327

He's not off mine. This Rouen thing is OK, but I just read the "updated agenda" jpop posted and I think it's a blueprint for a whole buncha nothin. Nothing in there even raised my eyebrow. We have major problems and they're pretty much ignored. To the extent they aren't, they're glossed over with approaches that IMO just won't do much.

Well, homegrown in each individual city's case. Also homegrown on a regional and national level, but we're talking about Cleveland. The city still bears scars from segregation and racism, and still spawns ugly attitudes which come up in modern discussions (with the mayor) about immigration. My mom teaches in an inner city school, so I hear about this freqently too. I think the missing value you speak of has been beaten out of certain people, who for generations discovered first hand that you could have a doctorate from Yale and you'd still be a... so anyway, when Cleveland is still as segregated as it is, by both race and class and with a high correlation between the two, it's hard to sell the idea that if you just go to school, this time it will work. It barely works for any one right now, no matter what they look like.

Seriously, just take a can of clear matte spray paint and coat the backs of those "Pay Fare Here" signs. It'll help. The next step is the software interface... ugh. There has to be some computer guy who's out of work right now and can fix that.

Great article, great attitude. Funny though that they were told one of the WHD's needs was "more parking."

That is a major disappointment. The stretch from 71st to 79th was the ONLY PART of Euclid Avenue that had been set aside for mixed use neighborhood. Two senior housing projects on that stretch might put a nail in it. Midtown Inc wants the rest of the street to be a business park, so at this point I doubt there will be any significant pedestrian development on the Euclid Corridor... ever. We built it as a hospital shuttle and that's it. Nice going.

[trying to get back on topic] Maybe, but it's not like we've had a population influx of people who don't believe in education. The problem is homegrown. We have a current population which, at this point, thinks education is a scam. Why might that be? I've never gotten my money's worth from my degree, not even close. Point is, I wouldn't go too far blaming the victims. If we're sitting here going "well, those people, they're never gonna learn" and those people are sitting there going "don't snitch" or something like that because they've completely rejected all forms of establishment, it's not surprising that others aren't lining up to live here. We could use some internal harmony. It's good for marketing and it's good for property values.

RTA, you're the government. You can strongarm these people. You don't have to accept getting ripped off.

There is so much cool housing downtown, your best bet is to walk around and just look at it all before deciding anything. I mean there's an abundance. At that price range, you pretty much have your pick. I would also take a drive around the Heights area before you decide. It has several pockets that might also appeal, and these pockets are closer to the Clinic than downtown is. From the Clinic drive E on Euclid to Mayfield, go right, now you're in Little Italy. Go straight up the hill and eventually you'll find Coventry off to your right. Worth exploring... but only to the right of Mayfield, not the left. Continue up Mayfield to Lee and turn right on Lee. The intersection of Cedar and Lee and the stretch of Lee to the south is also very cool. Turn right on Cedar. Now you're heading back toward the Clinic. The area around Cedar and Fairmount also has lots of nice rentals.... all these areas do. There are also nice rentals around Shaker Square, which is just to the south of these areas and also very close to the Clinic. That said, I'd still be downtown if I was you.

I haven't seen the ETA readouts working properly for some time... none of them. Occasionlly I see one working but it isn't accurate. I think it's time to audit what's still not functional (signal timing?) and hammer some vendors. I could have made RTA better fare machine faceplates in my basement in the time it's taken that vendor to fix their light dispersion issue. Many aspects of the health line are looking unprofessionally managed. I was afraid of that as soon as I saw this stuff being installed. This garbage has to still be under warranty. In the name of the people of this county, RTA should begin enforcing these warranties. This project is supposed to make us proud, not make us apologize.

Much of the resistance to busing seems tied in with a desire to maintain segregation more than anything else. I don't know if offering people a chance to resegregate neighborhoods will help the city in the long run. School quality should not be determined by where you (are able) to live. In Cleveland, yes money is a big part of the problem. There aren't enough adults in the building. I'm not denying the other factors others have mentioned, but money is one of them. Abatements, intended to draw higher-income people back into the city, have only exacerbated this problem. The school quality issue is not just one of perception. People I work with who live in West Park are poor yet terrified to send their kids to West Park public schools, so they shell out to the church when they barely can. The burden of funding education has been shifted from Cleveland's new rich to it's lower classes with these abatements. This keeps immigrants out too, and it keeps the outflow from reversing.

