By this time between 1980-81, RTA's ridership peaked 120 million. The rapid transit fleet was top notch and they had over 1,000+ buses in their fleet to serve the city of Cleveland. RTA has never gotten close to those numbers since then. A drastic population decline killed those numbers among other things. This is a very important piece of historical footage to show what the city was like.
That's interesting considering Cleveland's population had already been declining although a lot of people were still probably living in the suburbs and still commuting downtown for work. I know my father was one of them.
I would love to better understand the factors that drove the decline, more than just the obvious as theres a lot more complexity to it. I understand CTS had something like 1.4 million riders a day in 1945 (and just in Cleveland city limits), to around 350,000 a day regionally in the early 1980s to now where RTA has 60,000 riders a day across the metro region.
By this time between 1980-81, RTA's ridership peaked 120 million. The rapid transit fleet was top notch and they had over 1,000+ buses in their fleet to serve the city of Cleveland. RTA has never gotten close to those numbers since then. A drastic population decline killed those numbers among other things. This is a very important piece of historical footage to show what the city was like.
That's interesting considering Cleveland's population had already been declining although a lot of people were still probably living in the suburbs and still commuting downtown for work. I know my father was one of them.
I would love to better understand the factors that drove the decline, more than just the obvious as theres a lot more complexity to it. I understand CTS had something like 1.4 million riders a day in 1945 (and just in Cleveland city limits), to around 350,000 a day regionally in the early 1980s to now where RTA has 60,000 riders a day across the metro region.
Thanks for sharing this! I miss those days.
I just love street trolleys!❤