The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority made out well in the President Joe Biden years. It won a $130 million federal grant to replace aging rail cars. Cleveland’s two leading Congressional Democrats – Rep. Shontel Brown and Sen. Sherrod Brown – commemorated the moment with a giant prop check presentation in 2023.
So how does RTA keep federal money flowing from a second President Donald Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Capitol Hill?
RTA CEO India Birdsong Terry said last week that she and her team have been talking about that issue. Part of the answer is making sure RTA is on officials’ minds in conversations about how people get from one place to another – whether that official is Ohio’s Vice President-elect JD Vance or Sen.-elect Bernie Moreno.
“We have to be able to translate that mobility from highways and cars to buses and trains,” Terry said.
Terry stressed the economic and workforce argument for transit. Employers need workers, and workers need a way to get to their jobs.
And then there are the informal ways of getting officials’ attention. At a 2023 Senate Banking Committee hearing, Terry and Vance connected over the fact that they’re both parents to young kids, she said.
She made the remarks last week during an open-ended press conference for media interested in learning more about the transit agency.
… and RTA joins the Browns conversation
No media event is complete these days without at least one question about the Browns’ potential move to Brook Park. And no wonder, with possibly $1.2 billion in public money at stake.
At RTA’s media day, Terry said she has spoken with Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam about including the transit agency in stadium planning. If built, the new Browns campus wouldn’t be far from the Red Line stop at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport.
RTA has already spent millions improving the airport stop, according to Terry. She suggested that future dollars would have to come from someone else.
“I would implore the powers that be to make sure that they also line their budgets with enough dollars to make sure that we can be accessible once the development plans are made,” she said.
Terry didn’t specify which “powers that be” she was referring to. But it may well be anyone who can spare some change for the taxpayer-supported RTA.