Abstract
James Toman is a photographer and author who has written two books on the Shaker Rapid system. An authority on the subject, Toman continues to give talks and present slide shows on the Shaker line and owns a vast personal collection of around 2000 photographs that he has taken of the trains since the 1970s. In this interview Toman relates the history of the Shaker Rapid from its origins as a capital venture on the part of the Van Sweringen brothers all the way up to the present, relating stories of proposed transit projects that never came to fruition along with placing the public transportation system of Cleveland into a broader national context.
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Interviewee
Toman, James (Interviewee)
Interviewer
Halligan-Taylor, Gabriella (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Centennial
Date
7-19-2012
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
62 minutes
Recommended Citation
"James Toman Interview, 19 July 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 915029.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/515
Transcript
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:00:01] Okay, go ahead and start. Go ahead and start off with saying your name and the date, please.
James Toman [00:00:07] My name is James Toman. And today is July 19, 2012.
Gabriele Haligan-Taylor [00:00:16] And let’s start off with. Let’s go right into it with the Rapid. I see you have all of your resources out. Kind of- How did the idea for the Rapids?
James Toman [00:00:27] Well, the Van Sweringens were real estate developers, Oris Paxton and Mantis James, the two brothers. And they had had a success with their development on Fairmount Boulevard. In order to make that a success, they convinced the Cleveland Railway Company to run a trolley line down Fairmont Boulevard. Well, the brothers had been accumulating land in what is now Shaker Heights, and they knew if they were going to be successful in developing that, that they needed to have a trolley line come into Shaker.
James Toman [00:01:06] So they approached Cleveland Railway once again and said, would they be willing to build a line off the Fairmount line into what is now Shaker Boulevard? And Cleveland Railway said, oh, no, no, no, no. We’re losing money as it is on the Fairmount line. The Van Sweringens, because they needed a line, said, we’ll pay for its construction and we’ll pay you monthly for its operation, so please go ahead.
James Toman [00:01:35] And that made the deal and a line was built. It branched off of Fairmount Boulevard at Coventry, went along Coventry in the median strip to Shaker Boulevard, and then it turned east and ended up on Fontenay Road. That was the first end of the line on the Shaker Rapid.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:01:57] And was the Cleveland Railway S ystem already kind of developed as far as transportation goes?
James Toman [00:02:05] Yes, it was very well developed. In 1910, after a protracted series of lawsuits and other such things, the court gave control of all of the operations in Cleveland to the Cleveland railway company in 1910. So with that consolidation and with that management in place, the system was in pretty good shape. It continued to add to its lines.
James Toman [00:02:41] For example, Fairmount in those days ended at Lee Road. And then eventually they extended it out to Canterbury, a little bit shy of a Warrensville Center. And they extended other lines as well. But it was a thriving enterprise and very well managed. John Stanley was the president of Cleveland Railways, Cleveland Railway no s on it, and he did a very good job.
James Toman [00:03:16] The problem with the line that they developed for the Van Swearingens, though, who had promised that they would have Rapid Transit for their new community, is that it wasn’t very rapid. If you took the streetcar from Fontenay, then you got over to Coventry and then you got over to Fairmount and then from Fairmount to Cedar and then down Cedar Hill and then over To Stearns Road, and from Stearns Road to Euclid Avenue, and then on its way Downtown.
James Toman [00:03:50] Well, the brothers knew that that was not going to be a great inducement to future development, and so they decided that they would improve it.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:04:05] Just a quick question before we kind of get into the improvements, was before the Terminal Tower was constructed, where was, like, the center of kind of these transits going in and out?
James Toman [00:04:19] Well, Public Square was always the center of public transportation in Cleveland. The various streetcar lines looped around each of the quadrants. The four quadrants of the square. The West Side lines came in along West Superior Avenue, and they looped around the southwest quadrant, which is the one today, right in front of the Terminal.
James Toman [00:04:46] Or they looped around the northwest quadrant. East Side lines coming in down Euclid looped around the south southeast quadrant, which is where the Soldiers and Sailors Monument is, and other lines coming more northerly, and came in down Superior and looped around the northeast quadrant. So that was always the center. And we also had interurban lines connecting Cleveland with other cities.
