327

It's shorter the further east you live. Conversely, the further west you live in Lakewood, the more cumulative delay you will experience from this. West Blvd is almost the end of the commute for a lot of people. It was for me. On the inbound morning commute, conditions on this final stretch affect the entire road... not just the freeway part where the speed is to be changed. At current speeds, problems on 6/20/2 can back up well into Lakewood. Cut that speed in half, have something happen to close a lane or two temporarily, and the morning backup might reach anywhere from Bunts to West Clifton. I'm guessing that's a worst case scenario, but it's conceivable, especially if 90 is also torn up. Backups reaching west of 117th are not a projection at all... they were almost a daily occurrance within the past couple years.

Likewise... I'm exhausted! And your software intrigues me.

May I suggest West Park, for that purpose? We're talking about a major industrial seaport with a highway and a busy rail line running through it. Take away the highway and you really haven't changed much about the character of the area, not in the direction you're looking for. There may be a low ceiling in that direction, really. That's why I'm suggesting [benefit = small]. If nobody wants to believe me about [cost = big] I can live with that. But if nothing else, please recognize that we're talking about a highly industrial port area. I'm seeing a pattern recently... this isn't the first time I've taken the stance that not every quality-of-life development fits perfectly into every given industrial zone. Did anyone seriously buy in Battery Park on the assumption that sometime soon there would no longer be a tugboat factory and a gigantic mining operation across the shoreway from it? Sometimes I feel like things are placed willy-nilly in Cleveland because there is such fierce resistance to considering the relationships of anything to anything. So if "trendy urban development item A" is a cool idea on its face, and it worked great in an upperclass residential section of Berlin, then it's equally great for every possible location in Cleveland-- regardless of context. Ksonic99: Explain what? Why I think travel time would double when speed is halved? Why I think backups would take twice as long to clear if speed were halved? That's not logistics, that's arithmetic. If further explanation is needed let me know. Qualifications-wise I don't want to get specific about my resume in an online forum. I may have used your software before, and if so, cool. But I would rather have you think me a liar than broadcast 327's secret identity to those who might recognize certain details.

I can see how that applies to Detroit Avenue, but... who window shops for tugboats and bulk salt? And considering Detroit's right up the hill, how much window shopping do we really intend to add here? There's also the RR tracks issue someone raised earlier. Will those be calmed too? It's a main freight line between NYC and Chicago where we also hope to run more passenger trains... maybe pedestians aren't equally appropriate for every single ROW. And this isn't like the I-90 bridge where there's no parallel option for pedestrians or cyclists. For the innerbelt I think ped/bike access is paramount. I really think there's a fundamental distinction here.

Now you're arguing in favor of sprawl? If you expect city life to be quiet or free from vibration... then for you, yes. Cities need density and effective transportation networks to be functional. These core goals are at cross purposes with maintaining rural quietude. Sprawl allows people live in relative silence and isolation from the rigors of commerce. So if sprawl has to happen, I'd prefer that it not happen in the city itself. Then all you have is sprawl. Prioritizing rural virtues like quietude and "calm traffic" in an urban setting makes sprawl universal. "Calm traffic" is really not an aspect of urban life. Cities have action. Cities have lots of people going places and lots of freight converging. I think there's an extent to which these things, including their vibrational side effects, should be embraced.

Guys, you don't have to believe me, but the potential delay numbers are a lot bigger than 2 minutes or 6 minutes or anything like that. You're cutting the speed by a factor of 50% and assuming the resulting delays will be a much smaller proportion. Mathematically... how? Recall that inbound backups here can stretch past 117th and trap people in their driveways. Assuming, arguendo, that I'm even close to right about this, would it change anyone's view? Is there any threshold amount of delay that would indicate a problem, or are commuting issues simply unimportant here because--generally speaking-- the area has less traffic problems than LA?

