I like living on a bus line

I just saw the 807 circulator go by in the rain and realized how much I liked living on a bus line. I see the lit buses go by in the early morning and in the late evening, symbols of our quiet neighborhood's connectivity to things more cosmopolitan. I see them whoosh by all day, reminders of the to hustle and bustle of the extended workday going on elsewhere. It's comforting to have them around. They're my connection to my local civilization.

If it weren't for the demolition of the Fulton Road Bridge, I might never have had the experience of having the buses run by my house. They used to run on Pearl and on Fulton, the spoke streets radiating from the downtown hub, but the older connectors, like Denison, were largely ignored. The emphasis was not so much on functionality among neighborhoods as it was on commuting through them, on bypassing them in an express fashion.

Denison originally had a trolley line running down its middle, and one lane either side of the trolley path for cars. We have a lot of storefronts on and adjacent to Denison, as Sandy Rozhon's chronicling at the Brooklyn Centre WIKI will attest. It is still a main connector to Newburgh Heights and the east side of the valley via Harvard, to the freeways (176 and 77), to Tremont and to the new developments down at Steelyard Commons. The bus line suits it well.

I'm thinking that with this next round of revisions of bus service, we need to become our own best advocates when it comes to requesting bus service as a critical driver for a thriving community.

cut the fares, increase the service

RTA leaders favor 25-cent fare increase, no drastic service cuts - Cleveland Metro News – The Latest Breaking News, Photos and Stories from The Plain Dealer -- Time to talk about RTA board composition and board pay. Why are we having people who did not do so well in their prior incarnations, like Jane Campbell, continuing to have a hand in things so critical to our productivity around here? What do we pay this board, and should we consider cutting back on that? How many on the board are serving just to have a crack at qualifying for PERS, and should that perquisite be eliminated, too? We need to examine these cosy, and ultimately costly, insider relationships.

We need a better board with better connections and with a better track record of getting difficult jobs done to get us the money it takes to cut fares back to nothing, and soon, and increase services to make this the best transit system in the nation. The basics are already there. An attractive transit system is a prime economic driver. Period.

Mass transit can make the world go 'round, all day and all night. We must get out of this 9 to 5 mentality and see a bigger picture. Also, we must consider that it's easier to retrofit a transit system to operate off electricity than it is to do the same with all the automobiles. See Andy Grove's recent piece on energy on Portfolio.com

Julia Child & The OSS: Oh, So Social

Julia Child, international spy - THE WEEK -- In the late '60s in Boston, I would see Julia on her way to and from work. She rode the bus.

At the link is an eye-opening recounting of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services and precursor of the CIA. Follow the links in the article itself. Go deep. Here's a taste:

Julia Child: celebrity chef by day, superspy by night,” said Judy Berman in Salon’s Broadsheet blog. She was already a national treasure for having “pretty much single-handedly introduced fresh, high-quality ingredients to midcentury American tables,” but a “mind-blowingly cool” double life, too? “You can’t get more awesome than that, right?”

True, she was “secretly more awesome than you already thought,” said Ryan Tate in Gawker, but actually her work in an “administrative capacity” at the OSS was already known. It’s “interesting to get confirmation,” though, and there are some great new details, like that she said on her OSS application that “her weakness was that she was ‘impulsive,’ because she quit a department store job once.”

Certainly “there was nothing covert about Julia,” said Robert Stein in his blog Connecting.the.Dots. In fact she “reveled” in telling confidantes about “her most dramatic exploit,” cooking up a shark repellant for underwater mines aimed at German U-boats. Her delight in that makes you wistful for “that innocent time when secretly working for your country was a source of pride.”

Child isn’t the only high-profile OSS member already identified as an operative, said Nick Gillespie in Reason’s Hit & Run blog. The “main takeaway” from these new documents appears to be the sheer size of the OSS. People previously thought maybe there were 13,000 employees.

