Posts Tagged Health Line
Plain Dealer Doesn’t Want to be Pain Dealer
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media on December 1, 2009
December 1, 2009… The Plain Dealer is playing games with us about “Progress.” The paper wants to make us feel good. So Good News makes for good Page One copy. It also makes for misleading information.
It’s important to keep Progress reality-based. If you raise expectations too high and don’t produce, you have a problem. Ask Barack Obama.
It can discourage people in the end. More than they are already.
Once again we have it in a piece this past Sunday emblazoned across Page One: “Revival continues despite recession.” Oh, hope!
It links the new HealthLine – RTA’s new bus line from Public Square to University Circle – as the impetus for active development at both ends and in between the two destinations.
Two Page One articles proclaim Progress to support the newspaper’s revival theme. Two facing-pages inside the paper are dominated by a route map of the $200 million HealthLine.
The map’s graphics define projects along and about the HealthLine.
The strong intimation, if not declaration, credits the HealthLine as the impetus for this economic development.
If you take a look at what the PD is crediting to the development of RTA’s HealthLine you find it very misleading.
It’s a laundry list of projects from Public Square to University Circle. The price tag is $3.3 billion.
However, much of it isn’t private investment. It is either governmental or nonprofit construction and much of it planned, not a done deal.
The largest investment derives from various projects of the Cleveland Clinic at some $793 million. Similarly, University Hospital has a projected development of $410 million. The Stokes VA Medical Center has a $539 million projected cost. The Cleveland Museum of Art expansion involves $350 million.
Those projects do not owe their being to a new transit line. And they total more $2 billion of the projected $3.3 billion.
Cleveland State University’s projects total some $200 million.
You may have noticed also that these projects involve institutions that don’t pay the city any property taxes.
A major, accomplished development is East 4th Street at $115 million. But this also has heavy government financing. And involves property tax abatements.
The mention of E. 4th brings up another major defect in this kind of rah rah reporting: Opposite E. 4th is The Arcade, a heavily-subsidized renovation on Euclid Avenue, which is severely depressed.
If you are going to assess what’s happening economically along the HealthLine route you have to look at what is failing along with what may be succeeding. The Arcade represents a historic and critical retail link between Euclid and Superior Avenues.
One of the articles made a dubious claim of a great hike in ridership on the HealthLine compared to the former ridership.
“The innovations are working for the most part. Ridership on the HealthLine is up 47 percent over the old No. 6 line along Euclid Avenue, formerly the most heavily used line in the RTA system,” wrote Steve Litt, the PD’s architecture critic.
He goes on to say that the HealthLine had 3.8 million riders compared to 2.6 million for the old system’s No. 6 line down Euclid Avenue. (A RTA spokesperson told me that the 3.8 million is a projected ridership figure for 2009.)
However, Litt counted only the No. 6 bus route. Last year, according to RTA, it ran the No. 7 and No. 9 buses along this route. The figures for them tell another story. They were 267,631 riders on No. 7 and 951,369 riders on No 9 for a total of 1,218,940 riders last year.
The No. 6 had 2.6 million riders. However, the No. 7 & 9 buses – both in operation last year – had another 1.2 million riders. If you add them to the No. 6 route you get some 3.8 million, or just about the same ridership this year as last year. No dramatic jump of 47 percent.
There goes another rubber tree plant, as Frank Sinatra used to sing.
Actually, there were two other bus routes, a variation of No. 7 and No. 9 that didn’t run along Euclid last year. In 2000, they accounted for more than 150,000 other rides.
So maybe ridership along Euclid Avenue is really down.
Maybe also The Plain Dealer is getting too Pollyannaish. Too ready to see a silver lining.
This is now policy at the PD. Give us BIG. The newspaper under Editor Susan Goldberg has become a paper of headlines. Give us BIG headlines. Give us LARGE photos. Give us BOLD headlines. Make people believe that we are reporting HARD stuff. It’s magical stuff. Now you see it, now you don’t.
