Great Moments in Mass Transportation

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a story about how few people ride the light rail line from downtown to the airport each day:

It’s cheap, reliable and fast. But the RTA rapid that whisks riders from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to downtown in 20 minutes — for $2 — has an identity problem. Airport employees and those who arrive for conventions love it. Vacation and business travelers generally spurn it in favor of cars or taxis . . . Currently, Cleveland’s airport line attracts only about 300 riders a day.

However:

The rapid helped lure the Society of American Baseball Research convention to Cleveland last July. Many of the hundreds who arrived by air took the rapid to their downtown hotel, said Susan Petrone, director of communications for SABR.

I was at SABR, and I remember that Repoz from BTF and I left the hotel at about the same time, me in my car for the 135 mile trip back to Columbus, him to the RTA station to hop the train to the airport. I think I sat down at my desk at work the next morning as the train finally came by to pick him up.


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matt
15 years ago

Perhaps the dinginess of the light rail reminds these people of the insides of their parents’ basement?

(Yes, I realize a large percentage of SABR’s members have nothing to do with Bill James and the statistical revolution, but I couldn’t resist the dig.)

pete
15 years ago

I grew up in Cleveland and honestly had no idea that that the RTA had a train to the airport.

bigcatasroma
15 years ago

I hated Civ Pro.  I wish my professor started out that way, instead of jumping right into Pennoyer v. Neff . . .

Also, that’s probably why baseball’s highs correspond in and around wartime—i.e. 1910s-1950s, briefly in late 1970s-early 1980s, now, whereas football takes the place of war in American society (those glory days of the early ‘60s, the ‘90s).  It replaces actual war with, you know, America’s thirst for anything bloody.  I think that football, maybe just NFL football, is on a *little* downward spiral right now, what with all the actual war going on, while baseball, at least according to Fearless Leader Bud, has never been more popular . . .

P.S. It took a few posts to read, but I hunted you down Shyster . . .

Craig Calcaterra
15 years ago

“Pennoyer v. Neff”

Don’t read too much into my Civ Pro professor: we got into Pennoyer the very next day.

/wait, shouldn’t this be on the Rules = Destiny post?  Ah, never mind.

Bob Timmermann
15 years ago

I got stranded at Hopkins Airport for close to an hour when I got to Cleveland. And then got to ride into town on a train that had:
1) a horrible PA system
2) people yelling at me to buy a ticket although no one was selling them and all the machines were broken
3) dropped me off in a place that was supposed to be attached to my hotel which I never would have found unless I had been guided by someone who had already checked in
4) and the hotel had no food
5) and I was pissed off all the time I was in Cleveland

Other than that, I love the Forest City.