Hosted by Clevelanders for Public Transit
Monday, July 23 at 5 PM – 6:30 PM
1240 W 6th St, Cleveland
Join us at 5pm outside RTA Headquarters for a march to Public Square. The rally will begin on the south side of the Square at 5:30pm.
We are demanding local funding for immediate fare relief and service restoration.
Background:
Transit provides access to jobs, education, healthcare and many other destinations for thousands of members of our community. Unfortunately, transit in our region is in a death spiral: an endless cycle of service cuts, fare increases and ridership decline. A new vision is needed.
In 2006, a single trip on RTA cost only $1.25. Since that time, fares have doubled while service has declined over 25 percent. A recent study by McGill University has shown that transit service and fares impact ridership much more than the cost of gas or the availability of rideshare services. Ongoing reductions to service and fare increases have reduced RTA’s ridership to a record low.
Waiting to address declining transit is a luxury that residents of Cuyahoga County do not have. RTA is losing over $20 million per year due to a change in state sales tax collection policy while state funding for transit has plummeted from $45 million in 2001 to less than $7 million today. Ohio’s level of funding for transit falls below Nebraska, Arkansas and most states in the country.
Since the state of Ohio has failed to adequately address the need to connect taxpayers to jobs and opportunities, local leadership must act to solve the death spiral that RTA riders are currently facing.