We’ve had similar ballyhooing of projects that don’t seem to blossom. In July of 2008, it was “A resurgence at East Ninth Street” on the PD’s Page One. That one highlighted the Ameritrust Tower to support the headline. Didn’t happen. In fact, it’s a terrible blight on Euclid Avenue. At a crossroad that was the city’s financial center.
We’ve seen lots of renderings of the Flats East Bank. But the Flats remains substantially, well, flat. Nothing.
And University Circle, development stories seem to make it to the PD time and time again. The same ones. Yet, the private developments don’t seem to materialize.
We allow that the economy has something to do with this. However, we suggest that people who want their projects to get attention don’t have to haggle much to get the “news” on the front page of the PD.
The paper is accommodating. Even when it doesn’t know whether the projects are real or not.
Too much wishful thinking is going on. It doesn’t need encouragement from the daily newspaper.
Yet it sells papers. Must be so. Because they keep on using it. But does it do what newspapers are supposed to do? Inform us. Not titillate us. Not uplift our spirits. Not get us feeling good. Tell us the truth.
Let’s have a bit of reality. In the end it may save us. If nothing else, the embarrassment of failure.
RTA Takes Us For The Wrong Ride
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development on July 18, 2009
July 18, 2009… Is the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA, bkna as RTA) taking us on another ride? As a transit system, it seems more like a servant of the same old special interests when it should be taking care of transit-dependent citizens.
Yes, I believe RTA does have a money problem with sales taxes and ridership down. Raising fares hardly seems the solution.
However, I also know that RTA hasn’t paid enough attention in the past to its spending. If it did RTA wouldn’t have to be cutting crucial services now.
We’re being told that there is a $5.5 million problem. The solution for RTA’s management is to cut services and raise the price by 25 cents.
That appears to be not a palatable solution.
If CEO and General Manager Joe Calabrese and his RTA board can’t find $5 million in his more than $240 million (2008) budget, then we need to get someone who can do the job.
RTA has become too accustomed to providing services that aren’t really necessary. Too comfy saying yes to the downtown scrounges.
The Euclid Corridor Improvement Project (Health Line) was a perfect example of spending transit money for non-transit purposes. The road was plenty wide for RTA buses. I’d like to know the annual upkeep costs of this Euclid Avenue beautification program.
If you’ve got a lot of extra money to spend, fine, beautify. However, RTA’s primary task is to move people from where they are to where they need to go, especially people who can’t afford to own vehicles.
RTA spent $69 million of OUR dollars for the Waterfront Line, rushing it to please Mayor George Voinovich and his buddy Dick Pogue. They wanted it up for the opening of the Rock Hall of Fame and their parties. To get it done, RTA had to forget about federal subsidy, which probably would have covered 80 percent of the cost. The Waterfront Line was ill-planned and now it ill-serves.
The Waterfront Line service has been cutback. It’s important that RTA tell us just how much it costs to keep this line operating at any level. Maybe it should be mothballed totally.
Equally unnecessary for RTA was the walkway from Tower City to Gateway, a cost of some $11-13 million. I’ve never been able to get an undisputed figure. RTA has to “reimburse” Tower City for utility charges on the walkway.
It’s time RTA got tough and told the Gateway Economic Development Corp., which operates the Gateway facilities, that it has to pick up the cost of the walkway and pay to have its fans delivered to its doors. Why should RTA’s riders pay for this?
Despite the fact that these RTA facilities help Tower City, RTA pays some $1 million a year to Forest City Enterprises, owner of Tower City. It’s annual fee for RTA’s use of space into Tower City. RTA pays an addition $32,000 to “reimburse” Tower City for central plant operations. It even pays a utility charge for use of the escalators! There’s room for negotiations here to lower costs.
Isn’t it time to renegotiate these fees lower since there’s less use and Tower City seems to always get reductions of its property taxes?
The County or the State needs to provide more funding to RTA, too. Why shouldn’t there be subsidies for mass transit? It’s a method of lowering pollution and reducing traffic. We build enough roads for cars.
A small surcharge on every car in the County each year should produce the kind of revenue needed for mass transit.