James Toman [00:05:27] We had the Lakeshore Electric, which went out west to Lorain and beyond. We had the Northern Ohio Traction and Light, which went down to Akron. We had the Cleveland Southwestern, which went to Mansfield and then down to Columbus. And these all came Downtown, too. Well, the Van Sweringens had this idea that on the southwest quadrant of the square, they could build a station for the interurban lines, and they could all meet in there and have a nice waiting room and so on.
James Toman [00:06:06] And so they purchased the land on that corner with the idea of having an interurban station. That was the beginning of the Terminal Tower development.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:06:20] I got a lot from there.
James Toman [00:06:22] Yes, good question.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:06:24] Okay, so was Public Square just as hectic then as it is now?
James Toman [00:06:31] Just as?
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:06:33] Like, hectic. As busy?
James Toman [00:06:35] Oh, it was much, much busier then. I mean, in the course of a day, you would probably have several thousand streetcars going through. I mean, today we think of Pullman Trail. In 1911, RTA carried 46 million passengers. In 1946, it carried 497 million passengers. They all needed a vehicle. And round and round the square they went. So it was very, very busy. And there were waiting stations which were designed sort of in an Oriental fashion when they were nicknamed pagodas. And they had these on the different quadrants so people could wait in them if it was raining or snowing.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:07:30] So when the Van Sweringens kind of decided that they needed to actually build a Rapid train, did they buy out the land, or did they- How did they kind of go around Cleveland Railway.
James Toman [00:07:45] Well, they, of course, they own the land in Shaker Heights. And they own land going down really almost all the way to East 93rd. And then they bought land beyond that. And all of that land, of course, was empty. And so it became a major construction project to cut the Rapid from Coventry and Shaker Boulevard all the way down through the heart of the industrial zone in Cleveland.
James Toman [00:08:31] And work began that in 1912. And tons of blasting went on to create that cut, which goes right from Shaker Square all the way down to Woodhill Road. And from there, there are some bridges carrying the Rapid further east. But their desire to get the Rapid from Shaker Square, they had this land, but they had to cross over the right away of the Nickel Plate Railroad. So they were interested in negotiating with the Nickel Plate for the rights to do that. In the meantime, the New York Central Railroad, which owned the Nickel Plate Railroad, was under court order to get rid of the Nickel Plate and divest itself. So New York Central approached advance and said, look, we could have a wonderful agreement here. You buy the Nickel Plate from us, you get your access to downtown, and we can follow the right of way. You’re building on adjacent tracks. We need the downtown warehouse, which eventually was built between East 37th Street there were warehouses. And then at East 14th street there were warehouses. So the Van Swearingens bought the Nickel Plate Railroad. And that was the start of building their railroad empire. The Nickel Plate was in terrible shape. And the motto that its critics had came up with is, the Nickel Plate runs just often enough to be dangerous. But the Van Sweringens, who like to do everything right, hired excellent man John Burnett to run the railroad. And he really made a success out of the Nickel Plate.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:10:41] And the whole development of the Rapid was kind of. Was it a. Was Shaker developed because of the Rapid, or was the Rapid developed around Shaker, or was it kind of both?
James Toman [00:10:58] Probably the Rapid was the most significant influence in making Shaker happen. Because in those days, if you lived out in this area or were thinking of living in Shaker Heights, you had to deal with these major hills. From the Heights going down to Downtown, the automobiles of the day would find Cedar Hill and all those quite a challenge. So public transit, with the electric motors and operating on track instead of roads that in bad weather became almost impassable was a key thing. And so the appeal of the Van’s to build this wonderful community of Shaker Heights certainly had its appeal. But without the Rapid, it’s hard to say how far those dreams would have gone.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:12:11] So what was the success rate of the Rapid after it was completed?
James Toman [00:12:17] Well, it began construction on the actual Rapid in 1912. Of course, then we had World War I and it was difficult to get steel and other products. So from 1912, it was not until 1920 that construction was completed on the Rapid. So the line that had existed on Shaker was connected down through Shaker Square and South Moreland Boulevard. Now Van Aken Boulevard, which had no Rapid one, was built there. So on Shaker Boulevard, the line was extended to Courtland. And on Van Aken, the line went from Lynnfield. And that started running in April of 1920, but it didn’t go all the way Downtown. It went to East 34th Street. And the construction between East 34th and Public Square was just beginning.
