Grumpy

Although it's not within the city's purview -- it's the FAA keeping Burke open. Burke keeps recreational flyers and slower planes out of Hopkins, as well as providing for overflow/emergency. The article pretty clearly dissects that.

Ah, if only my first bus ride had been on rails it might not have taken an hour and a half (usually 35 minutes). Alas, then I'd have had a shorter nap. C'est la vie.

They seem to use the same criteria for picking locations as Apple stores.

Is all the land along Carnegie and Chester "snapped up"? Both currently have highway access and are direct shots to UC. Clearing and cleaning larger lots will help, as will some tax breaks to the companies that move there, but those would help with or without the road.

At the moment the biggest traffic holdup is the construction on 105th. Finish that up, start operating the express busses from Shaker and get some transit out to Euclid and I imagine the traffic issues will take care of themselves.

As far as overcrowding goes, I've personally rarely seen the bus turn people away. The bigger issue seems to be that people stand in front of the doors making it harder to get on/off which slows down each stop. IMO that means the design needs work, though I'm not sure how to fix this short of adding another set of doors which would require longer busses or removing seats which wouldn't be a popular fix. Another solution to the crowding might be to use the same busses on the 9 (or one of the other routes that feeds the HL) and run it all the way down Euclid. It could take some of the ridership that's traveling between UC and downtown thus freeing up space and improving timeliness since we know they can't add more busses due to the bunching issue. I'll also add as another pet peave of mine with it that the automated announcements don't work half the time and drivers don't make the announcements either. In the mornings when it's still dark out it's hard to tell what stop you're at unless you're really paying attention. The LED signs could show this (and do occasionally), but they only seem to only display "stop requested" 15 times for each stop instead. And that's the big reason why Joe loves BRT. I hear this all the time from other GCRTA staff. They are tired of doing rail extension studies for all corners of the rail system and not getting data favorable to extending them as rail. They hate doing all these studies without ending up doing something. Have they studied rail through Lakewood, you know, the most dense neighborhood in their service area? Seems like it would be the first place I'd study.

I think I agree with you. Certainly having the city less car dependant and having more commuters on rail or living within walking distance of work would have helped, but the problem was primarily caused by shutting down the city causing everyone to try and get onto the road at once. A few years ago Cleveland told everyone to evacuate due to snow and having everyone on the road at once shut down downtown. (I left work at 3:30 that day and didn't get home till 8.)

I think they close more for ice than snow, though this year all the closings my kids have had have been for cold. I can't recall the last snow day that was actually due to snow accumulation.

I'm not sure I agree that black churches subscribe to a stricter reading of scripture, but regardless from my point of view, church attendance and bible mindedness tend to go hand in hand with poverty.

Wickliffe also.

I hate median platforms. They preclude using regular busses in non-peak hours on the same corridor. They require riders to cross an extra street: there are few things in the world that frustrate me more than seeing a HL bus pull up to the station but not being able to catch it because there are cars driving by. And they make the traffic pattern more confusing for drivers resulting in cars regularly turning into the bus lane on accident which increases risk to pedestrians crossing to the median platform. Drivers are accustomed to busses holding up the right lane of traffic already, riders are accustomed to the bus stopping on the curb, and if the dedicated bus lanes on a main road are actually faster, than why not use multiple bus routes that feed to those lanes? Sorry, rant off. What were we talking about?

... and you do have the Waterfront Line that provides a 7/8-min ride from Public Square... 4/5 mins from growing/flourishing Flats East Bank. And it'll be used regularly for that purpose as soon as you can use the same pass for both RTA and whatever collar county service you're transferring to.

As far as schools, most of us that live in the suburbs know that there are workarounds to getting your kids a decent education in the city, but if I'm looking for a neighborhood in the area one of the first places I'm going to look is at the district as a whole. If the district as a whole is highly rated, then I don't have to worry as much about going out of my way to make sure my kids end up in the right school/class/program.

