Survival Horror Public Transit

Since Ryan & I were going to check out some houses for sale yesterday, we decided that I would take the rapid a couple stops further than usual, and he would just meet me at the train station. This seemed like a smart idea, since he was just coming from work, and it was the closest station to where we were going.

For those who aren't regularly taking cleveland rapid transit, a lot of the stations (well, at least a couple) are currently undergoing construction. This includes the Purtitas Rapid station. Where Ryan was picking me up.

While I don't like to think of myself as a person easily rattled by my environment, real talk, I am actually totally paranoid and easily rattled. But aside from that, I think that most people who are not regular users of the Puritas rapid station might be rattled.

Since there's not much around the station besides residential, and some low density commercial (can you tell I played a lot of Sim City 2000 growing up?) I don't think a lot of people from outside the area use the station. Honestly, though, it doesn't really appear that a lot of people really use the Puritas station. It doesn't have the traffic that W 117, or West have before it. The rapid car was basically emptied out by the time I got there. This just added to my terror.

While they appear to be building an entirely new station (which is all silver and shiny in line with the new-ish RTA asthetic) for now, people have to go through the mostly disemboweled old station. As well as some stucture made almost entirely out of 2x4s and plywood.

I suppose this is what it used to look like (thanks Wikipedia!):


According to RTA this is what its going to look like:


You can see the plywood structure as well as some of the old pedestrian overpass in street view:


And the worst part of this whole thing, is that the inside of the old station is pretty poorly marked and partially deconstructed. After walking over the pedestrian overpass from the train tracks you descend into a tunnel that goes under the tracks.



All the escalators have been totally boarded over, and the steps have a pretty significant portion of concrete chipped away. Note the mysterious pool of liquid (I'm thinking blood, maybe) on the floor. And the mood lighting. Seriously, y'all, this rapid station needs a couple signs and maybe a couple light bulbs.

This is the point of the station where I actually emerged, heart pounding.


And this is what that same structure looks like from the outside.


This was what was pretty much running on loop in my head while I was trying to figure out how to leave the station.


Thankfully it wasn't very foggy or near a graveyard or any fissures in the earth or I might have totally melted down. Totally scarier than Centralia.

But no ghost babies appeared, thankfully, even if it did take Ryan basically forever to find the station and come pick me up. And we saw a cute house. One that's closer to the West Park rapid station.