Service cuts are coming to Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority next year after the board passed its 2026 budget Tuesday.
The board voted unanimously to approve a budget that saves $11.2 million by reducing service, implementing a hiring freeze, eliminating 56 vacant positions, restructuring business functions and reducing overtime.
"We wanted to basically pass the budget so we can get through the year," GCRTA President and CEO India Birdsong Terry said, "but also look out into the next couple years to make sure that we aren't subject to the fiscal cliff that's going on with some of our sister agencies throughout the country."
Service cuts are eminent unless GCRTA can find another funding source, Birdsong Terry said. But it is still working to identify exactly where and how much of its bus, train and trolley service will be affected by examining bus and train frequency, ridership and operational costs.
"Looking at how many buses, for example, are duplicative of each other, and are they within reasonable walking distance," Birdsong Terry said, "and then looking at those routes and seeing how often that they operate, what the operating cost is associated with that, what the manpower is."
Concerns remain for some riders, like Eric Stewart, that these cuts will prevent GCRTA from adequately serving the Greater Cleveland area.
"Do you already know if the 50, 48, 15, 14, 40, and 19 bus routes are going to have reductions in service in the upcoming year? It is best to let the public know about this as soon as possible," Stewart wrote in an online public comment at Tuesday's board meeting. "The public is owed a fair opportunity to receive the facts on these suggestions and make a thorough examination so ridership can make a decision on if they want these routes."
Public outreach is an essential sticking point for Paul Meissner, a Shaker Heights resident and appointee on GCRTA's Community Advisory Committee.
"This is not a situation that anybody here created, but it's a situation that we can get in front of on a PR point of view, leveling of with the constituents of Cuyahoga County and saying this is what we need to do in order to resolve the situation," Meissner siad. "So I just ask that everyone be upfront and be transparent as possible about the realism of the situation that we're in."
Tuesday's vote is an early form of notification that change is coming, Birdsong Terry said.
"We will be able to come back to the community, back to public, back to [the] board, likely around quarter two, with the idea that those cuts would happen sometime in the summer of 2026," she said. "This is really a notification for folks so that they're aware of it, but we will never cut without notification first."