Good point earlier about the housing stock CBC. Much of it is unmarketable because of its format. Doubles are just not desirable anymore, and the mayor's office has noted this, but beyond that Cleveland still has too many urban SF homes. Too many apartment buildings were torn down over the years and now there's no balance in the offerings. We need more decent apartments for people to start out in. Essentially, if you want to live in an economical and relatively safe brownstone, you have to find it outside city limts. There aren't even that many left in the bad neighborhoods. Thats insane. Fire up that bulldozer, level some obsolete woodframes, and build density in its place. Immigrants don't want to pay gas bills any more than anyone else does, and immigrants don't necessarily buy into the American give-me-my-yard premise. We need different housing stock... something like what we used to have, when we were growing.

As mentioned above, this all comes back on itself. Jobs bring people but people bring jobs. Why open a store where no one lives, or has money? Why live somewhere that has no stores? Why open anything else, like a factory or HQ, in a dead area? We need to chip away at all these issues simultaneously. It's no good doing them in sequence because they're interdependent. It seems like we've been going hardcore after population growth, and to some degree industry and tech, while letting retail and services stagnate. That doesn't work, and Exhibit A is this thread. Despite all the civic improvements since 1990, and despite all these costly residential subsidies, which are given primarily (if not exclusively) to people who can already afford expensive housing, we really haven't turned the city around what-so-ever. At what point do we dump this plan and try something else? I say now. We need to keep what works and scrap the rest. Subsidies that get older buildings renovated, even if only to benefit the hi-rent and condos crowd, is a good thing. But we don't need any more mushroom houses built, whether on E40th or in Tremont with a hot tub. Why sacrifice schools and police to pay for that? Why sacrifice other development opportunities when we now have a bunch of that, and not all of it is selling so well? The biggest problems people cite here are schools and crime, not a lack of housing. Time for a reappraisal. The next most common complaint, the one I hear constantly everywhere but this website, is lack of retail. That aspect of redevelopment has not kept up with the rest, in fact it's worse now than 20 years ago. When you're thinking "yeah, but Steelyard" you should know something's wrong. I can talk people around the crime and the grime, but there's nothing I can say to "Where the hell would I shop? The same places I do now, after I drive five times as far." There is one clear way to reverse our population trend: Attack this retail deficiency the same way we've attacked mid-upper class residential. I beseech thee. Sooooo many people who might consider moving here are turned off by the current situation. Bribing more people with abatements won't fix the schools, while less abatements could actually help that problem. If we can find a way to work the same mojo with retail growth, while getting our state and federal friends to help with transit and police... we'll be growing again. I promise you.

I'm quickly becoming sold on the red line extension. That might provide the most bang for our buck, including UC in the route is a big deal, and East Cleveland needs help as much as anyone. I still see benefit to the WFL extension as well, and still think the goal should be to have them meet up at some point. Agreed that nearer neighborhoods would have much less to gain. But the same goes for all areas served by all trains, because trains can't jump. How many people get off any of the east side routes until after 79th? Not many, but that doesn't mean much. It's primarily to serve people 100+ blocks out... so I might only put a handful of stops. Maybe one for 55th, one for Glenville, one for Collinwood, and one for Euclid. True, any WFL extension would likely be a west-side style park n' ride. But isn't that RTA's busiest rail line? It barely touches anything residential, yet it's packed to the gills each day. So I don't think potential ridership can be measured by immediate proximity to homes. Also, don't forget the new port area. Long-term this could become a major employment center, and having rail service there means it's connected to potential employees along the entire system. This obviously doesn't come into play for a while, so in the end it probably makes sense to extend the red line first. Let's do it.

Definitely a solid plan. Improving the intersection is a benefit in itself, and once the rail line is past it, additional extension should be easier. Still, we should be looking ahead and getting cracking on where the blue line goes next. The rail aspect of this project, if it doesn't lead to a few miles of additional service, is indeed stupid. That part doesn't seem necessary to fix the intersection, so if we're going to pay for it, there should be a clear reason. This area doesn't become exurbia for several miles. Is Randall Park exurbia? The center of Solon isn't even exurbia, in fact it appears to have been built around a train station.