James Toman [00:13:44] The Terminal project was in 1919 beginning. So at East 34th Street, from this wonderful private right of way, the streakers had to climb a ramp and go down what was then Pittsburgh Avenue - today it’s called Broadway - and make its way on surface tracks to Public Square, where it looped along the southwest quadrant.
James Toman [00:14:12] And it had different routings downtown over those years. But ultimately it always went around that southwest quadrant. And that remained in place until the Terminal Tower project was finished. Probably calling it the Terminal Tower Project isn’t truly appropriate. We should call it the Cleveland Union Terminal project, Of which the Terminal Tower was one part and that did not operate. Those tracks weren’t completed, and the Terminal was not finished until 1930. And so it was on July 20, 1930, that the first Shaker Rapids went all the way Downtown on private railway.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:15:08] And so was it just kind of- So during this kind of 1920–1930 phase, was it exciting for Cleveland and [inaudible] Shaker, and all these projects were being completed, or was it just kind of a necessity?
James Toman [00:15:24] Probably the transit pieces were not particularly eye catching, but building that Terminal Tower surely was, and taking this really broken down, dilapidated part of the city and converting it into this wonderful facility. Some 2200 buildings had to be raised in order to create that. Streets were vacated, bridges built, and a train line, which the Van Sweringens built to bring passenger trains to the new station, was built all the way from Collinwood on the east side to Linndale on the west side. So there had to be a huge viaduct going across the Cuyahoga river to get things to the west. So it was a huge, huge project. In those days it cost $179 million to build. Today it would be almost 3 billion. So, yes. So people, I think most exciting thing for them was watching the Terminal Tower go up. And originally there wasn’t supposed to be a tower. It was only going to be a 14 story office building. And the Van’s recognized they were such advanced thinkers that they owned all this land, but fairly small acreage, really Downtown. The way to take most advantage of it was to build up. And so the Terminal Tower grew from 14 stories to become a 52-story building.
James Toman [00:17:25] And really beyond the 43rd floor, it’s nothing. It’s tiny, tiny little floors with a spiral staircase. It’s filled with spiders. And they built these extra floors just to make a statement about Cleveland’s greatness. And, you know, I mean, if we think today, imagine a developer adding 10 floors to a building just to make it look neat. I mean, unthinkable. But the Vans had this sense of let’s do this and let’s do this right. And so the Terminal became the tallest building in the United States outside of New York City from 1930 to 1967.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:18:12] Yeah, I think it was actually for a year, I think it was the tallest building until, I think it was Empire State Building?
James Toman [00:18:19] Yes. While the terminal was going up, so was the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and there was one taller in New York. All the while it was the Woolworth Building. So, yeah, so that was the Van Sweringens’ contribution downtown. And in the meantime, they kept buying railroads until they owned 27,000 miles of railroad track stretching all the way to the West Coast. And so they thought big. And in the meantime they continued to develop Shaker Heights. And so their stamp on this community is huge and irreplaceable.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:19:19] And with the tower completed in 1930, I feel bad timing. Did the depression kind of hinder the success?
James Toman [00:19:31] Yes, the Black Tuesday was in 1929. And so a year later, when the Terminal is being dedicated, June 30, 1930, people, I think, were beginning to become a little bit hesitant, but the thought was still that this could be a temporary correction in the market and so on. Well, as time went on, things became worse and worse and worse. So as the Depression deepened, the Van Sweringens, who built all this on borrowed money, began to run into banks that wanted to collect their money. The Van’s income stream was significantly reduced. They couldn’t pay the banks what they owed them on time, and so ultimately they lost everything. They might have made a comeback. They had a friend in Indianapolis who bought up much of what the Van’s had owned at bargain basement prices, and he hired the brothers back to run it. So now they no longer owned it, but they were still in charge of it. But unfortunately, the younger brother, Mantis James, died in 1935, and Oris Paxton, the older brother, died one year later. So they never saw the ultimate recovery and success of their dreams.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:21:31] They finished everything just in time, really. Depression [inaudible] before their- [inaudible]]
James Toman [00:21:35] Sort of. If you would have gone downtown and gone up to the observation deck of the Terminal and looked down from there, you would have seen these open plots of land that were designed to hold additional buildings, but they were never built. To this day, if you come into Downtown via Broadway, Ontario, you see this huge banner which is affixed to the side of the Landmark Office Towers briefly had held an effigy of LeBron James. Sherwin-Williams took that down. And now they have a wonderful thing there. But there’s this open piece of land, and a wall keeps people from falling down into the pit. That was meant to be another office building. If you’d have gone down Huron or Prospect, two more office buildings just to go up. They’re there now. They were built as part of the Tower City development, 1990. If you go all the way over to Superior Avenue, next to the garage and banquet hall for the Renaissance Hotel, there’s another down spot in which nothing has yet been built. So, their dreams, even for downtown, were never quite finished.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:23:13] Mm-hmm. At least until started, kind of finishing-
James Toman [00:23:16] Yes, and Forest City Enterprises filled in some of those gaps.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:23:21] But just not until recently
James Toman [00:23:23] Yeah, 1990. Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:23:30] Kind of getting out of the Depression. World War II came along. Did that affect anything or just because everything was built, so?