Well, yes, there are houses right up on Fairmount. Nobody's saying the section called "Clifton" that goes through the middle of neighborhoods should be 50 mph. But no part of Fairmount is a commuting artery in the sense that the West Shoreway is. Not even if you're commuting east to 271... and going the other way, Fairmount ends 5 miles out from downtown, in the midst of a dense neighborhood. Apples & Oranges. And as for encouraging transit ridership... why don't we just whip people with chains if they drive? That'll learn em. My take is that people are encouraged to use transit when it's practical to do so, like in Chicago. Our problem isn't that the roads here are too good and need taken down a notch... it's that the transit isn't good enough. And transit always sounds better when it's presented as adding options, not taking them away. Re: vibration, welcome to the city. Passing freight trains can feel like earthquakes to hundreds or even thousands of people, several times a day. This results from the confluence of industrial and residential density. If you're looking for quiet earth... there's lots of that. This here is a major city.

I'm not sure what the mounds are for either, but without them I'd rate this design "bloody awful." With them it's "bloody awful, mitigated slightly by topography." Maybe it will look better in real life than on paper.

I guess we agree to disagree on the 2-minute figure. My previous career was in logistical planning. I'd rather not go into detail but trust me I'm not just grasping at straws here. My estimate is subject to change based on particulars of the design... but to me, 2 minutes barely even accounts for randomness in a situation like this. We also disagree substantially on the benefit of this "calming effect." Personally I think it results from horses eating. There's so little for pedestrians here that I'm not sure who is actually impacted by cars whizzing by. And I'm not sure what desirability factors arise from backing up traffic. In fact, if I were appriasing property along a commuter roadway where traffic was about to be intentionally hindered I would be negligent not to reduce the value. This would be different if 6/20/2 were a residential capillary ending in a cul-de-sac... but it isn't. And there is virtually no property fronting this roadway because it's at a completely different grade from neighborhood areas to the south. I don't see the connection between hindering traffic on this road and improving life for Battery Park, which is up a steep embankment from it. What benefit does "traffic calming" on 6/20/2 provide specifically to Battery Park? They can hardly even be called adjacent, let alone intertwined.

Have you ever commuted in the area we're talking about? It means everything to some people, and I mean hardcore urbanites in Lakewood, not Avon. Commuting is not just an exurban concern, it's an issue for a lot of people in Clevleand proper and the inner ring. The answer to your question is both... during and after construction. The during construction part is especially serious because 90 is about to be torn up too. It would be a collosal planning blunder to do that simultaneously with this. Furthermore there's just no reason to slow this road down, since it's wholly unnecessary for pedestrians to cross at grade... and the road itself is not remotely at grade with any of the neighborhoods it's meant to help. Anytime you talk about changing people's commutes you're putting their very livelihoods on the table. Not everyone who depends on this major artery will be able to adjust, or move, immediately. There's gotta be a better justification for that than kind of upheaval than "Edgewater needs new signage." Lovely. Put up new signage, clean up the tunnels, maybe add another one or a bridge.

This is the stuff Ohio's gotta get on top of. Cleveland possesses every advantage listed there for Milwaukee, and I bet our costs are even lower.

In that case it's a difficult cost to justify. I'm in favor of promoting Edgewater, improving signage & lighting, ensuring pedestrian access, all that stuff. Let's do it. But if we don't have to tear up 6/20/2, if we don't have to stop traffic... let's not. This town ain't dead yet and people have places to go. I'd estimate the impact on commuters to be significantly greater than 2 minutes. Thankfully at-grade intersections won't be involved... that idea was ludicrous. If open highways were as ineffective as you suggest, there wouldn't be so many. This issue holds SERIOUS water for Lakewood commuters. I can't speak for anyone further west, and I really don't care what they think. But many people in Lakewood don't want to be shoved further away from downtown, and that's what this kinda does. It would negate a major benefit of living along 6/20/2.

It's like Beetlejuice... don't say that name a third time!

And who benefits? Contractors. They get to build cheaply on clean-slate land. If I'm a contractor, I'm dropping hints left and right to potential clients that downtown sucks and everyone wants to be in the burbs nowadays. As long as this is believed, I've got hi-margin jobs coming in as long as there's still open land out there.

^ That is goofy, but it's probably becuase they're new facilities for old companies moving to suburbs. Like Eaton... they're "adding" tons of new square footage in Ohio. This metric is meaningful to construction industry jobs and no others.

