RTA's new Cedar Hill center to offer safer, more efficient way to use buses, trains

Posted September 20, 2012 in Articles

Author: Tom Breckenridge

An ugly, half century-old RTA transit center at the foot of Cedar Hill will become a sleeker, safer and more accessible hub with Wednesday's ground-breaking for an $18.5 million rebuild.

Station users won't lose access to buses and Red Line trains during the two-year construction. But it will be a pain for the estimated 33,000 drivers a day who ply the hilly link with Cleveland Heights, one of the city's busier commuter routes.

The biggest impact will be on drivers heading east out of the city and up the hill. Starting the first week of October, Cedar Avenue will squeeze to two lanes, instead of three, from about Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to Ambleside Road, officials said.

Those coming down Cedar Hill during morning rush hour won't lose any of their three lanes.

The transit center, which hugs a dingy bridge overpass, will see radical change, driven partly by a need to unify the bus and rail operations, said officials with the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

A bus station south of Cedar will move to the north side of the road. A nearby bus loop will become green space.

Original Article: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/09/rtas_new_cedar_hill_center_to.html#incart_river_def