James Toman [00:23:37] Well, it did. The Vans lost, of course, control of the Shaker Rapid as well as everything else. And the banks foreclosed on the Shaker Rapid and took it over. That occurred in 1935, and they appointed the board of trustees to run the Rapid. Of course, the bankers weren’t in transportation business, but they didn’t want to lose that asset that their money had been sunk into. So they continued to operate it. And in fact, they had. They wanted also to show that the Rapid was going to continue to expand. And so they extended the Shaker Boulevard branch out to first Warrensville Center Road, and then out to Green Road. And from Green Road on, they. They put in stanchions to indicate that that’s where they would continue to build the overhead wire for saying to people, we’re going to continue to move east, so therefore, buy your homes and plots of land now. That never happened. So the Rapids stopped at Green Road. But during the Depression, ridership, of course, was down because people weren’t working. So they were at very tough times. This continued until the bankers. World War II came and ridership skyrocketed because the federal government put all these restrictions on rubber tires, on gasoline purchases and so on. So people who had sort of shifted to their cars, as many in Shaker Heights would have done because the affluent community, they had good private. And the roads were adequate then, but now the car was sort of saved for weekend trips and hop on the Rapid to get to work. So ridership went up and the Shaker Rapid’s all time peak of Rapid riding was in 1947 when seven and a half million people rode it.
James Toman [00:26:28] But before 1947, the bankers wanted to get rid of it. It just was not their interest. So they tried to find a buyer for it. Well, Cleveland Railway wasn’t interested. And Cleveland Railway in 1942 was taken over by Cleveland Transit System. They were not interested. Finally the bankers said, if someone doesn’t buy it, we’re going to tear it up and sell it for scrap value. Well, the mayor of Shaker Heights at that point said, oh my goodness, no, no, no. This is a vital asset for our community. And more than a transportation asset, the Rapid sort of defined the character of Shaker Heights. It was a real part of the culture of the community. So he said, if you’re going to, how much would you get for it? Scrap value? And they said, oh, one and a half million dollars. He said, well, I’ll pay scrap value for it. So he got a bargain. And it was in September 1944 that the city of Shaker Heights became the owner of the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit. Its real name before that was the Cleveland Interurban Railroad, but it became Shaker Heights Rapid Transit. Really not until 1944. Everyone called it the Shaker Rapid though.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:28:05] I was going to ask if they just called it the Rapid.
James Toman [00:28:07] Yeah, the Rapid. Yeah, take the Rapid.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:28:12] And it did- You mentioned kind of how more people, especially in Shaker taking cars, especially with, you know, Henry Ford and his development just in Detroit, which is fairly close to Cleveland, you know, not as far as California or something, but with that development of, you know, the cheap Flivver King, Ford Model T, all that, did that have any kind of effect on it or was it just because it was the Depression so people weren’t really buying any?
James Toman [00:28:40] Well, Cleveland was before Detroit became Motor City. Cleveland probably was Motor City. We produced all kinds of cars, high end models. When Detroit passed us up, it was because Ford realized that the market for high end vehicles was limited, but the market for low priced vehicles was huge. And so as these lower priced vehicles came on, the Wintons and The Peerless and all these cars that had been Cleveland’s, Bakers, those companies all folded, but a lot of the people in Shaker Heights weren’t driving those expensive cars.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:29:42] So generally didn’t have an effect? No. And with Cleveland being a big steel industry, so they had all the parts there for the automobile.
