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No doubt it would have attracted ridership. But the issue was attracting popular and political support to get it built. Previous Amtrak projects elsewhere are not relevant benchmarks in this market. Those have nothing to do with the travel options presented to Ohioans in 2010. It's unfortunate that the rigid federal planning structure would not allow us to respond to market concerns and cut stops to increase the average speed upfront.

Stops like Crestline amounted to speed bumps on a project whose main weakness was speed. It wasn't really 3C... it was 3C+D, which made sense, but it was also 3C+D+c+r+s and whatever else. Each stop made less and less sense, the more clear it became that travel time between the major markets was a critical issue. Sorry Crestline.

I'm curious about that too. I would say lack of apartment stock is Cleveland's primary structural problem right now. But 10 years of building, much of it city-driven, has yielded almost exclusively for-sale units.

Agreed.

Interestng. I think apartments might do very well on blocks near UC where houses aren't selling. Buying an old house in East Cleveland, at any price point, is very different from renting a modern apartment there while interning at one of the nearby hospitals. The lending envronment is what it is, but there are housing types for which we have immediate demand here. I really believe that much of this city, around UC in particular, could be reinvigorated pretty quickly by adding marketable apartment stock. And much of the land needed for that is currently occupied by distressed sf houses and doubles, if it's occupied at all.

Oooo, I like that too. We've had trouble with water features here before but I'd still like to incorporate one.

It was discussed earlier in this very thread, I believe. All 3 major sports teams have representation on the Mall planning committee. I know they're not the whole committee. But when ideas like a basketball court become public, it leads me to question that approach in a general sense.

This I like. Maybe the outdoor seating couldn't be used year round, but the cafe certainly could be. And that I think would help the Mall. Basketball courts would not help, not even in the summer when they're usable. We're talking about a promenade surrounded by stately government buildings. It's supposed to be the city's elegant front yard. I could almost get behind putting in a basketball court if everything else flanking the Mall were moved and replaced with housing, drastically altering its purpose and character. But even then, given our climate, we'd be better off putting basketball indoors as part of a rec center. Downtown could use a city rec center. But an outdoor basketball court on the Mall sounds like a long term planning idea produced by a committee that includes Mike Holmgren. Which it is.

I would say the opposite. With the current obesity epidemic I think we need more ways for people to exercise, not more ways for people to eat :) There's room for all that stuff. The more things to draw people down there, the better. So knock down East 4th St and make it a running track. Lard begone! Seriously, if we're trying to elminate the perception that the Mall is lonely and foresaken, we shouldn't relegate any portion of the new design to uses that are impossible for nearly half the year in our climate. Outdoor basketball courts are guaranteed empty today in Cleveland. And aren't they usually surrounded by chain link fences? Let's not do that here.

Love the idea, agree 100% with everything you said... except this one bit here. I refuse to believe that mankind has devolved so thoroughly in so short a time. But until we can start rebuilding this city's apartment stock, maybe we should investigate the feasibility of saving what we have left by moving it to more marketable areas.

I'm not super familiar with Northside, but its wider surroundings are a bit nicer than those of OTE, aren't they? It's tough to get a small island of neighborhood commercial activity going. It's also tough to redevelop an area that has "bad" on much of its perimeter. Not impossible, but tough. Just ask University Circle. SN had the benefit of not competing with SN during its redevelopment, and more importantly it had the two poles of downtown and OSU to feed it. Almost an ideal situation.

I was about to say "this is what Cbus gets for moving it to the edge of town" until I remembered that the casino in Cleveland is asking us to move the freaking river. Enough. Just build the things.

Neato.

BBQ pits are a smarter idea than basketball and volleyball courts.

Is this some kind of marketing? Love the show, and wouldn't be surprised. I work in a nursing home and have a complicated relationship with my dad... so maybe "The Firefly" was about me...? On second thought, nah.

Everything on the mall is square so there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But there are other commonalities among the mall buildings, and that context should at least be a consideration here. I'm OK with something "modern" as long as it looks decent (a site-specific issue) and makes sense.

^ Heh. I mean, are tenants suppsed to draw straws to see who gets natural light and who doesn't? Form should follow function, instead of being some sort of joke.

That design needs to evolve a great deal. More windows and less blank expanses of concrete is a good start. We don't need windows that look like DNA, any more than we need DNA that looks like windows. We just need an attractive and functional structure. The architects need to quit being cutesy and focus on that. Classical design elements probably wouldn't hurt.

But the rail station is needed, and this isn't, which seems like a threshold issue. I guess I don't understand the concept of "developing" bus corridors, if this is how it's to be done. To paraphrase Yoda: "Serve, or serve not. There is no develop." RTA is a transit agency, and Clifton already is developed. I don't see how this expenditure gets us more transit or more development.

No Doubt. That is a huge hole in their service. This project sounds worse and worse the more I learn about it. Infrastructure for a bus route that barely offers any off-peak service? How much will really be gained by making this a bus-only lane? Most drivers already treat it as such because they don't want to get stuck behind the bus. And the Blue/Green line needs new stations far more than Clifton needs new bus shelters. A grassy median here would be nice, but it hardly seems like a regional transit priority. I'm (beyond) glad that RTA is finally talking more about rail expansion and less about BRT.

Garrettsville, Oberlin... Cuyahoga Falls and Barberton are a little bigger but might still count. Practically any county seat in the surrounding counties, like Ravenna.

Unless the form of government delivers services over a broad area without regard to wealth. Under the current system, wealth means everything, measured in 6 mile increments. But that's not the only possible system.

This is awesome! I especially like the local products angle.

I don't think the plan is to move every school and fire station into the county seat. Only true redundancies would be elminated, like the pointless excess capacity in wealthy areas. It's wasteful and destructive for cities to go without police protection while townships have a cop running speed traps on every street.

In that case it seems like a real waste. I used to ride the 55 on Clifton every day. The buses showed up every 15 minutes or so and they were packed. There is no sense in restrcting a lane - during rush hour - to one vehcle per 15 mintues. That's insane, because this isn't Euclid Avenue. Hopefully this project also involves adding more buses on the 55 route. I'm not sure what we're gaining otherwise.