Greater Cleveland RTA gets $800,000 for bus stop upgrades, improved microtransit links

Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority will be making some big investments to make the wait for a bus a little more pleasant.

The agency was awarded $800,000 from the Ohio Department of Transportation's Workforce Mobility Partnership Program.

The agency will use $500,000 of the grant to make improvements at as many as 50 bus stops across Cuyahoga County, said GCRTA Deputy General Manager for Engineering and Project Management Mike Schipper.

"We may have an old shelter, we may have a location where the stop is in the tree lawn ... in front of a business where we would add a shelter and a shelter pad and so that our customers are just not standing there out in the open," Schipper said.

GCRTA completed upgrades to many of its highly-trafficked bus stops ahead of this round of funding, Schipper said. So the agency will be focusing on bus stops that receive moderate numbers of riders.

"The criteria we're looking at is some areas that have concentrations of jobs that are better served by our bus routes now, but the shelter in transit waiting experience is not very good," he said.

GCRTA expects the improvements to take a year to complete, Schipper said.

The remaining portion of the grant will fund a feasibility study identify opportunities for microtransit between Cuyahoga and Lorain counties akin to the Solon Workforce Connector Program and the ConnectWorks program in Cleveland.

Through a collaboration with ShareMobility, a transportation management company, the agency provides first-mile-last-mile transportation from GCRTA stops directly to their workplaces. The study will allow the agency to identify the best way to put additional microtransit in place, Schipper said.

"The money that we're going to receive in this grant will study those programs and other similar programs just to recommend a better connection between Cuyahoga and Lorain County."

The study is expected to begin in 2025 and could take up to a year to complete before the agency seeks funding for implementation, Schipper said.

"The study will ... give us direction, what we need to do. But the actual implementation of that will we will probably pursue another grant opportunity," he said. "The state of Ohio has a couple of those grant opportunities, as does the Federal Transit Administration."