Envision walking out of Tower City Center, ascending an escalator, and boarding a driverless train that whisks you around downtown fifteen feet above the streets below. The monorail, dubbed the Downtown People Mover, represented progress and modernity. In 1976, Mayor Ralph Perk submitted Cleveland’s Downtown People Mover proposal to the federal government. The DPM proposal portrayed Cleveland as the ideal city for a monorail.
The various attempts at developing an effective system to circulate people through downtown led to the development of the Downtown People Mover. In 1969, the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA), created five years earlier amid a flurry of Great Society legislation, funded a People Mover project for Morgantown, West Virginia. The people mover successfully transported students and faculty throughout the West Virginia University campus, avoiding the traffic congestion in the city, but the concept was slow to progress to the next level. Accordingly, the federal government set aside $220 million to test the abilities of People Movers as downtown transportation in the spring of 1976 and held a national competition in which a number of cities submitted proposals.
The Plain Dealer characterized the unveiling of the winning cities as being as “suspenseful as an Academy Award show.” U.S. Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman announced the grant recipients at a news conference by revealing downtown maps of the winners. Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles and St. Paul won portions of the federal grant, while Detroit won a portion of funds from an earlier people mover grant.
Downtown transit circulation was an important concern in Cleveland as in other U.S. cities, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1950s the Cleveland Transit System (predecessor of today’s RTA) had twice failed to achieve a downtown circulator subway to serve as the hub for a revamped rapid transit system serving the metropolitan area. Cleveland;s downtown consisted of dispersed retail locations, government centers, and office buildings, which the DPM planned to connect with its 2.2 mile loop, elevated fifteen feet above Cleveland’s streets.
Many opposed the construction of the DPM, including Thomas E. Bier, then an assistant professor at the Institute of Urban Studies at Cleveland State University. The proposed route would have run along Euclid Avenue, stopping at East 6th, East 9th, and East 13th Streets. At lunchtime, the area of Euclid Avenue between Public Square and East 9th brought together a variety of people in regard to class, race, and age. Bier reasoned that building the DPM fifteen feet above street level would further promote separation of the affluent, largely white pedestrians from less affluent, particularly African Americans. The lower-income shoppers of Euclid Avenue between Public Square and East 9th would have had little use for the DPM, therefore separating them from the higher income shoppers traveling further down Euclid Avenue to reach Halle’s and other upscale retailers.
Norman Krumholz, the City Planning Director in Cleveland at the time, also opposed the DPM. Krumholz concluded that the DPM conflicted with the transportation needs of 87 percent of RTA bus riders. The DPM’s free fare would undermine the twenty-five-cent fare that RTA had promised to uphold for three years. Armed with the information from Krumholz, Cuyahoga County Commissioners Robert Sweeny and George Voinovich also opposed the building of the DPM calling it “unnecessary . . . and the potential ruination of downtown.” Sweeney and Voinovich requested that Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams take back Cleveland’s Downtown People Mover grant, a premonition of what the future held.
Much like the failed Cleveland subway system, Cleveland did not build a DPM. Elected mayor in 1977, Dennis Kucinich requested that U.S. Transportation Secretary Brock Adams withdraw Cleveland’s application for the federal DPM grant. Richard Page, the director of UMTA, expressed his surprise. The UMTA had never been turned down for a federal grant by a mayor or city government before. Kucinich stated three objections to the DPM. First, the DPM violated an agreement with the RTA against such systems. Second, Kucinich expected the cost of the DPM to exceed its estimate. Finally, Cleveland’s existing transit system would be negatively impacted by the DPM.
Both Detroit’s DPM and the Morgantown People Mover exceeded their initial budgets by millions, legitimizing Kucinich’s fear of cost overruns. Cleveland’s DPM was expected to serve 46,500 riders per day. Morgantown’s People Mover transports 10,000 people per day. Detroit’s DPM transports the same number, even though it was estimated to move 55,000 passengers per day. Would the Downtown People Mover have proved popular enough to move 46,500 Clevelanders per day through downtown? Cleveland will never know, but if Detroit’s DPM is any indication, the answer is unlikely.
]]>In 1970 the future of public transportation in Cleveland looked bleak. The city was millions of dollars in debt and its transit system crumbling. Ridership had dwindled in the wake of World War II and large groups were moving into the suburbs, outside the current busing system's range. The road to recovery began in 1971; with the election of a new mayor the city was able to institute a regional public transportation system.