James Toman [00:29:49] Yes, yes. And really, the only remnant of. Well, there are a couple remnants, but the main remnant of the Cleveland automobile heritage is the current Euclid Avenue property of the Cleveland Institute of Art at East 115th in Euclid. That was an old Ford factory, and that’s now where the Cleveland Institute of Art is putting on a new wing. And they have two campuses now, one on East Boulevard, one on Euclid Avenue. They will combine them all at that old Ford factory.
Gabriele Haligan-Taylor [00:30:30] Oh, that’s cool. Yeah, I didn’t know that. So kind of going through late 1940s, going into the 1950s, what kind of changes were happening? Happening in Shaker?
James Toman [00:30:44] Well, in 1944, when the Rapid was taken over, there were also all these plans for new highways to be built and Rapid Transit extensions everywhere. And part of that plan was to build a downtown subway. And it was going to loop from Public Square out to East 14th Street and create a Downtown Loop. And it was going to be built by Cleveland Transit System. And so they said to Shaker, Mayor Van Aken, and Paul Jones, his appointee as General Manager at the Rapid. Would you want to be part of this subway plan? And he said, well, sure, that would make it. You know, not all of our patrons want to get off in the square. Some of them want to get off at East 9th street and so on. So that was the planning. And so in 1948, as the fleet of cars that were running on the Shaker Rapid had become old, the original cars were built in 1914, so they were already 30 years old. They had bought, under the banking trustees era, they bought a couple more secondhand cars.
James Toman [00:32:13] But it was time to update the fleet. And so they decided that they would buy a PCC fleet. President’s Conference Cars is what they were called. And they were being implemented all over the country. And the Shaker Rapid decided to buy 25 of them from Pullman Standard in Boston. And they were equipped with a door on the right hand side in the middle, which was designed for their use on the subway. Depending on which way it was going, people could get off at either side if they had center platforms or side platforms. They received those new cars in 1948. But before 1948 occurred, CTS changed its mind about building that subway, instead decided they would build a Rapid Transit Line without a subway, which would go from the West Side of Cleveland, West 117th Street, out to Windermere on Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland. It now goes all the way to the airport. But so Shaker Heights bought these cars with the side door, and they were never used. So they just sealed them and put a bench there, a passenger bench there. But that was being a modernization of the line. The PCCs worked fine. They were very comfortable. And so in 1953, they bought a fleet of secondhand ones from Minneapolis. And then in 1959, they bought another bunch of used ones from St. Louis. So they ultimately had 55 of these modern cars.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor[00:34:21] Is that down on the third?
James Toman [00:34:22] Mm-hmm. And these cars ran on the Rapid then from 1940, some on until the very last of them operated in December 1985.
James Toman [00:34:45] Can you stop that for a minute? Okay.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:34:51] Just- Do you think the lack of the development of the Cleveland subway was good or bad over the course of the?
James Toman [00:35:00] Well, to me, it was an error, because cities that developed these, like Philadelphia and Boston, continue to run on a variety of lines, which all merged in Downtown. Cleveland is stuck with one Downtown station. And that means that if people are not working right at Public Square or doing their business, they have to get off and either walk or take a bus. And taking a bus or walking when the weather is not so nice is a disadvantage. The people of Cuyahoga County approved a subway. After the original subway plan had failed. Cleveland Transit built their Rapid Transit Line. And then the calls were, let’s build again this downtown loop subway. And the people voted money for it, $35 million to build it. But at that time, Cuyahoga County’s engineer was a fellow named Bert Porter. Bert Porter had no use for public transit whatever. He thought everything needed to be highways. And so he fought tooth and nail against building that subway. And he finally convinced the county commissioners not to issue the bonds for it. So in 1959, it became a dead issue.
James Toman [00:36:44] Bert Porter was also the man who wanted to put a freeway running right through the heart of Shaker Heights, right through our Shaker Lakes.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor[00:36:50] The Clark Freeway?
