debt. That debt comes from a breach of contract in an earlier funding agreement, and was activated by Superior’s closure. (The letter was provided to Scene by RTA and was reported first, natch, by GC at the PD.)

Per usual, the FTA didn’t mince words. In its summary of a meeting in D.C. earlier this month with Joe Calabrese, FTA Associate Administrator and Chief Financial Officer Robert Tuccillo painted the Mayor’s position in the clearest possible terms:

“GCRTA also explained that it is concurrently in discussions with the City of
Cleveland to negotiate the reopening of Public Square to buses,” Tuccillo wrote. “The FTA understands that the Mayor has stated that if the closure is causing an adverse financial impact to GCRTA and buses may operate safely within the redesigned Public Square, he would reopen it; this would cure the breach of its Full Funding Grant Agreement with the FTA.”

Though RTA has demonstrated an operational and financial burden, and a safety study concluded that terrorism would be as much of a threat if Superior were open as it is when it’s closed, the “potential threat” of terrorism has been Jackson’s last gasp in this protracted and completely unnecessary saga.

Here’s hoping Jackson gets the assurances he needs today. Most of us are feeling a lot like the FTA’s Robert Tuccillo, who wrote: “We look forward to bringing this matter to a close soon.”

Twitter evidence from this morning:

This article appears in Feb 15-21, 2017.

Sam Allard is a former senior writer at Scene.

9 replies on “RTA Plan: Have Buses on Public Square by March 6”

  2. Frank Jackson and pet puppy Joe Calabrese were stupid to try and play the “Cleveland Way” with the Feds……as if arrogantly rewriting an agreement was being done with a local company that cannot fight city hall if it wants future public work.

  4. so stupid….couldnt have the buses drive around…they just HAVE to drive right through the park.

  5. Quote from Mayor Frank Jackson:

    “The problem is we have a problem. It’s not that we don’t know what the problems are; we’ve known those for years. It’s not that we don’t know what the solutions are; we’ve known those for years. The problem is we haven’t done anything about it.”

    He is the man LMFAO

  6. Hooray!!!!! Now we can have the park become a giant, filthy, open air bus station! What could go wrong???

    Of all the Clevelands in the world, we are the Clevelandiest.

  7. If this was going to happen, they could have just let the square stay the uninviting place that it was. The whole “park-like” setting goes out the ;window as soon as the first bus goes through the square.

  8. I miss the old Square more and more. At least you could walk through it in a straight line after a big snow, which my wife noticed immediately after being called for jury duty. Still too much pavement, and that “snack bar” is an unnecessary and hideous abomination that belongs at a suburban mall.

    Yeah, the hills are great, but the bus lanes will cancel them out. Also stink them out with noxious fumes when you sit on them, and fill your ears with engine noise.

    The new Square wasn’t all that wonderful in the first place, and now the final fuck-up begins. What a waste.

    Chuckles the Clown

  9. Well, they are fucking it all up now. Scene should get some pictures of what our wonderful new “park” looks like today. That nice open area? Now it’s divided by not only a (soon to be active) roadway, but now concrete barrier. Yes, that’s right, the park who’s whole design purpose was to allow pedestrian traffic to flow, now has a couple nice big runs of portable concrete barrier in the middle to funnel people to some ridiculous crosswalk. I won’t even comment about how they striped all over the nice (and expensive) paver stones and pavement. This city makes me physically sick with disgust sometimes. Well I hope everyone is happy with their new $50 ($60?) million bus terminal, because that’s what we’ve got now. Do you ever see people get some lunch and then walk over to the Stephanie Tubbs Jones bus terminal by CSU to relax and eat outside on a spring day? How about cruise over there to E22nd and Prospect to enjoy an outdoor concert? Yeah. Never. I wonder why…..

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