Quote:
Originally Posted by edale
It's a legacy line, and the city has changed drastically since it was built.
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i don't think that i would classify cleveland's red line as a "legacy line". when i think of legacy heavy rail, i think of the early 20th century systems in NYC, chicago, boston, and philly.
cleveland's red line was actually built in stages from 1955 - 1968, which was an incredibly unusual time period for the construction of ground-up heavy rail rapid transit in the US.
and because it was built through the existing city, instead of having the city built up around it, it takes a lot of less-than-ideal routing corridors (old freight ROWs, running alongside an expressway, etc.) that don't take it directly through many high-density, ped-friendly urban neighborhoods. many of the stations are surrounded by pretty bleak landscapes of park & ride lots and other ultra low density uses.
as you said, it's not shocking that it has pretty low ridership numbers.
and as i said earlier, as a downtown-airport rail connection (the first of its kind in the US), i can't see cleveland abandoning the red line anytime soon, even if it doesn't make a ton of financial sense to keep it operating.