About a year and a half ago I posted a thread about which cities in North America had street-level rail transit, called streetcars, trolleys, or light rail. Tomndebb, I believe, said that the rail transit line in Shaker Heights is right down the middle of a main street. (I regret to say I don’t have time right now to post a link but I can do so later.)
Anyway, a friend I’ll call Bert said that certain people have already exercised influence to have ‘the tracks in Cleveland/Shaker Heights torn out’ and refuses to listen to my claim, based on my answers in the thread. So Tomndebb, or anyone else, are there still rail-transit vehicles there? Thanx. 
The Rapid through Shaker is still running at this time. It comes up from the Cuyahoga valley in a trench between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Shaker Boulevard and as the land levels off at the top of the hill it comes up to the road surface just west of Shaker Square. It rolls through Shaker Square, still between the lanes of Shaker Boulevard, then the Green Line continues down the grass plot/boulevard center of Shaker Boulevard until just past Green Rd. Meanwhile, the Blue line angles south in the center of Van Aken Boulevard from just east of Shaker Square, at which point it goes back into a trench (I would guess to allow bridges to cross it to reduce the number of surface crossings between cars and trains). It continues to the end of Van Aken where it again returns to the surface in the boulevard median strip to wreak havoc on traffic trying to get between Van Aken Plaza and Chagrin Boulevard. Rapid Transit maps, 2002 (Adobe .pdf)
Now, they are, indeed, messing with Shaker Square and there may be plans to re-route the line either beneath the square or around it. I haven’t followed those discussions closely. However, I have heard nothing of ripping out or burying the Green Line so that it no longer runs down the median of Shaker Boulevard. (If I gave the impression that the streetcars were continuously out in traffic in the earlier thread, I apologize. They are only in direct competition with cars for a hundred yards or so entering and leaving Shaker Square and at the crossings along Shaker Boulevard.
If the issue is whether a trolley shares lanes with cars (outside an intersection), the answer is no. If the issue is whether Rapid cars actually interfere with automobile traffic, the answer is yes, particularly at the Shaker/Van Aken intersection and at the terminus at Van Aken Plaza. I’m not sure how you would want to describe the Green line which is in the center of the roadway, but on the median strip of a boulevard.
The Rapid through Shaker is still running at this time. It comes up from the Cuyahoga valley in a trench between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Shaker Boulevard and as the land levels off at the top of the hill it comes up to the road surface just west of Shaker Square. It rolls through Shaker Square, still between the lanes of Shaker Boulevard, then the Green Line continues down the grass plot/boulevard center of Shaker Boulevard until just past Green Rd. Meanwhile, the Blue line angles south in the center of Van Aken Boulevard from just east of Shaker Square, at which point it goes back into a trench (I would guess to allow bridges to cross it to reduce the number of surface crossings between cars and trains). It continues to the end of Van Aken where it again returns to the surface in the boulevard median strip to wreak havoc on traffic trying to get between Van Aken Plaza and Chagrin Boulevard. Rapid Transit maps, 2002 (Adobe .pdf)
Now, they are, indeed, messing with Shaker Square and there may be plans to re-route the line either beneath the square or around it. I haven’t followed those discussions closely. However, I have heard nothing of ripping out or burying the Green Line so that it no longer runs down the median of Shaker Boulevard. (If I gave the impression that the streetcars were continuously out in traffic in the earlier thread, I apologize. They are only in direct competition with cars for a hundred yards or so entering and leaving Shaker Square and at the crossings along Shaker Boulevard.
If the issue is whether a trolley shares lanes with cars (outside an intersection), the answer is no. If the issue is whether Rapid cars actually interfere with automobile traffic, the answer is yes, particularly at the Shaker/Van Aken intersection and at the terminus at Van Aken Plaza. I’m not sure how you would want to describe the Green line which is in the center of the roadway, but on the median strip of a boulevard.
Ahhhh the line down Shaker Blvd… memories of my childhood (and my mother’s for that matter). Of course, the line came nowhere NEAR where I lived (Chagrin Falls), But my Gram lived right on Shaker, so we’d see it every time we visited.
tomndebb double-posts!
I’m headin’ for my fall-out shelter.:eek:
dougie. Where does “Bert” live? How would S/he know about this?
Samclem, he lives in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County a few miles from me. Remember the aerial hospital shots in Emergency? It’s near there. Apparently he used to live back east–he’s past 75 now–and claims the tracks were torn out. For all I know he’s talking about a streetcar line that was abandoned before I was born.
Ah, memories. I used to take the Green Line to Shaker Square back in college, when I had an internship at Channel 19. It was still the FOX affililiate at that time – it was just about 6 months prior to it getting the CBS affiliation from Channel 8. Anyhoo, it was one of the few neighborhoods in Cleveland where the Rapid was street level and parallel to traffic; just about everyplace else, the Rapid stops are at elevated or sub-street platforms. I thought it added a lot to the feel of the neighborhood.
That sounds like the logical answer.
When I worked downtown at the Cleveland Public Library, I took the Shaker Rapid all the way to the Terminal Tower (this was when they were building Tower City Center, in 1990), and walked a couple blocks east on Superior from Public Square. I read in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History that the Rapid tracks ran through a small gorge southeast of downtown called the “Kingsbury Run,” and that this was the infamous area where they discovered the bodies during the “Torso Murders” of the 1930s. <urk> While riding through there, I looked out the window but didn’t see anything much. I think the area is more built-over now.
I sure got a lot of reading done on the Rapid, compared to now when I have to drive to work. Sometimes I fell asleep and missed my stop at Warrensville Center Road. I just rode all the way to the end of the line at Green Road, turned around, and caught my stop on the rebound.
Shaker Square hasn’t been the same since we lost Arabica (a cool coffeehouse that had been a Heights cultural institution for a quarter century, and was murdered by Starbucks). But the Shaker Cinema is still a great place for movies.
The Van Sweringen brothers were the ones with the vision for the Terminal Tower, the Shaker Rapid, Shaker Square, and the Heights as a swank residential area. In the 1920s and 1930s. They deserve much of the credit for making the East Side what it is today.