Grumpy

And that is why I refuse to wait at a bus stop that either could be or is affected by a re-route. The drivers take things into their own hands all the time, unfortunately. Pass this along to anyone who says buses can spur TOD as well as rail systems. (of course, in this case if the bus had taken its regular route, you would be stuck in traffic like every other highway commuter was last night) And if there was light rail or commuter rail, because of having its own right of way, many of us would never have noticed the traffic jam caused by a flipped semi instead of spending over 2 hours sitting in that cramped bus seat next to the sweetest little old lady that happened to have a flatulance issue that evening and listening to the music from the ipod of the college student a couple rows up that is apparently trying to destroy her ear drums.

I hope the city waits till the independent review of the structure is completed before contemplating any offers like PLJ's.

Sure would suck to be one of those 19000 people. The state of our state's public transit funding is embarrassing. I consider it sad that I had to learn my state rep's name because I've had to write so often. I'd really like to go back to only thinking about her name at election time.

The Signatures for a few posts are showing up kinda wonky on my antique version of IE at work. Kinda squished. The screen seems too wide now too. Other than that I like the change.

While I'm not a big fan of BQ or DA, I'd rather we take a big running back that can replace Lewis. If we had a reasonable running game it would make any QB's job that much easier. An ability to run would mean lighter coverage for the receivers downfield, which would make it easier to make passes.

I'll take black friday over boxing day. I'd prefer boxing day over black friday, so to each his own.

When my daughter was a baby we were flipping channels with her in the room and she overheard some comedian make a joke about gonorrhea. Guess what the first word she ever said was.

Yeah, my kid is a smart little climber, pretty soon we're going to start velcroing him to the carpet when we aren't looking. My mother likes to remind me that I was just as much trouble for her as a kid. Oh, and FYI, because of him we're now aware that they do make leashes for children.

Mrs. Grumpy just shared a fun story about our 20 month old. Apparently he was bored a few minutes ago, so he dragged his rocking horse from his room to the baby gate that's supposed to be keeping him out of the kitchen. He then used the rocking horse as a step to boose himself over the gate. Then he dragged a kitchen chair across the room to the oven (where pumpkin pie was baking for tomorrow), used the chair as a ladder and climbed up to the controls for the oven. He then locked the oven and turned it to self cleaning mode. Noticing that he was playing fairly quietly Mrs. Grumpy became suspicious and came running, but not before the pie turned black and the little monkey had managed to get the fridge door open. (Fortunately he hadn't made a mess in the fridge yet.)

If you can afford to spend a significant amount of time/money on personal travel but still cover all your expenses, prepare for retirement and keep yourself out of debt, there is nothing wrong with it.

^I've read this in various places several times too, but it really depends on several individual factors like: Do you usually itemize your taxes? How much interest do you think you can get on your savings? What kind of interest rate are you paying on the mortgage? Another consideration is that a large amount of financial advisors are paid by commision, so it is in their best interest to convince you to invest your money rather than paying off the house.

The HoJo was not related to the port move. It was demolished because the building had been condemned for about 20 years and no developer had made any progress in remodeling the structure.

Somehow it has never seemed to be a significant part of my life and thus I have not dedicated the needed brain cells to memorizing what stars were where when I was born.

^Welcome to the board.

I think I'm a Sagitarius.

Money and Power can fade just as quickly as good looks.

45 minutes to play. The Browns will find a way to make this close or this is the start of a winning streak! LMAO!!! >:D Even if they lose, that was still the best quarter they've played in years.

Wow... so far.

I've been trying to avoid looking at my 401k too much for the last year but it's doing a lot better the last few months. Fortunately I have a really lousy pension plan in addition to the 401k, so put together I should be ok someday. (The fun of being a government employee, lousy pay, but put together a lousy pension and a 401k with a small match and retirement planning works out ok). I've been planning and investing for years based on the assumption that I'll only be working till I'm in my mid 50s, but if the market doesn't do as well as I'm assuming or something, hopefully I can just stay at my job a few more years. If I do actually retire someday, I'd have to find some kind of volunteer work or something, because if I sat around the house all day, my wife and I would probably kill each other. I agree that college costs are scary, both of the short smelly people I keep seeing around the house will be in college at the same time as they're about a year and a half apart. They are going to have to choose between earning scholarships, taking out a lot of student loans, or discovering the joys (and savings) of a community college education (We'll think about CSU). And they can forget staying in a dorm unless they can get someone else to pay for it; our house is a hundred yards from the bus stop for a reason. Seriously though, there isn't an option of earning a scholarship for retirement, so college savings has taken a backseat in our budget to retirement savings. And I agree RnR, I paid for most of my education myself (well scholarships, grants, and the GI bill helped) and I don't think it unreasonable to expect my kids to put up part of the cash themselves too.

Someday I might have to watch that movie just to get your references.

Why on earth would you choose Euclid Ave if you wanted to do a "Suburban" style building? Euclid is the main transit route through that part of town. If you expect everyone to drive to your new building, wouldn't it make more sense on Chester, or Prospect, or literally any other street in the entire city?

^^I, like many passengers, thought it was a bad move when they combined the 39x and 39bx and made all the routes go through Bratenahl. You're right that there are very few passengers that ever get on/off during that stretch. I've been thinking about it a little and I don't think I'm terribly dissatisfied with the changes being made. Though the route gets packed outside of rush hour, most riders are only going a few miles, not all the way from Euclid to Downtown. The changes will inconvenience me, and my fellow riders, but if the choice is being inconvenienced vs. someone else losing the option of a ride, I'll suck it up. Realistically, this probably means that outside of rush hour I'll be driving, but truth be told, I'd probably at least consider driving in an unusual circumstance where I have to get between downtown and home outside of rushhour anyway. ^^^I agree that there is very low ridership between E 260th and Shoregate, but there really isn't anywhere for the busses to turn around and park to await the next route. Plus if you don't have a bus going as far as shoregate, the transit dependent would lose the ability to transfer to Laketran. In addition, on the weekends the ridership on this stretch picks up with people headed to the stores at Shoregate.

By that same argument, what's the point of rebuilding a convention center that's hardly used? The NCTC would offer these benefits: > pedestrian concourse (indoor) and rooftop plaza (outdoor) linkages over the railroad tracks and possibly the Shoreway between the convention center and North Coast Harbor, including leasable spaces for retailers, advertisers, etc. > unite RTA bus and rail, Laketran, Akron Metro, PARTA, Amtrak and possibly, Greyhound, Lakefront and Megabus into a single facility. > could also include some convention and medical mart facilities, either in the interim or for long-term expansion, overflow, etc. The city of Cleveland is attempting to ID planning funding to conduct preliminary engineering of the North Coast Transportation Center in order to attract federal funding for it. Well that's great news. Any idea how much it would cost to plan the preliminary engineering?

I think the Mall C site will depend a lot on the way it is designed. If there are plenty of public spaces around it where one can get a view of the lake, the design itself meshes well with the surroundings, and there is nothing about the design that would preclude a future NCTC being tacked onto the North end of it, then Mall C could be appropriate. I'm anxious to see renderings of how it would look.

I agree that it should be done now, but I have my doubts about your chances of success. I think our state legislators will be more than hesitant to spend any money at the same time that they're voting on a pay cut for themselves.