July 5, 2010

What a lousy system. 

¶ 7/05/2010 07:56:00 PM 0 comments

 




The Cleveland crib is the intake for Cleveland's fresh water supply, about 3.5 miles out in Lake Erie from downtown Cleveland. There is a webcam mounted on it, supposedly pointed at downtown.

All I see today (Jan 31) is ice drifting past, so I'm not sure that's it's pointed at downtown just at the moment, but it's still pretty cool.

Added 2010-02-19: Well, since I posted this, the webcam appears to have gone off the air. Sorry. It was cool, though, really. 

¶ 1/31/2010 04:19:00 PM 0 comments

 
Good economic news about Cleveland?

Via creativeclass.org, a chart of economic conditions in which Cleveland isn't at the bad end! A rarity...

The chart shows unemployed people per job opening for a group of major American cities, and Cleveland comes 15th out of 45 or so, which is ahead of not only Columbus and Pittsburgh but also Houston and Charlotte, which are usually assumed in these parts to be paradises of available jobs.

creativeclass.org is surprised at how well Cleveland did, of course. The health of Rust Belt cities like Cleveland isn't very high on the list of creativeclass.org concerns.

Labels: Cleveland

 

¶ 12/06/2009 05:27:00 PM 0 comments

 
Cleveland RTA Ticket Prices

I used RTA's website to find out what the various fare options are. A "ride" is a ride on a single vehicle, a "trip" is ride on multiple vehicles in a 2.5 hour period.

I calculated costs for me, somone who doesn't get any student, senior citizen, or other discount and who has to ride two transit vehicles (Rapid and bus) per "trip".

Type	Cost	Cost per day/Notes
1 ride	$2.25	$9.00/day (4 rides)
2 ride	$4.50?	$9.00/day (4 rides)
1 trip	???
2 trip	???
5 trip	$11.25	$4.50/day (2 trips/day)
Day	$5.00	$5.00/day (2 trips/day)
Week	$22.50	$4.50/day assuming riding 5 days/week
Month	$85.00	$3.86/day assuming riding 22 days/month (Cheaper than $4.50/day if riding 19 days or more per month)

So, Rob Pitingolo was correct when he said that it would be cheaper for me to buy a 5 trip pass rather than a full day pass.

Addition 11/17/2009: It turns out that you can't buy the 5 trip farecards at the Rapid stops, or at least you can't at W. 25th. Purchasing this particular item is more difficult than I would have thought. You can mail order them from the RTA website, so maybe that's what I'll do.

Labels: Cleveland, Cleveland RTA, transit

 

¶ 11/09/2009 09:42:00 PM 2 comments

 
Transit to work

So, I decided to actually try to take transit (the Cleveland RTA system) to work instead of driving as I have every day since I started working 25 years ago, and it worked out pretty well. I've done it several times now, and I see no particular reason not to keep going with it, although I haven't waited for a late bus in the snow yet, either.

I live in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland, and it's a reasonable walk from my house to the W. 25th St. Rapid station. (If you're not familiar with Cleveland, the Rapid is the heavy/light rail rapid transit system) . I work in Landerhaven, which is a large office park (formerly a golf course -- many people here still remember it as a golf course) in Mayfield Heights, out in the eastern suburbs. As it turns out, there's actually a bus that goes right to Landerhaven, starting at the University Circle Rapid station at the bottom of Cedar Hill, and then proceeding all the way up Cedar, through Cleveland Heights, University Heights, Beachwood, etc. to Landerhaven. So, for me, the trip is fairly simple, red line Rapid from W. 25th to University Circle, and then the #32 bus to Landerhaven.

Initially, I bought a couple of all-day farecards at Dave's Supermarket in Ohio City for $5 apiece, and these are good for both the Rapid and all buses. These can also be purchased from machines at all Rapid stations, and I've done that a couple of times now too. The user interface for the machines is ... clunky, but it works. It's a nice change to be able to buy these (and use credit cards!) at the Rapid stations; that wasn't possible (for the most part) the last time I rode the system. I don't think you can buy them on the buses though.

The $5 all day farecard is the best deal I've found so far, because there are no free transfers in the system at all and the individual fare is $2.25 per ride, which means my W. 25/Landerhaven roundtrip would cost me $9 in cash fares. There are probably better deals available if you ride every day, but I haven't really investigated that yet.

