The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) will celebrate its 50th anniversary this weekend with a restored bus on display to show what buses were like when the transit authority was established in 1974.
The event is scheduled from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 21, at Settlers Landing in the Flats , featuring live entertainment, food trucks, and activities for the whole family.
The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority was established in 1974 to replace the failing Cleveland Transit System (CTS), four years after the state’s General Assembly passed legislation permitting Ohio communities to establish larger regional transit agencies.
By 1975, CTS and Shaker’s rapid transit lines had merged under the new regional transit authority, followed by local bus systems in Maple Heights, North Olmsted, Brecksville and other outer-lying communities now served by RTA.
Fifty years ago, local fare was 25 cents, 35 cents for Express fare, and 13 cents for students. Seniors and the disabled rode free or paid 13 cents during rush hours.
A labor-intensive restoration
RTA’s Central Equipment Fleet Manager Jeff Adams and Equipment Mechanic Tony Lavalle worked together to restore the 1965 General Motors “New Look Bus,” a popular model at that time for transit agencies around the country. That was the kind of bus in service in the 1970s and early 1980s.
RTA has kept a few older-model buses in storage throughout the years, including this particular bus. “It still had the seating, and it was pretty much intact from how it was used when it was in actual service,” said Adams.
“This bus was probably taken out of service some time in the ’80’s,” said Lavalle, one of the few people who knows how to operate the 1965 bus. “It had to have been after 1981 because the Central Bus [Garage] was opened in 1981 and I have confirmation that that bus was [initially stored] here. Then it just sat there forever. That’s when Jeff approached me and said, you know, he wants to get this running.”
Lavalle had to do a lot of work to upgrade the bus’ mechanical systems to make it road-safe.
“All the parts for that bus are obsolete,” Lavalle added. “You can’t get anything. So I had to adapt to the modern stuff in order to get it to work.”
Old-fashioned destination signs
The most unique part of the older model bus according to Lavalle is its destination signs. Today destination signs of modern buses are computer-controlled, he explained.
Said Lavalle: “The destination signs [on the old bus] are basically ribbons. They’re ribbons of paper. When you go in there, they have big metal reel handles. You look at a little window and it has an indicator, and it tells you what you’re looking at. And then when you go on the outside of the bus, they have a six-foot reel of paper, and you have to go through the reel to find out what the next stops are.”
“So if you want to update the destination sign in there, you have to go to the print shop, and they have to print you out a new reel, and it has to be installed into the bus,” he continued. “You’d have this big reel, and it made all kinds of noise, because half the time, the gears were always broken and rattled the whole front end of the bus. It was really an experience.”
Learn more about the history of public transit in Cleveland on RTA’s website.
Love cars?
Here’s more from Lavalle about how he fixed the old 1965 bus:
“The engines are two-stroke, V6 engines. Nothing uses a two-stroke engine anymore, especially of that size, unless it’s a weed whacker or a chainsaw or something like that. But even a lot of that stuff nowadays is four-stroke engines. So it’s very unique.”
“The transmission in that bus has an angle drive transmission, because the engine sits in the bus sideways. So the transmission is next to the engine, and the rear differential has to have an angle drive shaft. When you look underneath there, it’s kind of weird looking, because everything’s on an angle.”
“When we got it out of storage, it had a lot of air leaks, and the original air tanks were all rotted out. Trying to repair them was not going to work. And it could have been a safety issue, because the repairs could have blown out because of the pressure. So I just redid everything. I went and bought new air tanks. I had to fabricate the brackets. The air lines on that bus are made of steel, unlike the air lines of the modern buses, where they’re plastic and they’re flexible, those are all steel lines on [the older buses]. I updated it to the plastic lines.”