A Waterfront Line train departs Downtown Cleveland’s North Coast Station at East 9th Street. The light-rail line from Shaker Heights and Tower City Center will return to regular service Aug. 4 but for weekends and holidays only (KJP). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Rail line has been largely inactive since pandemic
ARTICLE UPDATED JULY 31, 2024
Starting Sunday, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) will restart regular service on the light-rail Waterfront Line in Downtown Cleveland, a 2.2-mile extension of the Blue/Green lines from Shaker Heights. But the service will be limited to weekends and most federal holidays only, and then from just 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Additionally, Waterfront Line service will operate for Cleveland Browns home football games during the 2024 season. Waterfront Line service will also be available during special events such as the WWE SummerSlam this Saturday, and the Rod Stewart & Billy Joel concert on Sept. 13. Service hours for those events will be based on the time of each event.
GCRTA considers weekend service to be for Saturdays and Sundays, so the trains will not run on Friday evenings or evening Saturday evenings when the Flats East Bank is busy with traffic and parking is limited. GCRTA normally operates holiday service on New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. However, Waterfront Line stations will not be served on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.
In a written statement, GCRTA said “The Waterfront Line is a key economic and entertainment access point, allowing RTA to connect the commercial and residential community to the Great Lakes Science Center, Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Browns football games and the Flats East Bank Entertainment
District.”
The transit authority suggests that potential riders visit www.riderta.com to plan their trip or to get details on routes and scheduled departure times. Riders can check the RTA Transit App for real-time arrival information. The GCRTA Transit App is available at www.transitapp.com for download to your Apple or Android device.
Waterfront Line map from 1996, the inaugural year of the 2.2-mile light-rail extension of the Blue and Green lines from Shaker Heights. It was extended from Tower City Center, through the Flats East Bank and along the lakefront railroad tracks to the Municipal Parking Lot at South Harbour Station. Some historic Flats restaurants are shown because they offered discounts to patrons showing GCRTA fare media (GCRTA).
“All Aboard Ohio is delighted to see expanded access to the GCRTA Waterfront Line,” John Esterly, executive director of the nonprofit rail and transit advocacy organization All Aboard Ohio. “Regular, reliable transit will continue to drive the economy of the Cleveland area, and these improvements will provide access for leisure users and for those with atypical work schedules.”
The Waterfront Line began service in July 1996 as bicentennial legacy project to help Cleveland celebrate its 200th birthday. The rail line cost $70 million to build and in 1997, as a daily service that ran to 2:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, carried double its projected annual ridership of 600,000 persons.
GCRTA wanted to build on the Waterfront Line’s early success by extending it beyond the Municipal Park Lot. A two-year study completed in 2000 recommended building Waterfront Phase II for $118 million as a downtown loop on East 17th Street, Euclid Avenue, East 21st/22nd streets, Community College Avenue and East 30th Street back to the Red/Blue/Green lines.
But as the Flats East Bank declined in the 2000s, so did ridership. During the Great Recession of 2008-10, GCRTA finances and ridership were hit hard and the Waterfront Line was an easy target for service cutbacks. A major redevelopment of the Flats East Bank in the early 2010s helped ridership improve a bit.
GCRTA had to make $8.7 million worth of repairs to a long, curving bridge over Front Street and Norfolk Southern railroad tracks at the north end of the Flats. The curving bridge and the movement of trains causes stress on the sectional concrete bridge (ACI Concrete Convention).
Its closure after the pandemic was due to a 645-foot-long bridge over Front Street and the lakefront railroad tracks needing $8.7 million worth of repairs. Five stations were also spruced up last year for $1 million total. Work on the bridge and stations was done in time so the line could serve nine Cleveland Browns regular season home games in 2023.
GCRTA officials note that the rail line cannot be shut down permanently or they will have to refund millions in federal funds. The transit authority tapped federal funds to rebuild the long bridge over Front Street and to replace two street crossings in the Flats in 2015 including with new tracks and concrete roadway panels.
A report by Cleveland State University Masters of Urban Planning and Development this year recommended that the Waterfront Line return to daily service. Some students suggested it run 24 hours to take home Flats bar patrons and workers as well as Amtrak passengers whose Cleveland trains are scheduled during the overnight hours.
They also urged that the city incentivize development of city-owned parking lots near Waterfront Line stations to support transit-oriented development and create ridership generators. City planning officials told NEOtrans they supported the recommendations but GCRTA has so far declined to have the students make a presentation at a transit authority board meeting.
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