The number of “notables” was also kind of surprising, said Andrea Stone and Emily Bazar in USA Today. The list of OSS agents “resembles a cocktail party guest list rather than a spy network.” With so many “actors, financiers, and socialites,” the internal joke was that OSS stood for “Oh So Social.”

two and a half hours in transport, half an hour on site

We just got back from cousin Rick's show over at *Asterisk. We RTA'd from Archwood-Denison to Tremont. We spent half an hour in Tremont at the show. The rest of the time between 8 and 11 PM was spent getting there and getting out of there. We walked a lot from stop to stop to kill time. The public transit around here is not conducive to mobility in the evening hours.

Tremont is a walking neighborhood incredibly clogged with cars. The bus stop to the side of Parallax was filled with valet parking. If the bus ran reasonably often, fairly late, and were dependable, the parking problem would disappear.

Sitting grousing in the grimy, sticky bus stop, we came to the conclusion that the public transit system has no real advocates, especially among those who run it. If there were advocacy, enthusiasm, and a sense of urgency and now of dire necessity, the funding would not have been cut back as it has been. The RTA folk seem not to be connected; state and regional "leaders" consider them and their mission expendable, and certainly not as integral as an economic driver should be.

Our RTA execs can be counted on to do something quite well: They don't make waves. Because of this, they get a nice retirement from good jobs.

bad timing, but what did you expect?

Tower City site appears to be top convention center choice - Cleveland's Top Story from The Plain Dealer -- It appears that the ConventionCenterMedicalMart charade is now making a feeble move to act as though they're serious about spending that money--that extra sales-tax money--that currently balances the county's budget.

I think they're trying to lock it up for ForestCityRatner and a dwindling supply of hypothetical conventioneers before somebody steps in and gives it to the RTA for the use of a million or so of us locals.

getting ready to get productive: crunching the numbers

This whole RTA discussion has made me think what it would be like to be a young person again, with a limited amount of cash, looking to be employable or otherwise earn some money. Back in the '60s, we went out and bought a car for $500-1,000 so we could get a job, from somebody else, and get back and forth to the job and to Kent and Geneva after hours. I'd imagine that same type of car would cost $3,000-4,000 today.

That's just about the same as the cost of a high-end Mac and some nifty accessories, or an IBM tablet with all the trimmings. And, all I would have to do to get myself the computer would be to put a car somewhere into a lower priority slot, get a bicycle, and pick up a weekly bus pass for $17.50.

The bike would cost as much as 2-4 tankfuls of gas; each weekly bus pass would cost one-half to one-third of a single tankful. My costs of transportation upkeep would be much reduced. I would not have to buy car insurance at the exhorbitant rates charged younger adults.

Economics writers like David Bach estimate I would be $7,00-8,500 a year ahead of my car-owning, or car-owned, peers.

On the downside, I would have to learn patience and tolerance, I would have to plan my activities ahead and with deliberation, I would have trouble going to a drive-in, I would have no back seat for recreation or sleeping, nor would I have a receptacle for my beer cans, my changes of clothes, or my McDonald's McMuffin wrappers, and I certainly would not have a glove compartment to keep a nickel-plated snub-nosed .38 out of sight, but at the ready.

Not having a car would have made sense for me, 42 years ago, and even more sense if I could have had the trade-off of a computer.

A computer gives you the option to be self-employed and independent, in lieu of or in addition to having a straight job. It links you into that nicer bunch of people our parents told us about. Even though you can't sleep in it, it is a complete office and entertainment emporium.

Young people need to have the option not to have a car, to buy their big computer right off the bat, to have reliable public transportation, just the same as we all need reliable public education. Education and transportation should be provided for the same price--free to the user, paid for by all of us--and used as drivers of the economy.

In cutting back on the buses and trains, we are again missing the boat. (Ewwww...I had to.)

RTA should be a critical economic driver, not the first place to cut costs

I would like to comment on service cutbacks on our RTA system. I can't be at the hearings today, or tomorrow, or Thursday. I cannot spare time from our business. Gloria is taking this note of mine to the hearing at the library now. My thoughts--

--It's exactly the opposite of what needs to happen now. When people need to wean themselves from cars, they need public transportation more frequently, more broadly dispersed.

