RTA TAKING US ON ANOTHER FANTASY RIDE

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority – better known as RTA – apparently has trouble knowing the purpose of its business.

Hint. It’s transportation. Not parking. Not tourism. Not beautification.

Back in the 1990s, RTA thought it was in the tourist business. It built a Waterfront Line for something like $62-million, all of it RTA money. There was no federal money for a fast job. However, RTA needed it fast to satisfy people like Dick Pogue of Jones Day who wanted to impress people from New York City. (Notice how impressed they were.) Pogue and other Cleveland “leaders” wanted a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

You see with a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame all those young law grads from Yale and Harvard law school would flock to Cleveland that rock’n and roll’n place.

That little scheme failed big time.

Then RTA became the town’s beautification committee and helped pour some $200 million into beautifying Euclid Avenue. I don’t have anything against a beautiful Euclid Avenue but I don’t want to use very scarce transit money to achieve it.

Now, RTA is convincing itself it should be in the parking business.

RTA announced it will be providing long-term parking for people heading to the airport by its rail.

I’d like its boss Joe Calabrese to show us exactly how much ridership that’s going to produce. Because I don’t see the cost meeting the income on this one anymore than I saw it on the Waterfront Line.

Why doesn’t RTA get into the business of transporting people – especially working people without transportation – where they need to go?

Looking for big ridership from people going to the airport in Cleveland isn’t anything like the trains from Philadelphia – or I’d say any of the big East Coast cities – to an airport.

If it is, Joe, give us the figures.