In 1971 Ralph J. Perk became Cleveland's first Republican mayor in more than three decades and, after establishing the Cleveland Regional Sewer District, he set his sights on the transit problem. At the time of Perk's inauguration as mayor, the busing system in place was Cleveland Transit System (CTS). In the late 1960s, CTS ridership suffered a dramatic drop from which it was unable to recover. To combat the drop in ridership, CTS resorted to cutting service programs, employee layoffs, and selective fare hikes. In 1968, under the mayoralty of Carl Stokes, an attempt to revitalize the transportation system in the city resulted in a four-mile rail extension to Hopkins International Airport. This made Cleveland the first city in the Western Hemisphere with direct rapid transit service to its major airport, but that was not enough to overcome the financial problems of the system. In its last full year of operation, CTS operated with a net loss of $6.9 million. The city council, working under the recommendation of Perk, approved a bill to allow the city to purchase $9.5 million in CTS bonds and temporarily solved the money problems. While this relieved the immediate pressure of the transit issue, Perk knew he needed a more concrete solution and developed a plan for modernizing the transit system.
A variety of circumstances delayed the implementation of Perk's plan. First, it was necessary to assess the fair market value of CTS and arrange a way to pay the remaining debt after it was no longer in existence. The city obtained a federal grant by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration in the amount of $582,000 to conduct the survey. Recognizing it was not within the power of a single municipality to solve CTS's problems, the study called for the regionalization of transit and proposed that public ownership should rest in a transit authority. This push for regional transportation was not limited to the Cleveland area; it was a concern evident throughout the nation in the late 1960s and 1970s. Cities such as St. Louis, San Francisco, and Chicago were conducting similar studies, all of which concluded the best solution for the economic well being and suburban development of each city was to develop a regional transportation system.
Next, Perk had to determine a way to finance the new transit system long term. To combat this Perk proposed a one-cent tax increase. The proposal was overwhelmingly approved by the voters and on September 5, 1975, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) was given control of all CTS assets. During its first year, the RTA was averaging a ridership of 356,000 riders a week - a 65% increase from the final years of the CTS. RTA also made a profit of $260,000 its first year that was allotted to paying the debt of CTS and other capital expenses. By the end of 1975, RTA had added bus service to Euclid, Maple Heights, North Olmsted, Brecksville, Garfield Heights, and Bedford. In 1976, RTA added six additional service areas.
Perk had to overcome problems of debt and corruption, poor sewage and water pollution, and a crumbling transportation system. Under his leadership and belief that a city is meant to function in the best interest of the people, the Regional Sewer District and Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority were established. During his four years as mayor, Perk laid the groundwork for the RTA. Perk did not sit by idly while city council and the transit board made all the decisions but actively campaigned for the implementation of the RTA program by attending meetings, encouraging the support of the plan, and appointing the board that would oversee the day-to-day functioning of the RTA. Perk gave the city a transportation system it could be proud of, one that would prove to be profitable and a model that other cities could emulate. Forty years later the Regional Transit Authority is not only still operating, but continues to flourish and receive recognition.
]]>The settlement of the Heights on Cleveland's east side was dependent upon electric streetcars with sufficient power to ascend the Portage Escarpment at Cedar Glen in the 1890s. From there, streetcars opened heights land for development progressively farther east until the Van Sweringen brothers faced the task of making their distant Shaker Heights project accessible to downtown. The Vans created the Cleveland & Youngstown Railroad to make this connection, envisioning an interurban train linking Cleveland to the growing east side, and specifically their Shaker Village development (later Shaker Heights). The C&Y became their means of performing a number of transportation projects, building freight yards for other railroads and, here, putting in place the infrastructure necessary to bring the Shaker Rapid down off the Heights.
Trains, including the Rapid, require gentle grades in order to be operated economically. Too steep a slope and additional engines have to be added, or less weight can be hauled up hill, or both. To traverse the eighty feet of elevation between Shaker Square and the base of the Escarpment cliff west of Woodhill Road, a long elevated roadbed was required, including several bridges to allow north-south traffic to cross below the tracks. This roadbed is a little over a mile in length, meaning the resulting 1.25 percent grade could permit the Rapid to run affordably between Shaker Heights and downtown Cleveland.
