Friends, we have an emergent situation with RTA I claim is alarming. The stations and rail infrastructure have been shit the past year. You will have elevators and escalators out of service with a system of customer service and operations that can be staggeringly awful at times.
We saw witness for the Cavs parade the capacity scale respond in meager retreat to the demands many larger metropolitan cities accommodate daily. The weekend outages at various rail stations on east and west side and replacement buses can be a test in humility for those who seek something approaching half of a standard for public commute. The murals on the east and west routes are an improvement from the hack street graffiti yet the timing with the past RNC seems dubious. I challenge RTA aggressively to determine effective innovations to their depleted funding from both public and private financial sources.
Let's cite for example the design of their newer stations like east 55th, costing near of ten million dollars (??) and one of their central hubs for operations personnel as well. As you may know each of the rail station stops at this location, blue, green, and red line. The platforms are set such that if I was to travel from 55th to public square, you can't immediately jump on the next rail because the platforms have high and low concrete grounding. This is a rather goofy approach to architecture. I believe we probably have some unsavory political dimension to it as RTA administratively has some heavy stupid going on at times. Perhaps an effective solution would be a more robust electronic banner system to display time to arrive, yet a strong undercurrent of property damage hooliganism seems to prevent these standards.
The controversial disabling of RTA service in the new public square is just right in my opinion.. Why does one have to have clunky eyesore buses stamped with personal injury lawyer advertisements run through city center when adjacent downtown corridors minutes walk away are more effectively routed. Again an element of design and politics RTA fails to recognize as their own shortcoming. The RTA commuter witnessed rate hikes recent and will face graduated increases in the years to come.
I'm rooting for you RTA leaders, yet as of late you are very disappointing. By month end my pass is often worn and unable to be machine read, a sign of lost opportunity, yet I also see a beacon and a call for new innovation in our transportation systems for our new digital age.