--When an economy needs to expand, the last thing we want to have is a crippling of the transit system.

--The public transit system is a prime economic driver, to those who understand how to make a proper use of resources. If it had extended hours, we would all do more business. If it had extended routes, we would all do business over a greater area. If it were a free service, our region would be without parallel and would be one of the first to prosper on the uptick.

--We have additional revenue from the sales tax hike ostensibly levied for the as-yet stillborn MedMart. RTA is far more important. Confiscate the additional revenues. Use them to do something besides balance the county's budget. Use them to provide extended and free transit.

--Demand that the state provide a lot more dollars, instead of cutbacks. Trim state government. We in the urban areas are more important than government jobs.

--A recent issue of Crain's INVESTMENT NEWS pointed out that government workers earn 51.4% more than their private-industry counterparts. Get this into line fast with pay reductions and cutbacks in all government jobs. Our communities are more important than individual jobs. Make sure that the departing employees get no buyouts, either.

--Take our money back from the state, and from the county. Use it to build out the RTA and to offer free service as a major economic driver. Be the first to make it easy to do business, the first to make it easy to be working and productive. Imagine the possibilities!

--Cut welfare. Give people free opportunity. They will take care of themselves and feel a lot better about it.

--Run the buses around the clock; make RTA the first step toward a true 24-hour economy.

the politics of sustainability, from the perspective of the bus

Cuyahoga Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones cuts back on use of county car - Cleveland Metro News – The Latest Breaking News, Photos and Stories from The Plain Dealer -- So much of leadership entails leading by setting the example, and here we have PLJ about to set foot on the bus. Gloria and I just bought our two weekly passes today, since we're in town most of next week. I'm wondering whether Peter gets a free pass, or whether he has to come up out of pocket for it. I've heard that GCRTA employees get complimentary passes.

If Peter begins riding the bus, he'll take note of what we've been seeing lately: Overcrowding, broken air-conditioning, little available ventilation because of modern bus design, busted out/broken down shocks and springs, and missed stops. He'll also note that the buses don't run anywhere near frequently enough, and that the hours need extravagant expansion. As working hours expand, so should the economy. Mobility is one key to productivity.

He'll also note there's a certain zen aspect to the bus ride, a time for a sort of mass-transit-induced reflection and meditation. He can even catch up on reading. Knowing him, though, he'll probably talk to everyday people, asking them what's really going on. Until you ride the bus and walk the streets after business hours, you really don't know.

Will Peter ever casually sit down next to Debbie Sutherland? Will she be clutching her purse with white knuckles? Does the bus run out to Bay Village? Stay tuned for another episode of Adventures in Regionalism: From the Bus to November.

this is just about the last place to cut

Crain's Cleveland Business: RTA to boost fares, cut service to reduce red ink -- At a time when ridership is making buses bulge at the seams, cutting service and charging more for what remains is the last thing you want to have happen. Service and bus routes should expand; administrative staff should be cut; salaries should be cut; grants should be acquired; general taxes should be levied. But service should expand both in the number of buses circulating each route and in the hours of operation.

We found out recently that GCRTA has no idea how many people actually ride these things. We ride quite often, and the fare boxes are always inoperable.

The shopping areas depend on bus traffic. So do schools. So do the legion of newly minted commuters.

Here's some input from somebody who buys and uses a weekly ticket at all hours and for all destinations:

1. Make the bus appear every 15 or 20 minutes on each route during the
hours of 5 AM and 8 PM. Expand the workday to fit what many of us really
work.

2. Run the buses all day and all night.

3. Stabilize the routes and the scheduling, to the point where it becomes
intergenerational knowledge. Quit the switchey-change-o managerial flourishes
and give an area something it can depend on.

4. Maintain our investment: make the fare boxes work, replace the shocks
and the springs.

5. Make the buildout of the RTA a primary focus; now, the area see it as an
expense for transporting poor folk; it's actually an asset that enables a person
to save $8,000 a year in car expenses (see David Bach's Go Green, Live Rich). GM, Ford, the UAW, and State Farm will suffer for a while, but it's about taking care of the welfare of the individual members of the community first and foremost. Pretend for a while that we are New York City, and there's no way to have a car
reasonably.