The grading of the Rapid's right-of-way actually starts at Shaker Square, as the roadbed gradually descends into a trench between the two lanes of Shaker Boulevard, eventually becoming deep enough to pass underneath Woodhill Road. From that point west the tracks emerge onto an elevated bed that gradually descends to the level of the city. In doing so, it crosses over nine streets and two sets of railroad tracks, each of which has a bridge carrying the Rapid overhead. The bridge at Holton Avenue is one of Cleveland's most interesting and unappreciated structures.
This roadbed was created by building a temporary trestle of logs to get the tracks sufficiently elevated. Then trains of hopper cars were brought in on these tracks to dump large quantities of dirt and stone ballast to fill in the trestle. This was more economical than trying to pile up the ballast from below and then place tracks on top later.
At first the Rapid reached the bottom of the roadbed and moved onto tracks in the city's streets to finish the journey to Public Square, but that was only a temporary expediency. The ultimate goal was to bring the Rapid into the lower level of the Van Sweringens' new Cleveland Union Terminal passenger station beneath their Terminal Tower complex. To do this, the trains needed to come into town near the level of the river, where the major railroad passenger trains would also be delivering passengers to the C.U.T. This entailed extending the Rapid's grade dozens of feet lower, which they did through the gradual descent of Kingsbury Run, a tributary of the Cuyahoga River. It was the need to secure rights to use existing tracks of the Nickel Plate Road that led to the Vans purchasing the Nickel Plate Railroad and becoming a major player in North American railroading in the 1930s.
But the original focus of their attention was developing Shaker Heights up on the Portage Escarpment and making it possible to move their homeowners quickly to their jobs in downtown Cleveland. This led to their building the Cleveland & Youngstown's elevated roadbed that is largely unseen by the multitude of people who still ride the RTA's Green and Blue Lines west of Shaker Square, but deserves to be recognized as an important piece of Cleveland's urban infrastructure.
]]>The story of the failed Lake Erie International Jetport is one that generated a flurry of political interest but ultimately succumbed to the grandeur of its own ambition. Mayor Ralph Locher first introduced the idea of a new airport for Cleveland in June 1966. Dr. Abe Silverstein, the director of NASA's Lewis Research Center, revived the idea three years later. Silverstein's comprehensive plan, estimated at $1.185 billion, located the jetport one mile north of downtown Cleveland. The circuitous lifecycle of the jetport-in-the-lake plan represents the midcentury promises that large-scale construction and redevelopment projects offered for metropolitan economic growth. Several such projects swirled around Cleveland in the latter half of the twentieth century, but not all of them reached fruition. For example, Tower City Center was conceived in the 1970s but languished until it was finally opened in 1990.
Both Locher's and NASA's plan assumed that by the 1990s Cleveland Hopkins International Airport would be insufficient for the region's commercial air transportation needs. In addition, an offshore jetport would reduce the roar of the supersonic jets that people assumed would become the air travel of the future. In March 1972, Cleveland created the Lake Erie Regional Transportation Authority (LERTA) to facilitate plans for a jetport. Dr. Cameron M. Smith, LERTA's executive director, presided over a board of trustees appointed by the county commissioners and the city of Cleveland. The Federal Aviation Administration underwrote the funding for LERTA's $4.3 million feasibility study in 1972. The study, completed in 1977, recommended building the jetport five miles offshore in Lake Erie on a stone-and-sand dike. The proposed 13-mile dike would surround a manmade landmass, a massive undertaking that would stretch contemporary technology to the limit. The jetport would be accessible by a causeway carrying an RTA rapid transit line and an extension of the Innerbelt Freeway.
Proponents of the jetport cited the additional jobs that would be created by the jetport, positive effects for Cleveland's image and economy, and the practical need for a new airport. However, by the 1970s, the jetport had strong opponents including Mayor Dennis Kucinich. Opponents pointed out reasonable barriers to the construction of the jetport including the project's expense compared to renovating Cleveland Hopkins, weather conditions on the lake, and the failure to explore alternative forms of transportation. The FAA finally predicted that Cleveland would not need a new airport at least until the year 2000 and withdrew support in 1978. LERTA dismissed its employees and the board met only once a year. The Lake Erie International Jetport proved to be a pie-in-the-sky dream that was too expensive and impractical to be built. The promise of improving the infrastructure to serve a growing city's strong economy and prepare Cleveland to leap into the twenty-first century could not overcome admittedly reasonable opposition.
