State Grant to Help Cleveland RTA Rail System

Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority plans to use a $15.3 million state grant to help pay to buy new buses and a rail car.

Funding for just one rail car might not seem like much, but RTA officials said that having another $6 million to spend on preventative maintenance for buses and rail cars will free money obtained from a federal grant to be used instead to rebuild track for the agency’s rail lines.

RTA plans to spend $5 million of the state grant for rail car replacement and $3.67 million on new buses.

It will also spend $660,000 to purchase property adjacent to the East 79^th Street station on the Red Line in preparation for an expansion project.

Mike Schipper, RTA’s deputy general manager of engineering, described the rail car funding as a piece of a larger funding puzzle the agency is trying to solve as it seeks to replace a rail car fleet that is nearing the end of its useful service life.

A consultant’s report earlier this year put the cost of rail car replacement at $240 million or about $3 million to $4 million per car.

“It’s a multi-year funding source approach,” Schipper said. “But it will allow us to get started. And certainly the $5 million that we got in this program is another step in getting us to where we can get started on replacing the rail cars.”

He said RTA is working on a rail car funding replacement plan that won’t require a tax increase.

RTA hopes to land $55 million in future state funding, and has lined up another $58 million from a mix of local grants, reserve funds and expected federal grants.

That means RTA still needs to find another $122 million for rail car fleet replacement.

“We will fund the rail cars through other mechanisms. And since we’re almost halfway there with a year’s worth of work, we’ll figure out how to get there,” Schipper said.

The grant money awarded to RTA is part of $70 million in new public-transit money in the state transportation budget.

The Ohio Department of Transportation said RTA’s award was part of $58.4 million in state funding for urban transit agencies and $3.5 million for rural agencies awarded this week.

Other large grants awarded include $7.6 million to the Central Ohio Transit Authority in Columbus and $5 million to the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority in Cincinnati..

An additional $35 million of Federal Transit Administration funding was awarded to Ohio’s 38 rural transit systems.

The largest of those awards was $2.5 million in state and federal funding to Athens Public Transit.

GoBus, an intercity bus service administered by Hocking Athens Perry Community Action’s Transportation Division, got $4.4 million in federal funding.

Tags: Cleveland RTA, Cleveland RTA rail service, Cleveland RTA Red Line, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, Greater Cleveland RTA