Advisories · Honest answers
When a transfer is the wrong answer
There is a train from downtown Cleveland to the airport terminal. On some journeys it beats anything this desk can sell you, and it would be dishonest not to say so.
A booking desk telling you not to book is unusual enough to need explaining, so here is the explanation: this desk would rather have a customer for ten years than a fare today.
There are journeys in this city where a car is the wrong tool, and pretending otherwise is how a company gets one booking and no second one.
The rail line
Cleveland has a rail line running from the downtown core directly into the airport terminal. The station is beneath the terminal building, so there is no shuttle and no walk across a car park.
The journey takes roughly 25 minutes from Tower City, runs every 15 minutes for most of the day, and costs a couple of dollars. For a solo traveller staying downtown with one bag, it is faster than a car in the weekday morning peak and costs about a twentieth as much.
If that describes your journey, take the train. It is genuinely the better answer and this desk has nothing to add to it.
When the train stops being the answer
Bags. One case and a laptop bag is fine. Two large cases, or a case plus a pushchair, on a platform and through a station is a different proposition, particularly alone.
Where you actually are. The line serves the downtown core. If you are staying in Beachwood, Westlake, Independence or anywhere in the outer counties, getting to the line is most of the journey, and the calculation collapses.
The hour. Service thins late at night and early in the morning. For a 4:30 am departure the train is not running when you need it, which is precisely when the early pick up in the early starts advisory exists.
Who is travelling. Three adults splitting a sedan fare is competitive with three separate rail fares, and considerably easier. With children, with an elderly passenger, or with anybody who cannot manage stairs and a gap, the car wins before the arithmetic starts.
Winter, sometimes. The platform at the downtown end is exposed. In February with a delay, that is a long fifteen minutes.
The four cases where a car is genuinely better
- 1. More than two people travelling together. The economics flip immediately.
- 2. Anywhere outside the downtown core. Which is most of this metro area.
- 3. Early morning and late night runs, when the train is not there.
- 4. Anything with real luggage, ski bags, golf clubs, instruments, boxes.
Everything else is a judgement call, and it is yours rather than ours.
Why this page exists
Because the alternative is worse for everybody.
A customer who books a car for a journey the train does it better feels, correctly, that they were sold something. They do not come back, and they tell people. A customer who was told the honest answer once tends to call when the honest answer is a car, which around here is most of the year.
When you do want one
The booking page takes the details and the quote is free. If your journey is one of the ones described above where the train wins, say where you are staying and the desk will tell you so rather than quoting you anyway.