The Euclid Avenue Corridor

currently under construction is a Cleveland, Ohio Regional Transit Authority project spanning 7.07 miles from Cleveland's Public Square to East Cleveland's Windermere Station.

This project is a dedicated bus line from downtown Cleveland passing through the Cleveland State University campus, Cleveland Clinic, and University Circle, which includes the University Hospital, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Museum of Art, among other civic and cultural destinations.

If the EUC project comes in at budget it will result in a 168.40 million dollar investment, with roughly half of its funding derived from Federal sources.

Save the aforementioned institutions and the hotels that will benefit from this transit package, just who does this project serve?

Will this project stand a ghost of a chance to deliver any positive economic or social impact along its proposed route? Already the few remaining Euclid Avenue merchants in the downtown area are upset with the interruption of business they face due to the invasive nature of infrastructure improvements and the construction of the bus lanes. RTA has tossed them a small amount of advertising linage as a form of compensation for business losses.

What these merchants will face when the project opens in late 2008 is a no parking zone along the projects entire route, and limited automobile access, two lanes only, one eastbound, one westbound.

This automobile parking free Euclid Avenue is a fine and noble concept, though in practical terms it will present a major obstacle to any actual gain in retail starts along its path. As difficult as I find it to say, not many merchants will consider opening a new business without some automobile access for their customers.

The Cleveland Clinic is on record as desiring a "campus" for their current group of buildings that stretch along Euclid Avenue from East 95th Street to East 105th Street. Want a campus, build a campus! It makes perfect sense that the Clinic should concern themselves with building high density housing along the Euclid Avenue corridor instead of an "opportunity corridor highway ".

See OESB blog HUMOR ME CLEVELAND October 17, 2007 for more on this highway boondoggle.

In keeping with the spirit of usage of this major Euclid Avenue Corridor project, the Cleveland Clinic should embrace the Euclid Avenue Corridor as a green alternative to their grandiose opportunity corridor private interstate pipedream. Those who are employed by the CC would be given the chance to live closer to their workplace. What a novel idea, the return and gain of some of the tax paying employed that are currently residing in the suburbs.

Future housing plans are in the works for the University Circle area via University Circle Incorporated , perhaps a comprehensive plan for a variety of housing alternatives , between East 79th and Euclid to East 107th and Euclid , would be a good place for the Cleveland Clinic to start. The UCI gang can meet them westward at that junction.

Time to attempt to sell a book once again. In keeping with the flavor of the day which is Cleveland public transit we can offer a 1036 page history of northern Ohio transit, mostly on Cleveland bus and streetcar lines, by former Cleveland News reporter Harry Christiansen published in 1983 and entitled NEW NORTHERN OHIO INTERURBANS , Rapid Transit, Trolleys, Steam Trains, Buses!

Relive the days when public transit was a profitable private business concern, not a subsidized chunk of political pork. It seems fair that if a business concept is profitable private funding will be found to accomplish the stated goals of said business concept. Perhaps the Euclid Avenue Corridor will serve to create jobs, and housing along its path. With the rising cost of gasoline in an unstable world petrol market, we can't have enough of these ecological friendly projects in the works.

Remember folks it was a plot hatched and served up by the American Automotive, Rubber, Steel, and big oil companies that influenced the dismantling of our urban streetcar and light rail lines by means of bribing elected politicians of the affected cities in post World War Two America.

This dirty pool was at quite a cost to us as citizens, and the companies involved were found guilty only a few years ago, after much delays in our courts.

We received in place of our streetcars, planned obsolescence in the form of buses and automobiles, and the destruction of our cities and their neighborhoods in the process of further opening up the suburbs to the automobile.

In 1960, United States households had one third automobile per household, in 2004 three and one half automobiles per household. A nation of petrol addicts we are, and a more sobering statistic is the number of fatalities incurred on American highways per year, in the neighborhood of 37,000 plus.

Any housing gains in our cities are a positive, and may we live long enough to see the rebuilding of clean and efficient transit again.

Hats of to John and Kim, and all the daily bus and rail riders whose examined usage of public transit collectively helps us become less oil dependent.

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