Extending the red line there would be excellent. I'd like to see a loop made up of these two lines. Are you saying there's no neighborhood development potential between downtown and Collinwood? Asiatown? St Clair-Superior? Glenville? Connecting these and everything else to employment centers associated with the new port? Nothing? I disagree... I think this is the ripest development corridor we have going. It's the one that would gain the most from a new rail line. I think the lack of rail service to downtown is a glaring problem with these neighborhoods and they would each gain tremendously from it... moreso the further out they are. Sorry Lakewood... you're closer, you have 3 parallel bus lines and 2 freeways, you have a tangential rail connection already, you're possibly getting BRT next, and most importantly you're connected to downtown by a chain of gentrifying zip codes. All of those factors tell me the eastern corridor has more to gain from new rail service. Collinwood is a legitimate flickering light. Is it limited to the immediate Beachland area? Kinda, but it has a lot of decent neighborhood to build upon besides that small stretch. It's one of the few neighborhoods in town, particularly on the east side, that municipal workers clung to and preserved. It's on the cusp of revival, but unlike the city's other growing areas, it's much further out and it's isolated by ghetto. Those factors indicate to me that rail service is about the best thing we could do for it. I can't see re-doing existing lines when the system is so incomplete as it is. I would do that after east, after west, after Parma or Berea, and after extending the blue line a few miles SE. I see very little chance the CCC area would develop any time soon regardless of transit options... and it's already adjacent to downtown.

^ Sorry... you're correct, I got caught by a very misleading PD headline: Renewed Cornell Road Bridge to reopen after being closed for four and a half years Posted by Karen Farkas/Plain Dealer Reporter June 30, 2009 19:53PM It's still disconcerting that it took 2.5 years (according to the body of the article, Cornell closed in 12/06). The idea that a RR could stonewall a public bridge repair near a major hospital is flatly outrageous. If I don't want the road in front of my house worked on, tough cookie. It's getting worked on. Cornell Road's bridge took longer than the I-35 replacement and that's not acceptable.

There's a thread around here somewhere with diagrams. IIRC, the plan is to extend the blue line to the other side of the intersection and have it stop there. I don't think it's more than 1/4 mile worth of distance. However, getting it through that intersection theoretically makes it easier to do a serious expansion later. I know of no plans for that though.

The reason I didn't initially advocate pushing into Lake County is that another jurisdiction would be involved then, and who knows what that might entail. But clearly the further it goes the more useful it would be. Painesville would be ideal. But I strongly disagree that a line ending in Collinwood or Euclid would be unpopular. These communities are way too far from downtown to allow for a reasonable bus commute, and 90 has frequent problems... these problems will only increase when the dead-man's curve redo begins. Collinwood and Euclid are too urban to sell as anything other than urban living. Marketable urban living involves being able to depend on transit for most of your needs. Given this location, that sort of living becomes a lot more feasible with a downtown rail connection. Collinwood is a flickering bright spot in a very desolate part of the city-- and it's separated from downtown by miles and miles of ghetto. It needs this. We need this. It's not a future need, it's a present need that's been ignored long enough. The waterfront line has been a PR disaster for RTA for 10+ years at this point. It's high time we justified it, by making it go somewhere that can't be walked to in the time it takes to catch a train.

I'm with the cle.com posters on this one... why did this tiny bridge take 4.5 years to build?

That, and the west side is much better served by our freeway layout than is the east. Plus we already have our "underused failure of a" waterfront line pointing toward Collinwood but dead-ending in a downtown parking lot. My dad used to live in Collinwood and was shocked to hear that it no longer has any rail service... and he's not exactly what you'd call an urbanist. Oh yeah, and the MM/CC is now on this line as well. As much as we need new stations and light rail rehab, we should not continue to ignore the sunk cost of the waterfront line, and what it clearly implies to everyone who looks at a service map.

I can see why the stations are getting redone. A lot of the eastern ones are crumbling, especially 55th, so I'm glad it's seeing action. I'm also very excited about the blue line extension and I wish it could move faster. My quibble is with the continued absense of any meaningful expansion plans. The blue line project makes it clear that we can't set this stuff up overnight. So let's get some preliminary work underway. Most notably, the waterfront line needs to go somewhere and Collinwood needs rail service. I would put this on a equal priority with the west shore line, perhaps higher due to greater need. Maybe we can or can't get some federal funds to help with this, but if we don't even begin talks about it here, the federal answer is a guaranteed NO.

Are they really moving along on this fast enough for this to happen? Hard to say. Everyone's optimistic.

How bout this one: "Ohio+" The plus stands for Detroit, Kentucky, and West Virginia. What I mean by that is I agree with Oldmanladyluck. The people or groups charged with attracting population here aren't getting it done. Downtown, however, is a notable success... which we could be doing more to promote.

Frank Jackson has come out against immigration, so his removal might be a necessary fix. He openly adheres to the worldview mocked in South Park's famous "they took our jobs!" episode.

Then get these people off the roads! Wow. These are the ones we need to build trains for. I agree about fuel efficiency though. I would, however, weigh gains in fuel efficiency against 50 miles of additional work for each truck per day. It is also inefficient to forego that much commerce when you have vehicles perfectly capable of doing it.