Here's a great place to start job creation in Cleveland: The RTA (a story)!
Taking the train yesterday, unbeknownst to me in the morning, was a huge mistake.
I go eastbound from the W. 140th/Triskett Station. The station after it (W. 117th and Madison) has service blocked from both sides to the West Blvd/Cudell station. We had to take shuttle busses to the Cudell station and then had to wait 15 minutes for the next train to arrive. The platform was DC packed, and they had only three small cars for all of us, which is one more than they normally have for a rush hour commute that arrives every 13-15 minutes.
That wasn't the worst of it. On the way home, I was standing in the Tower City platform and had to wait 20 minutes for a train to arrive. During rush hour, mind you.
The train finally approaches and all of a sudden, there was a giant banging noise as if something exploded. Turns out that a giant 4 x 4 metal grate fell from it's ceiling confines with such force that the tile underneath it cracked. Everyone on the platform was stunned and they had good reason to be: had anyone been under this thing, which weight a good 60-80 pounds on it's own, they'd have been hospitalized at best and dead at worst.
I looked up and the area above the ceiling had such a great amount of water damage and rot all over.
So does RTA mean to tell me that, despite jacking up pass rates every year (to the point where parking downtown is actually the less costly option), they can't keep at least one set of tracks open? They can't update it's Carl Stokes-adminstration-era cars or at the very least, add more cars during rush hour? They can't add another desperately needed line along the Lake Erie coast that conveniences everyone and not just east-siders? They can't simplify their needlessly complicated train-pass system (activate or not? REALLY?)?
The RTA's Rapid is literally the WORST train system I've ever been on. It's infrastructure is crumbling, it's unsafe (not just the cars or the platforms, but the people on them . . . your morning commute is awesome with students getting into shouting matches or fistfights on the damned train, let me tell you), it's very inadequate for 2013, it stops in only one place downtown and very few places of any importance, it's becoming less of an economic option for the return on investment and it's infrequency is a problem.
You want a TDA project/giant overhaul that will bring much needed jobs and work, why not start HERE? MAKE this city an example of how a great and adequate transportation system benefits a city and revives its job-starved economy. Many cities can use infrastructure repair for certain, but this would bring a lot of people for sure.
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