The Rapid now uses a "Proof of Payment" system. The basic concept is that there's no regular checking of tickets/farecards by anyone in the stations or the trains, but you may run into wandering ticket checkers who can ask you at any time for proof that you have a valid ticket. If you show up with a farecard already in hand, like I did, you're supposed to run it through the ticket vending machine and get it activated. The only exception to this is Tower City (in downtown Cleveland) where they actually have fare gates that won't let you through unless you insert your farecard. As I mentioned above, you can now purchase farecards from automated ticket machines at all the Rapid stations.

On the buses, you can either insert your farecard into a little reader or you can pay cash, including folding money, which is also inserted into the machine. Cash fare is $2.25 per ride, no change is available, no transfers apart from the farecard system. My all day farecard worked on all the buses. I will note that people paying cash seem to slow the whole system down tremendously.

So, what's it actually like? Keep in mind that I've only ridden a few times so far, and the weather hasn't been too bad, but here's what I've noticed.

The Rapid has been on time within a couple of minutes, especially in the morning. The train is a lot more crowded from W. 25th to Tower City than it is from Tower City to University Circle, just like you'd expect, but even from W. 25th St. I haven't seen a train yet that was full to the point that all the seats were taken, although people stand anyway.

Coming in from the west side, the trains alternate between through trains to Windermere (aka Stokes Transit Center, in East Cleveland) and trains that turn around at Tower City, so if you want to go past Tower City, be careful about which train you get on, or be prepared to get off at Tower City. I've already gotten this wrong once ... In the morning when I'm riding (7-8am), the through trains to Windermere are about 15 minutes apart, with the Tower City trains in between.

My favored AM schedule allows practically zero time to catch the #32 bus at University Circle, but it's always worked out so far. The short slack time is really nice when it works... Because this is the official starting point for the #32, it tends to leave on schedule, so knowing the schedule is useful in this particular case. Between 7 and 9 am, the eastbound #32 runs basically every half hour, so missing your chosen bus can be pretty costly timewise. I did have to wait for the bus for 10 minutes or so once so far (actually, in the afternoon, not the morning), and I found out there is an enclosed (heated!) bus waiting area at the UC Rapid station, on the eastbound (uphill) side of Cedar , but it's not all that big.

I've always gotten a seat on both the eastbound and westbound buses so far, which is partially because I get on at more or less the starting point in both directions, and partially because they're not all that crowded. I don't think I've seen any of the buses crowded enough that people had to stand, although sometimes they do anyway, especially if they're not going far.

The whole trip is slow, a lot slower than the equivalent drive for me. I can drive to work in 35-40 minutes, and I take a longer route than I have to because there's a much lower chance of stop and go traffic, but the bus/train takes maybe 65 minutes at best. Because the the buses (and, really, the trains too, but especially the buses) run relatively infrequently, the penalty for missing the conveyance you were counting on can be pretty high.

The bus makes a lot of stops, as buses tend to do.

In the Landerhaven office park, the #32 runs on a flag stop basis -- you can get on and off anywhere you want, you just have to tell the driver/stand on the side of the road and look hopeful. (One of the drivers told me that they assume anyone standing by the side of the road in Landerhaven is waiting for the bus.) The downside of this flexibility is that there are no bus shelters. Also, a peculiarity of this particular route is that the eastbound and westbound buses take the same route through Landerhaven, so you have to make sure you get on the one that's actually going the direction that you want. One assumes, though, that there are very few people getting on the eastbound bus in Landerhaven and getting off at Ursuline College. My experience has been that the #32 is almost empty in both directions as it goes through Landerhaven.

I like being able to read or listen to my ipod. I really like being able to get somewhere without having to pay attention, even if the whole journey takes a long time. I like looking out the window, although I suppose that might pale after a while.

My least favorite part of the experience so far is waiting for the bus in Landerhaven in the afternoon. There are no shelters (and no sidewalks!), and I don't feel really comfortable cutting the timing close, so I'm inevitably waiting for at least 5 minutes and sometimes more. I have to assume that this aspect is going to be even more unpleasant during the winter. The westbound buses do come more or less on schedule as far as I can tell, so this is another case where knowing the schedule is helpful. An extra bonus: my co-workers driving past me on their way home.

It can be noisy sometimes. The ipod helps with that, of course. I haven't had any really unpleasant interactions with my fellow riders yet. This is something that people who aren't used to riding transit worry about quite a bit, but it's been okay so far. That probably won't last forever, but I think it's safe to say that, at least on these routes I take, real unpleasantness is the exception and not the rule.

At $5/day for transit and, say, 50 miles/day of driving with my 20mpg vehicle, it costs a little less out of pocket than driving.

Labels: Cleveland, Cleveland RTA, transit

 

¶ 10/14/2009 08:39:00 PM 2 comments