]]>Until the late 1800s, looking down from atop Cedar Hill you would have seen little more than a countryside landscape divided by an unkempt dirt road. The hillside known as Cedar Glen hosted few travellers aside from farm wagons and, later, visitors to the springs resort at the foot of the hill. In less than a century, this scene would be replaced by one of a busy, six-lane road as Cedar Glen became the biggest gateway to the Heights from the city of Cleveland.
One of Cedar Glen's most salient characteristics is its gradual rise in elevation. The western edge of the Portage Escarpment causes this natural formation. The Portage Escarpment not only divides the Allegheny Plateau and the Great Lakes Basin, but also acts as a boundary between Cleveland and its suburban "Heights" to the east. Originally the eastern part of Cedar Glen and the high ground to which it leads belonged to East Cleveland Township. When Cleveland Heights incorporated as a village in 1903, it engulfed the southern part of East Cleveland Township, which included farmland and Cedar Glen.
Another natural feature that, for a time, made Cedar Glen a well-known area was Doan Brook, which was piped and buried underground in 1929. In the early 1800s, bluish grey sandstone called Euclid bluestone was quarried along the brook. The hard sandstone was used for everything from laundry tubs to sidewalks. Later in the century Doan Brook again brought attention to Cedar Glen. Dr. Nathan Hardy Ambler was a former dentist and the owner of the Cedar Glen property through which Doan Brook passes on its way from Shaker Lakes to Lake Erie. Although the blue-green water tasted like sulfur, Ambler began bottling and selling it to local restaurants. Because patrons believed the water offered health benefits and hydrotherapy was becoming a popular treatment method, Ambler and his partner Daniel O. Caswell opened the Blue Rock Spring House in Cedar Glen. The water resort and sanitarium operated from 1880 until 1908 when popularity began to fade.
Cedar Glen began its transition to one of Cleveland's most important transportation gateways from the suburbs in 1896 when entrepreneur and suburban developer Patrick Calhoun donated a large tract of land to the city's park system. One of the conditions of the gift was that Calhoun would be permitted to run a double-line street railway through Cedar Glen. Construction began that fall on the street railway that was intended to bring passengers to and from Euclid Heights and Ambler Heights, prestigious residential allotments on the "Overlook." The increase in suburban residents and visitors made possible the construction of the Cedar Fairmount retail district at the top of the hill.
By the 1920s Cedar Glen was bustling with heavy streetcar and automobile traffic. At the end of that decade a tunnel and platform were built on the western end of Cedar Glen in conjunction with the construction of the Cleveland Union Terminal, further connecting Cleveland Heights to its urban neighbor. In the mid 1950s Cleveland Transit Service (CTS), the predecessor of today's RTA, built the University Circle Rapid Transit Station at the same location on the bottom of Cedar Glen where the tunnel was constructed twenty-five years earlier. Completely transformed from its onetime status as a barren, dirt road, Cedar Glen now remains a well-traveled gateway to and from Cleveland.
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]]>Opened on April 11, 1920, the Lynnfield passenger station was constructed as the final stop along the South Moreland (now Van Aken) line of the Cleveland Interurban Railroad in Shaker Village. Besides a few homes located in the vicinity along Kinsman Road and Center Road, the area was completely undeveloped. The construction of this small station in the middle of nowhere was the culmination of years of planning, land acquisition, and construction headed by Oris Paxton and Mantis James Van Sweringen to build the Cleveland Interurban Railroad — a rapid transit system that laid at the heart of their plans for the development of Shaker Village.
From the time of their initial speculation and investment in the Shaker area in 1908, the Van Sweringen brothers understood the importance of efficient and timely transportation between Cleveland and their desired upper-class enclave. Elite suburbs connected to metropolitan areas by railway were gaining popularity with people of means throughout the United States as cities grew increasingly industrialized and congested. Cleveland Heights, as well as suburbs outside of Cincinnati, Chicago, and New York City, offered examples of these successful real estate ventures. Initially, the Van Sweringens planned to extend a streetcar line to their residential community. Refused by the operators of Cleveland's streetcar franchise, the Vans began acquiring land and the right of way to provide an electric train line to the city's downtown from their suburb.
During the timely process of preparing for the transit system, the Van Sweringens negotiated an interim solution for Shaker Village's lack of public transportation with the Cleveland Railroad Co. and Cleveland Heights. The Cleveland Interurban Railroad would lay tracks for a streetcar to connect Shaker Village with Cleveland Heights, which had a line running into the City of Cleveland. Opened in 1907, this Shaker Lakes Line provided access to and from the Shaker area. A trip to the city, however, would still take over an hour.
