In Cleveland, the buses stop for suckers
An Opinion piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer rips into lots of people and things, and one of those things is the Euclid Corridor BRT project. He talks about the potentially-tainted concrete, but also about the potential cronyism used to complete the Euclid Corridor deals:
I have never understood the Euclid Corridor, either. After a couple of years of chopping up concrete, the corridor, now that it’s finished, lets you take a bus from Public Square to University Circle.
Of course, there already was such a bus. I think it was called the No. 6. But this was going to be a new bus (er, an Alternative Transit Vehicle) up and down Euclid Avenue. Euclid was going to be the yellow brick road to a whole new prosperity. Somehow.
I was there the day of the ribbon-cutting. The street looked very nice. But then, after about two weeks of manufactured civic bliss (if bliss is a bus running on a street) this story ran:
“RTA plans to test concrete along seven miles of Euclid Avenue to see if it contains a chemical that could erode steel bars, causing the road to crumble.. . . A Plain Dealer investigation in September showed family business connections among the three firms.”
There’s plenty of dysfunction to talk about in the city and the county. The feds are crawling around like ants, scanning county records for sweetheart deals.
I’ll confess to you that I don’t mind sweetheart deals when things are going well and the public gets a little taste of the loot.
But now, all is a shambles. Here and in Washington, we are asked to pick up the tab for people who have played us.
And the people who have played us have played us so long, I honestly think they are startled that we are sore at them for expecting us to pay their cronyism club dues.
This is a new day in the city, the county and the country. And the only reason it is, is that the con artists ran out of con.
Shame on them. And let’s hope we’re smart enough to know this: If we’re fooled again, shame on us.
In the meantime, if you walk along the Euclid Corridor, please don’t spit on the street. You might break it.
So…this guy is not a fan of BRT?
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