AKRON, Ohio — A proposed commuter rail line from Cleveland to Akron to Canton is dead, and officials of a pro-rail group in Northeast Ohio are angry, the Beacon Journal reports.
The $170 million project was killed when the governing board of the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study voted on March 27 to withhold support. The 43-member policy committee of public officials voted 23-4 with two abstentions to drop looking at commuter rail service from Tallmadge Avenue in North Akron to Bedford Heights, said Ken Hanson, executive director of AMATS.
The Akron-based planning agency oversees federally funded highway and transportation projects in Summit and Portage counties and Chippewa Township in Wayne County.
Planning organizations in Cuyahoga and Stark counties could still push for commuter rail service, but there is no interest in the project in Summit County, barring a reversal of the governing board, Hanson said.
Asked if that killed commuter rail in Northeast Ohio, he said, “It does, as far as I can see, at this point in time.”
Hanson said the project, in the works for nine years, was hurt by a consultant’s draft report that said the rail line would provide few benefits to Summit County and attract few riders, the cost of developing such a service would be high and the rail line would not reduce traffic congestion along Interstate 77.
The issue was on the agenda last week for discussion only, but the policy committee agreed to kill the project in Summit County.
There was vocal opposition to the project in Silver Lake and Stow, but support for the commuter line in Hudson, officials said. The plan called for five trains heading from Bedford Heights to Cleveland weekday mornings and returning at night. In addition, there would have been two morning runs from North Akron to Cleveland with two trains returning at night. Service to Canton was not in that plan.
The $170 million cost to start up the line would have been divided equally between Summit and Cuyahoga counties.
The Ohio Association of Railroad Passengers is angry with AMATS’ action.
“This was an ambush, plain and simple,” said association Vice President Ken Prendergast, who said there is widespread support for the project.
Such actions are why Americans distrust government, he said, and the committee’s vote compromised the public’s trust.
“For the most part, government officials are honest people,” he said. “But this kind of behavior causes citizens to forget the good things they do. It’s ridiculous that three metro areas (Cleveland, Akron and Canton) having more than 3 million people must be held hostage by a misinformed village (Silver Lake) and some sour grapes that aren’t even part of the Cleveland-Akron-Canton corridor.”
He said some AMATS officials from Portage County voted to kill the project because they were angry that rail service through Kent had been rejected earlier.
He accused Silver Lake Mayor Warner Mendenhall of orchestrating the vote to kill the line.
To spend $85 million in Summit County funds for several hundred riders and to impose a quarter-percent sales tax to fund the train, Mendenhall said, would be “absolutely absurd… and an abuse of public funds.”
He said the project stirred concerns in his village but that he was most troubled by the costs.
Prendergast, however, said Northeast Ohio needs commuter rail.
“If we don’t build commuter rail, then we’ll have to spend even more taxpayers’ dollars to acquire land, demolish homes and add more expensive (highway) lanes to some highways just to handle rush-hour traffic,” he said. “This region can’t afford to do that — not when there’s an alternative out there that can save the taxpayers’ money, save our communities, protect the environment and improve mobility choices.”
A consulting firm, Parsons Brinckerhoff in Cleveland, had suggested that Northeast Ohio look at commuter rail between Akron and Cleveland, along with $629 million in highway improvements to reduce traffic congestion.
The firm spent three years on the $2.5 million study, which was funded with federal and state money.
Its report recommended setting up a commuter rail from North Akron to Cleveland, with stops in Cuyahoga Falls, Hudson, Macedonia, Bedford, Garfield Heights at Interstate 480 and three stops in Cleveland. A trip from Akron to Cleveland would have cost $3 one way and taken about an hour. The study projected 2,700 daily riders.