By 1916, the brothers had acquired the right of way from Shaker Village to Cleveland and construction for the Cleveland Interurban Railroad began. Delayed by World War I, the transit system would not be completed for six years. Upon its opening, transportation time from the suburb to the urban center was cut by more than half. From Moreland Circle, later known as Shaker Square, the estimated travel time to the downtown was 20 minutes. From the Lynnfield Station, the trip would take a half hour. The impact of the electric train on Shaker Village was profound and immediate. Between 1919 and 1929, the population of Shaker Heights grew from 1,700 to 15,500, property value increased from less than a million dollars to over $80 million, and nearly 3,000 new homes were constructed. The success of this rapid transit system in promoting the development of Shaker Heights would also spur the construction of Cleveland's most defining building, the Terminal Tower.
While the area surrounding the Lynnfield Station would not see residential growth for well over a decade after its construction, the small passenger station at what is now 18900 Van Aken Boulevard reflects the foresight and planning of the Van Sweringen brothers in the development of one of America's most prominent and successful rail suburbs. The structure was designated a Shaker Heights Landmark on June 22, 1998.
]]>Imagine descending an escalator from USBank Plaza and boarding a subway bound for Tower City Center. Mayor Tom Johnson first proposed a Cleveland subway in 1905, and the idea surfaced repeatedly thereafter. After several failed attempts between the world wars, the city came closest to realizing this dream in 1953, when Cuyahoga County voters approved a $35 million bond issue for a downtown circulator subway by a two-to-one margin. The most discussed route would have traversed a loop from the Cleveland Union Terminal to Superior Avenue and East 9th Street, then to Euclid Avenue and East 13th Street, and back along Huron Road to its origin. Although popular with the public, freeway advocate and county engineer Albert S. Porter persuaded county commissioners to nix the plan in 1957.
Two years later, Playhouse Square area merchants had grown alarmed by the drop in business that afflicted many American downtown retailers by the late 1950s. With the bond issue set to expire in a matter of months, a group led by officers of the Halle Bros. Co. department store and the owner of the Hanna Building worked behind the scenes to reopen the debate. They got a big boost when the City Planning Commission wrote a subway into Downtown Cleveland-1975, a master plan to guide future development in the city's heart. The plan, which now featured a simpler hook-shaped route under East 14th and Euclid, prompted a bitter feud between downtown interests in Playhouse Square and those near Public Square. The former had long clamored for easier access for transit riders. The latter, especially the Higbee Co. with its advantageous basement entrance adjacent to the Union Terminal rail platforms, frowned upon the subway idea.
It may never be known exactly why the county commissioners voted down the subway again in 1959. Some alleged that a sizable bribe bought the decisive vote against the tube. True or not, it is clear that Porter succeeded in creating a situation ripe for defeat. Although Toronto had recently completed a similar subway that reinforced its downtown as a vigorous hub, Porter warned darkly of buildings collapsing into the "quicksand" beneath Euclid Avenue and stores with their utilities cut off for weeks on end. He insisted that no one who could drive on a new freeway would think of being packed in "sardine" fashion into a railcar.
In the 1980s the idea of a subway reemerged in the form of the Dual Hub Corridor, a combination downtown subway and at-grade rail link with University Circle along Euclid Avenue. As cost estimates soared, the idea was scaled back, and the RTA Healthline ultimately opened as a bus rapid transit system in 2008. Meanwhile, the issue of how to distribute transit riders all over downtown found resolution when downtown interests banded together with RTA to fund a system of free trolley buses whose digital overhead destination signs exclaim, "Smile and Ride Free!"
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]]>Cleveland, like many American cities, experienced its heyday of streetcar transit lines in the early decades of the twentieth century. Many Clevelanders still fondly recall their trips downtown aboard the creaking, groaning streetcars that plied the city's major thoroughfares. While streetcars formed the backbone of public transit in the first half of the century, in the second half, buses and rapid trains became common. The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority formed in 1975 through the merger of the Cleveland Transit System and the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit and also assumed control over several suburban bus systems. RTA spearheaded the federally funded Euclid Corridor Transportation Project, the culmination of decades of attempts to introduce a high-speed transit line on Euclid Avenue.
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