James Toman [00:36:52] Yeah. And so one of his plans was finally stymied by the huge civic, you know, protests that that drew. And now that that freeway ends at East 55th street, they’re now talking about extending it, but not extending it into Shaker, but extending it via the CTS Rapid right away to University Circle. So people go from the West Side right to the museums and institutions, the University Circle, without any having to deal with too much traffic.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:37:30] I would like that, because I-
James Toman [00:37:34] Yeah. And the plans Are pretty well drawn. The problem is that the county has no money, the state has no money, the federal government has no money. So it’s going to probably be 2020 before it’s finished. [crosstalk]
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:37:55] Yeah, it’d be interesting because to avoid kind of going through all these cities and towns, you would think that maybe they consider going back to a subway that extends east and west as well as going around, you know, Downtown Cleveland.
James Toman [00:38:13] Well, the last attempt to put in any kind of subway was in 1984 when Cleveland Transit wanted to build what was called the Dual Hub line, which would have gone from Public Square to University Circle, and it would have been a subway from Public Square to about East 18th Street or maybe East 21st, Cleveland State University. Well, everyone thought that was a wonderful plan, but its cost was nearly a billion dollars. So they settled for rebuilding Euclid Avenue with bus lanes, which I don’t think was a great transit improvement. However, rebuilding the avenue was a great development thing because Euclid Avenue now looks nice. They put in this wonderful fiber optic network. So we have the second best fiber optic network in the country. And this is a real inducement for the medical industry and the hospitals and so on to continue to build on Euclid. So as a development project, it was great. But my sense is that we do not have the financial resources locally to ever see a subway.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:39:44] Not in the near future?
James Toman [00:39:48] No. And the Shaker Rapid had a wonderful opportunity, and I thought it would have made great sense in the 1970s. It was supposed to take the Shaker Boulevard line from Green Road and continue it on all that land was open and take it all the way up past Richmond Road to a huge parking lot at Interstate 271. This would have meant that people coming along 271 and wanting to go Downtown could stop there, hop on the Rapid, and down they’d go. But the residents along Shaker Boulevard thought that that would be an unpleasant intrusion on their tranquility. There’s the expression NIMBY, not in my backyard. And so the plan came to naught. But to this day, if you were to go down Shaker Boulevard, you could see how all that land in the center was kept open. At Richmond Road, there was an underpass. Rapid could have gone right under it. It could have gone through Brainard Circle, right past where 271 is now. The Circle was meant to turn cars. It could have then shifted over via Gates Mills Boulevard, going all the way out to Mayfield Road and on a huge. So if you go down Gates Mills, that huge median strip could have held four tracks and eight lanes for automobiles, because none of that was ever built, of course, but the Vans had these grand visions.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:41:43] So kind of getting into you personally, how did you find yourself a part of the Rapid?
James Toman [00:41:52] Well, I grew up in Maple Heights, Ohio, which is to the south of Shaker and near Lee Road. And I had learned that there was this wonderful trolley line because I love trolleys. From the age as long as I can remember being alive, when we would go to visit my grandparents in Cleveland and so on, I’d see the streetcars. I was so excited. And at age 10, my parents thought I was old enough to go downtown by myself on a Saturday. They’d give me a dollar and I would buy a strip of tickets. I’d ride the streetcars all day, go to Kresge’s and get two hot dogs and a birch beer, two comic books. Come home with seven cents change. But I would often go down into the Terminal and go down the steps and look at the Rapid because I thought it was really exciting. So to get to the Rapid for Maple Heights, you had to take two different buses to get there. And in those days they were a separate system. Those buses were Cleveland Transit, the Rapid, Shaker Heights, you had to pay two fares. And my mother did not think that was a wise investment of money. But if I pleaded enough, she’d give in and we’d do it that way. So those are my first rides on the Rapid from Lee Road down. And I probably did the first ones in 1950, ’52, in that era, and always loved the Rapid since.
James Toman [00:43:40] In 1970, I started- I got my first good camera and then I started recording the Rapid. And I’d come down a couple times a week and go to different stops and photo it. So I now have probably about 2,000 images of the Shaker Rapid during its era. And so in 1987, by 1987, I had been writing books on Cleveland history and we had four of them done. So my name was sort of out there. And I got contacted by a California company who wanted to have a book written on the Shaker Rapid because it was this unique line. So I proceeded and over the next two years I wrote the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit. And the book unfortunately, they did not print sufficient quantities of it and it was sold out very quickly. And at that time, the company that published it was taken over by another company who was not interested in publishing books. They wanted to do everything on video. So there was this gap. And so that was why 16 years later, I’m getting all these calls from people. Do I have any of the original book that I put out? This one. So I’ve done two books on the Shaker Rapid.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:45:39] When did you do this one?