^I included them originally, but the headline reverses the meaning of the rankings so including others would either require changing the headline or explaining the reversed meaning so I got lazy and just included Cleveland because it's in the middle either way you look at it. Sorry.

I think we agree the location could be better as far as proximity to downtown workers, it'd probably get about 1/4 of the riders from downtown at most. However, a main station (provided it's not the only station) gives people an easy to find location to make it easier for occasional riders and new riders. In addition, the location is close to the stadium, GLSC, and Rock Hall which will generate a significant portion of the occasional riders. Also, the location is still fairly good for the Justice Center and Federal building which have higher than average ridership for downtown workplaces.

I suppose this could have gone in the religion thread, but belongs here just as much. These Are The Most Godless Cities In America Apparently the Cleveland/Akron/Canton area is 50th.

IMO, people follow jobs. If you bring jobs, people will follow. Some of them will end up in the City and others in the suburbs. But people won't come to the area at all if jobs don't come first. Job training alone won't bring people here, in fact it may just give people the tools to be able to move away to where the jobs are. The schools may make those with kids choose the suburbs over the city, but schools won't improve until there are significant numbers of middle class families moving to the city, which won't happen till there are significant numbers of middle class families moving to the region, which won't happen till there are significant numbers of jobs hiring. Refugees? They may be brought here, but if they don't have jobs when they arrive, they'll move on to other parts of the country. It's all about the jobs. So the question then becomes how to create jobs. There is no home run in this department. Tax changes might be a single. Small business loans might be another. Improving the port and the rail roads is a potential single (or double). The medical mart and convention center could be a single too.

I'm with you. I agree with the idea of routing through the center as a centralized station, I was just arguing against the idea of a single station or the assumption that riders would want a single station. Even your proposed revised routing still goes through public square, which is probably still going to have close to as many boardings as a North Coast Transportation Center.

I'm just questioning where the numbers come from. I can't open KJP's link at work to find out. They might like having one stop, but their riders won't. A route going downtown has to have at least a couple stops and the north end of the malls isn't exactly central to downtown or its workforce.

^Is that assuming that everyone going to or coming from Cleveland will want to get on/off at that station? Currently most of Laketran's Cleveland busses take a winding route around downtown with multiple stops closer to where people work. METRO, SARTA, and PARTA also have multiple stops in Cleveland including University Circle and multiple stops downtown. I support the idea of a North Coast Transportation Center, but let's be honest, it won't be closer than the current bus stops for a good portion of the current riders.

I didn't want to take the UC parking/transportation thread too far in this direction so I'll post here. For a while, I've been assuming the baseline alternative (and RTA's eventual preferred alternative) will be something like what they want for the Blue line extension. I'm guessing an express bus service with stops at 222nd and Lakeshore Euclid Park&Ride (then hop onto 90) Get off the freeway at 156th and stop somewhere near Waterloo 5 points (St Clair and 152nd) Windermere (for transfers to HL/RedLine) Then a stop or two around UC (Probably the same few places the express busses to/from Warrensville & Harvard stop.) By doing something like that, RTA would improve speed and access to these neighborhoods as much if not more than most of the options they're already exploring. And as a bonus, if it's a huge success then they've already got ridership for whenever they do build rail.

Possibly a good sign of what we should expect/hope for with the RedLine extension too.

^As far as I can tell in UC there's 3 primary areas there that most people commute to for work. The UH/South side of Case/Uptown area (which you have covered nicely with your loop), the CC, and the Museums/VA/North side of Case. I think you significantly increase the potential of a line by including at least 2 of the 3. I like Ken's plan a little better than yours since it includes the UH area and the Clinic (Plus has the potential to someday replace the HL down Euclid.)

Not a lot to like about the weather but I have to say the bus ride was pleasantly spacious and quiet with no high school kids. Apparently I only get seats on the Healthline and route 10 on snow days.

Well those are some nice looking houses.