6. If we don't do all this, then what the heck did we do spending all that time and money on Euclid Avenue? Was it merely for some short-term jobs and to cut back on the number of independent businesspeople? If we cut back on current service, we need to somehow get back the money we as a community just spent on the Euclid Avenue Extravaganza, and perhaps damages, too. Where do we start?

Claudia pens a beautiful devotional piece

CoolCleveland.com - CityScape - Reflections on the Award-Winning RTA --Here's a nice PR piece for the GCRTA, and it's erudite, and historical, and makes everything seem so peachy-keen. We need a little more of a dose of reality, though, in that the free trolley car service disappears on the weekends and at night (where it goes and what it does with its weekends, we just don't know), and the in-town buses run so infrequently after normal business hours as to be practically unuseable.

Gloria and I have given an honest try to bus- and rapid-riding these past two years, and it's well nigh impossible to use the system efficiently unless you have a set routine during the normal business day. It's not geared to 24-hour usage, it's not geared to using for going clubbing at night or exploring on the weekends, it's not constructed so anybody can use it intuitively or on the fly, hopping from one route to another with the expectation of not being stranded for an hour or two.

As long as there's this uncertainty that flows from service where the time intervals are just way too huge, ridership demographics will not improve, ridership numbers will not increase.

I'd be interested to find out who on the RTA board or among the executives actually uses the system successfully at night and on the weekends.

an urban guerrilla Easter

I was just reflecting on what a great day we had today, in the midst of and despite all the snow we had in town and on the near west side. We are lucky enough to live right on the bus line, so we were able to mitigate our road risk and take the 79 right downtown to Starbucks on West 6th (which does not shovel and refuses to shovel its walks, by the way, even when called on it) to wait on the 10 AM Easter brunch at The ChopHouse, and it was good. We then still had time to catch the 326 up to East Ninth Street for the 1215 Easter Sunday mass, which the rector of the cathedral, Father Edward Estok, celebrated in a very elegant ceremony, replete with brass. It was a remarkable celebration. Then, dallying on the way out, we got to introduce ourselves and talk for a few minutes to the new Bishop of Cleveland, Richard G. Lennon. The 326 then took us back to Public Square, and the 79 dropped us off back home on Denison by 2:30 PM. We got to savor a lot of Cleveland, and that too, was good. We'll have to run this routine more often. It was a great way to spend a leisurely Sunday.

Campbell seeks RTA board seat

Campbell seeks RTA board seat: Peter Lawson Jones on Jane Campbell: "'She could get a public appointment almost anywhere,' said Jones. 'I would not appoint her simply so she could pile up a couple more years on PERS [Ohio Public Employees Retirement System]. She qualifies on her merits.' "

As a people, we need to limit these public-pension payouts. It seems from what PLJ is saying that service on the GCRTA must carry some salary or service credits.

We can't afford to have the same old cast of characters lining up at the trough; we cannot continue to keep filling the trough for them; we cannot continue to reward mendacity and mediocrity. We must take the incentive to serve personal interests first out of the public-service arena. This mutual-admiration society we call politics-as-usual in Cleveland is what keeps the whole region behind.

Break the stranglehold.

RTA Board approves fare increase – first in 13 years

Newsroom - News & Updates Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority--"CLEVELAND – Pushed by fuel costs that have more than tripled in recent years, the Board of Trustees of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) today approved the first system-wide fare increase since 1993.

To lessen the impact on customers, the Board approved a two-step increase. Most fares will increase 25 cents on July 1, 2006, and 25 cents on Jan. 7, 2008."

This is not bad at all. In my particular case, a monthly pass will increase $4, from $54 to $58, and this still feels like quite a bargain to me, considering the fact that it cost Gloria $40 yesterday to get the UrbanCombatVehicle to half full.