James Toman [00:45:41] That was 2005. And that one, of course, is primarily a picture book with short little essays for each section.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:45:50] But nowadays, I feel that’s better because no one wants to read.
James Toman [00:45:55] No one wants to read. And so since 1989 book came out, I’ve been asked by different organizations to give them talks on the Shaker Rapid, which I always enjoy doing. And I have slide presentation, which I give.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:46:27] And all of these are most of them your original photos or all of them?
James Toman [00:46:34] All the old ones, of course, are not. Those come from Cleveland State University has received a gift of all of the construction photos of the Terminal Project, and that included building the Rapid Transit. So that exists. The Shaker Historical Society has a collection of old photos as well. And then since I did not get a camera until 1970, but being a trolley fan, I have a bunch of older friends that were taking pictures. So they all made their collections available.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:47:28] So how do you think the Rapid today? How was the success rate as far as kind of the ’60s and ’70s and ’90s?
James Toman [00:47:42] Well, public transit throughout the United States, in every major city, without exception, except maybe for New York, began losing riders after World War II. World War II allowed people to. Everyone was working, but you couldn’t buy anything because of restrictions, so people put money in the bank. So when the war was over, automobiles were bought as fast as they could come off the production lines. And that resulted in a tremendous downward spiral of ridership that continued until really 1975. In 1975, the Cleveland Transit System was bankrupt. The city of Shaker Heights couldn’t afford to keep running. Running the Rapid. The suburban bus lines, Maple Heights, Bedford, North Olmsted, Independence, Euclid, they had no money to continue operating because without ridership, without a tax support base, you can’t do it. So community leaders put together the idea of a Regional Transit Authority and people voted strongly in favor of it with a one-cent sales tax increase to pay for it. So in 1975, when this was approved, the fares on all public transit dropped radically because they were now subsidized by this thing, Shaker Rapid ridership went through the roof. They had these 55 PCC cars which they had bought between ’48 and ’59 wasn’t enough to cover the demand. So they started looking out elsewhere. Where can we get other cars? They went to a museum and leased two cars from a museum. They went to Newark and bought two Newark streetcars. They went to Toronto and bought nine streetcars from Toronto that had once Run in Cleveland streets. Cleveland sold them to Toronto in 1952. They came back in 1978 and ran on the Shaker Rapid. So this became a temporary improvement in capacity to carry riders. But part of the deal for Shaker Heights was that if Shaker Heights approved the issue for the sales tax increase and turned over the Rapid to the Authority. Regional Transit Authority. The Regional Transit Authority would tear up the whole Rapid line and rebuild it and to modern standards, all new track and get all new cars. So in 1980 and 1981, the Rapid often did not run down Shaker Boulevard. Stopped at Shaker Square and looped. And then buses would take you. And then the same thing on Van Aken Boulevard. And the new fleet of Rapid Transit cars came in 1981. They were made in Italy by Breda, and those are continuing to run to this day. So they’re already 31 years old. But 40 of the 48 cars were reconditioned over the last six, seven years. So they probably have another 10, 15 years of life in them. But the whole line was rebuilt and new platforms, new shelters. And while that was certainly a transit improvement, folks like me, who loved going out and watching the cars, Seeing a white car come, an orange car, come a yellow car, come, a green car, come a red car, come all of different. That was a photographer’s delight. Now they all look exactly the same. [crosstalk] Yes.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:52:44] Do you think, though, once these are kind of gone, do you think they’ll stick with at least the same style of car?
James Toman [00:52:54] Well, they’ll probably will come up with what is now called the low floor car. See, on the current Rapid cars, you have to go up two steps from the platform. The most modern street cars that are operating in the country now, you just walk directly in. You don’t have any steps to climb. The lowest part of the car is in the middle where the door is. And then the car has to rise where the wheels of the car are. So if you are handicapped or limited mobility, you stay in the middle of the car. If you’re a youngster, you go to the back. So they would probably go with the low floor.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:53:47] Do they ever use the old cars or are they all kind of?