I'm still not sold on this. People will walk along it to the extent it's lined with people-friendly stuff. Which means no. There's no density down there at all and everything to the north is warm-weather-only... and as noted, already pedestrian-accessible from the south. The renderings we've seen show minimal new development fronting the blvd. I'm not sure this will accomplish anything besides angering everyone in the northern half of Lakewood who works downtown. After conversion it will still be a commuter road, just a far less effective one. Too much loss for too little gain.

Well, they just started. They should be given a fair chance to prove themselves as community-destroyers. And as illustrated in Austin, many of them have access to highly destructive instrumentalities. Don't count em out! They can close the gap quickly. He wasn't a tea partier, that is quite obvious. What was my tactic? As I've reiterated in other threads, I don't equate tea partiers with white people or riots with black people. There is probably a few decades difference between the average age of the two groups as well. Read the rest of what I wrote (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,12302.0/msg,467672.html) and you might come to the same conclusion as jam40jeff (http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,12302.0/msg,467718.html): Hmm, I somehow missed that (maybe in my haste to reply to the partial quote by 327). My apologies. I do find your original post much more interesting after the first paragraph. I found the rest of your post interesting too. I didn't have a response to it then and still don't. You get an A for those paragraphs. When discussing race I try to keep my metaphors tighter than normal. As for your riot comment, there was an awkward comparison in its phrasing. Surely you can see that, and surely you understand why that might be controversial. It's not a gotcha moment, it's an "oh, come on" moment. Just a couple posts ago here, you preceded "rioters" with "criminal" and employed humorous understatement to highlight how much more "civilized" the tea partiers are viewed to be. If you think the only people you might offend are "criminal rioters" think again.

Dude I was being facetious. That was sort of a "Stephen Colbert" type post. I'm familiar with John Carroll. I was attempting to illustrate the incongruity of attaching sovereignty concepts to an arbitrarily selected cut-out from a large chunk of generic suburban area. The point with the name is that it indicates a dependent status. "University" is in the name because it's the otherwise non-distinct blocks of houses that lie north of a certain university. "Heights" is in the name because it's higher than Cleveland. Thus the name itself is referential to Cleveland, suggesting that UH exists only as part of a larger community.

The very name of "University Heights" is subservient. What university? What's it higher than? Meanwhile, a place with a name like "Cleveland Heights" is obviously coming at you with freaky mojo. As I said, I live right by it so I understand the fear-- believe me I do. Pretty soon there's gonna be a store on Cedar (YOUR part of Cedar that is) selling vintage Transformers and weed pipes. It's a shifty burg, that Cleveland Heights. Everything has its place. In life, a man must find his own stretch of Cedar. On this stretch we have papers. May I see your papers? It's not that I think you're, you know, from that Heights over there down Cedar. It's just these crazy times, know what I mean? Things don't stay in their place anymore.

Props to jam40jeff for identifying the tactic. If I had a nickel for every time I've seen the ol' disowned innuendo... I might favor a flat tax.

Well, they just started. They should be given a fair chance to prove themselves as community-destroyers. And as illustrated in Austin, many of them have access to highly destructive instrumentalities. Don't count em out! They can close the gap quickly.

:lol: I was wondering why a Clevelander would be the one to bring up the suburban Latino population of Cincy. It's true, though...at least anecdotally, from my personal experience...that Latinos have largely skipped city life in the Cincy area and gone straight for the suburbs. The numbers still might not be that high, though, I haven't seen them. Through your typo, I was thinking you knew more than me about the demographics! ;-) I'm shocked Cincinnati's only at 2%. Had no idea. I don't know what Cleveland's percentage is, but there's an entire section of town that's mainly Puerto Rican. Admittedly, Cleveland has very few signs in Spanish outside that one area. None downtown that I can think of. I just can't see the smallness of the local Spanish-speaking population being reason enough to scrap the signs idea, in light of the fact that this small percentage is so uncommon in 2010. Not being able to afford new signs is a pefectly good reason though.

Get what? We need more information about the cultural and philosophical differences you're referring to, because many of us live right by there and have never heard of such a thing. Nobody's just looking at a map, we're all pretty familiar with the area. And we're struggling to understand just what differences you mean. Please elaborate.

Wow. We're talking about a 5-mile radius here, tops. The Amazon Valley is less tribal than what you're describing.

That was totally a typo... I meant the "country" as in USA has different percentages, not Hamilton County. Mea culpa.