The Limits of Technocratic Solutions for the Current Transit Crisis

All door boarding will only get you so far.

Last night I arrived home in Cleveland from Florida from a late flight close to midnight. I had had a long traveling journey because in Cleveland it’s hard to get a direct flight anywhere. I wasn’t feeling well and I was eager to get home.

And in my head I was debating: Should I take the train or should I take a Lyft?

Normally I take the train. I took the train to the airport. It takes a little longer but it’s cheaper and mostly painless (unless they’re doing track work, which is always a risk right now).

It was late though. Even during the day, if it’s not rush hour, Cleveland trains can feel a little empty, which makes you feel a little vulnerable (especially since the airport is the end of the line). You’re just getting in this private space with one or two people, and you never know if one of them is going to be a weirdo. The odds are not low that that will be the case.

Long story short, in the past I might have said, “whatever” and just went for it and taken the train. (And honestly none of my friends would do that alone. I am weirdly, I would say, incautious about this stuff.)

But in my head I’m thinking, even on the way the Rapid was kinda weird. I got on board at 8 or 9 am and half the train was people sleeping — presumably homeless. They weren’t bothering me. At the same time, it’s awkward to step into a situation like that. There was another guy who approached me, looked at me and then went away. I don’t know what his deal was, but sometimes you’re going to have people behave weirdly around you on transit and for the most part I can handle it, I mostly just keep my head down and try to avoid anyone who seems to be behaving strangely. But it’s always a little unpredictable.

Anyway, I ended up taking a Lyft, since it was close to midnight. And the Lyft cost about 10 times what it would have cost me to take the train. And the guy was late. And he drove too fast, and that made me a little uncomfortable.

(I didn’t want to wake up my husband and have him drive to the airport to get me. He woulda had to pack the kids in the car and everything.)

And I was thinking, “boy I wish I better options than sorta chancing it on weird stuff happening to me on the train or the walk home or hopping into a car with some rando.”

I have used transit in Cleveland for more than a decade. And in my view, it had gotten much worse in the last few years. This is unrelated to pandemic fallout, but the RTA has been putting off some basic maintenance work (due to lack of funding) and now it’s coming to a head. Half the time you step on a train and then they tell you '“oh track work.” And you have to get off, and on some bus, and then get back on the train.

The other thing is, we’ve had this increase in homelessness. And people are using the stations and trains as a living area, but we aren’t fully accommodating them either. There’s nowhere for people to use the bathroom. So they’re using the elevators.

I had a really bad incident a month or two ago when I tried to take my 6-year-old daughter to a birthday party by train on the other side of town. We’d done it before and it worked pretty well. This time they had track work. So we had to go catch a bus. And we both had bikes so we had to mount them on the front of the bus. And then we had to carry them down the stairs (which my daughter sorta couldn’t do) because someone had taken the most weird and enormous crap in the elevator I have truly ever seen.

Transit is in big trouble right now and I hate to say I don’t feel optimistic about it. I feel a little disappointed with what I’ve seen from transit advocacy groups also, sort of the planning/technocratic realm. There’s a resistance to engaging with the really important issues: mental illness, drug use and homelessness in a real way, in my opinion.

(Sometimes what you see is relatively well off people who live in Brownstone Brooklyn bragging about how they aren’t scared to use the subway, so proud of themselves 🙄. I wouldn’t be either if I lived where they did and used it at the hours they do at the age and level of fitness they are.)

On a positive note, RTA has added this group of civilian case worker types that are going out on trains and trying to help folks and sort of deescalate some situations. I think that’s one positive development we’ve seen come out of all this.

But it’s probably not sufficient. One thing I keep asking anyone who will listen to me for is porta potties outside the stations. But RTA just refuses. They’re afraid people will do illegal stuff in them, which would happen in a real bathroom but I think porta potties are sufficiently gross to deter.

Regardless, asking riders to deal with unsanitary conditions and human waste every day on their train ride is not a winning strategy.

I don’t think technocratic measures that people were excited about a few years ago, like all-door boarding, are going to lure riders back in Cleveland without addressing these other issues.

One thing I think is relevant (but outside planning related focus) is debates that are happening about our mental health system (or lack thereof). Whether people with severe mental illness, like schizophrenia, should be hospitalized in some cases involuntarily. And whether that might be more humane then just allowing them to be arrested and rearrested like Jordan Neely on the subway.

Now these kinds of debates wade into some controversial topics. And as we all know right now, we’re not exactly able to have constructive public debates. Still the idea that we, as transit advocates, can offer some maudlin one liner about how “transit systems can’t solve every problem” and go back to fixating on technocratic operational innovations is pretty hard to watch.