James Toman [00:53:50] They’re all gone. The last car operated as a Christmas shoppers’ special in 1985. They had it painted red and green stripes on it with a wreath. And that was the last running of a PCC. Some of the cars are preserved. There’s a car in the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum Right outside of Pittsburgh, the Northern Ohio Railway Museum near Chippewa Lake, Ohio, has three of the work cars that ran on the Shaker and three passenger cars. So there’s been some preservation of.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:54:47] Of them. Are there any preserved in Cleveland or?
James Toman [00:54:49] No, just the ones down by Chippewa Lake.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:54:54] And were most of them sold?
James Toman [00:54:57] Scrapped. They were towed out to Brook Park Road and - there’s a rail yard there - and torched.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:55:15] I think they put one maybe in the Art Museum.
James Toman [00:55:21] Well, there’s a current plan to take one of the cars that used to run on the Shaker Rapid, which then was purchased by. We had a wonderful operating trolley museum here in Cleveland called Trolleyville in Olmsted Falls and- Excellent thing. Well, the man who built it died and his sons were not interested in continuing it and they sold off the collection. So that’s where a few of those cars were purchased by the Northern Ohio Railway Museum. But they’ve donated one of the cars to University Circle Incorporated. And from what I hear, the plans are to build a tiny little museum on the corner of Stokes Boulevard and Euclid Avenue and display the car.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:56:33] That would be nice.
James Toman [00:56:34] Yeah.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:56:35] Because these are pretty like you said, with all the colors. It kinda gives it, like life. You know?
James Toman [00:56:37] Yeah. Yes.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:56:48] Was there anything we didn’t cover that you guys were mentioning on the record?
James Toman [00:56:53] I suppose the one piece that should be mentioned is that the Shaker Rapid was expanded in 1996 as a part of celebrating the City of Cleveland’s bicentennial. And they built a Waterfront Line. So from the Terminal Tower you can take the line down through the Flats to the Lakefront. And it has stops at Settlers Landing at Cleveland Browns Stadium at East 9th street, and the line ends in the Muni lot at East 14th. So that was an extension of the Shaker Rapid and it does a booming business when the Browns are playing. But it doesn’t carry many people other than that, which surprises me in a way because there’s a stop right at the Science Museum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I would have thought people would have used more so that extended the line. And now the city of Shaker Heights has entered into agreement with NOACA, the Ohio Department of Transportation to fix the traffic problem at Chagrin, Van Aken, Northfield, and Warrensville. It’s the most terrible intersection.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:58:39] Six points.
James Toman [00:58:40] Yeah. And they’re going to to extend the Rapid across that intersection. Van Aken will be closed off. Van Aken will turn over to Warrensville via Farnsleigh. It’ll become a four-way intersection instead of a six. And the Rapid will go 3/10 of a mile further. Many people have advocated the Rapid should continue along Northfield all the way to Harvard and then go up Harvard to Cleveland, Tri-C and the Highlands development. But again, money is the issue. But it’ll leave to be extended 3/10 of a mile.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [00:59:34] That’s a start. Do you think just kind of the decline in the Rapid, the reflection of just the decline of public transportation in general?
James Toman [00:59:44] Yes, absolutely. There have been numerous studies. I just finished writing a book on the public transit in Pittsburgh, and we accessed all these studies about public transit. And every study found people prefer their own automobile. The comfort it gives them, the control they have, and you can always switch the route that you’re following. So Americans love their cars, and unless significant issues face us with fuel supply and fuel costs, I don’t see anything changing that love of the car. Although an interesting phenomenon in the last few years, fewer teenagers are getting their temporary licenses. At 16, they seem to be less interested. So is this the beginning of a cultural change? Maybe.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [01:01:03] I say Good.
James Toman [01:01:05] yes. I think a lot of parents say good too.
Gabriella Halligan-Taylor [01:01:15] Well, thank you so much. I don’t have any questions unless you have any more stories to tell.
James Toman [01:01:20] I don’t have any more stories about the Shaker, except to repeat that the Rapid Transit was not just a transportation system. It was a real piece of the culture of the community. And people looked very fondly at it because it gave Shaker, in addition to its wonderful homes and beautiful streets, this wonderful, unique thing that other cities did not have. So it’s a treasure that needs to be preserved and will be.
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