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No respect for "Turbo Lover," I take it?

CSU actually suggested to me that I take language classes at CCC because they're cheaper and easier to schedule around than CSU undergrad offerings. But I had no intention of transferring these credits in, which may have been the difference.

Recent simultaneous lane closures on the west shoreway, innerbelt bridge, and Detroit Ave have made Lakewood seem about 10 miles further from downtown than it actually is. The weather doesn't seem to be a major factor in these traffic tie-ups, because traffic on any of these routes moves perfectly well once it gets past the eastbound bottleneck. I am increasingly skeptical of the west shoreway conversion plan, because it appears to serve a necessary purpose in its current configuration. This doesn't just apply to car commuters, since buses in the area suffer identical delays and since Lakewood is (for the moment) very much underserved by rail. Think about it-- unlike the east side, the west side's physical connections to downtown can be counted on one hand. I'm beginning to think the free flow of those few connections is not to be messed with.

As everyone knows, the heat is a huge problem here in Miami.

I have the east side ancestral connection too, specifically Collinwood and up. My dad lived there for a while before I was born. My parents are both from Knox County and I grew up in Newark/Granville. We moved to Warren (technically Howland) in 89. College started at OSU and ended at Toledo. I worked in Detroit for a couple years, then bounced around in Ohio a while. I'd like to end up on the east side too but I'm not sure where yet.

What? It has everything to do with the current state of the center. Either it can hold an orchestra concert or it can't, and that quote tells me it can't. It flat out says the current mall isn't "sturdy enough."

Seems to me that we could have traffic use the larger square of Prospect/St Clair/E 9th/W 6th and completely cordon off Public Square for a weekend fesitval.

I'm more inclined to believe events moved because FCE wanted a piece of the action. Ever tried walking to tower city amphitheater? It might as well be suspended on a pole 2 miles above downtown. That's why I'd like to see more festival activity centrally located, like on the square.

I thought it was funny. The rest of the country has systematically abandoned our region and its economy. They had become comfortable in the assumtions that industry collapses and mass layoffs only happen in places like Cleveland, and that what happens in Cleveland is Cleveland's problem alone. Now we're all in the same fix, and I find that hi-larious.

Those concerts on the square would be great. They happen once in a great while but I'd love to see them more regularly. Is there really a chance that the mall would collapse under a bunch of people? If so, things are worse off than I thought. Maybe we're just beginning to mourn the Flats. It looked like the most recent FEB plans involved a sizeable gathering space, so one day we can at least have festivals again down there... if management approves...

Don't know. They come every 15 minutes or so. It's a great service, I love it, but it has nothing to do with installing an actual streetcar line. Edit: ^ what he said

^ To expand on that, the trolleys in Cleveland are really just free downtown loop buses. They're only called "trolleys" and designed to look like trolleys for cutesy marketing purposes. The routes they run could just as easily be covered by regular buses, and I believe they once were. Since the "trolley" buses are smaller they're probably cheaper on fuel, which may assist in providing the service for free. Whatever your bus route to Clifton/UC is, just stop charging fares for it, and you would then have a "trolley" service like Cleveland's. Actually the loop routes are fairly small, so I doubt an equivalent service would make it past Over-the-Rhein.

That depends on what those jobs pay. If one by itself can support a family, then we need x number of jobs. If it takes two incomes, we need 2x jobs to support the same exact population. We also subtract day care out of disposable income under the 2x scenario. So... pay people decently and everything improves.

Either they accept the poverty plan, or then we bring out the pitchforks and torches. None of them should come through this with any degree of comfort.

I counted seats this morning and I believe the health line buses have 46. How does that compare with a regular bus? Speaking of "bus," something struck me when I read the xingcolumbus/wordpress article posted above. It mentions how "they don't like to call them buses." But they ARE buses. Saying Euclid Corridor Transit Vehicle sounds like saying Manual Inertial Impact Generator when you mean hammer. It makes people roll their eyes and mutter nasty things about government. I realize these are better than typical buses in many ways, but that doesn't change their existential nature.

Sentenced to live out their days free but in dire poverty. Public housing only, and they have a permanent credit score around 300. They're allowed to work but most of their wages are garnished.

I don't mean low key at all. We need more big productions, and more of them should be adult-oriented rather than family-oriented. I'm talking about parties that make people look around and say holy crap, before they pass out and have to be carted away. Some of the neighborhood block parties in Detroit make Ingenuity look like a 5 year old's birthday. Anybody been to Dally in the Alley? Fourth Street Fair? Those work out well because they know what they are (giant knock-down, drag-out parties) and don't muddle things up by straining to be family-oriented. You can't please everybody, and who do we want to attract to Cleveland? Young adults. They like to party. Orchestral events do nothing to counter the perception that Cleveland is boring, square, culturally conservative, etc. I guess what I'm talking about is recreating the old Flats vibe once in a while. Since we lost that, downtown sorely lacks unpretentious mass fun. We need that now more than anything. The first couple Ingenuity fests were getting there, but now they have dialed it back considerably. Budget is a concern, and they lied so badly about attendence for a couple years that I don't blame sponsors for doubting them now. Unfortunately, Ingenuity is branded in such a way that it can't be done on the cheap. What I meant about Ingenuity being too ambitious is not the size of it but the fact that everything about it is expensive due to the "tech" theme. Large scale downtown fesitvals can be done a lot cheaper. I think Ingenuity also suffers from trying to be everything to everyone. I recommend less kids-tent-bubble-magic and more sexy robot girls. A different example would be Comfest in Columbus. I haven't been there but I understand it actually does a decent job of being everything to everyone. There's no reason we couldn't do something like that on the mall, something of that scale. We don't have it and we need it. Public square doesn't work as well for big events because of the streets and the buses and such. It would be cool if the city could have little mini-fesitvals on one quadrant or two, something like what they do by west side market on saturdays. It may be possible to close off the square itself temporarily and do a big fesitval there. Seems like we'd have to get the E/W transit centers up and running before we could do that.

We are really short on events and fesitvals here. I think downtown needs at least a couple more during the warmer months. Ingenuity is a cool concept, but also an expensive one to carry out. They don't need to be that ambitious.

The Lorain Station area looks really cool as you pass it on I-90. I'd prefer the highway wasn't there, but it is fun to look over at the neighborhood climbing up the hillside. Maybe the only place in Cleveland where you can get an urban vista that nice from your car.

Good question. It has plenty of advocates on here, but then again so does the other site. I view the city's position as being very different from GCP's. Cities are supposed to advocate for their assets, and they're supposed to push projects in the direction of good urban planning. Nobody stands to recieve any personal gain from the medmart going on public land. GCP, on the other hand, selected one business interest over others and over the public. That interest, alone, would reap a windfall if the project went up on its astoundingly overpriced land. That interest's tenants would also get a disproportionate share of the spin-off business generated by convention traffic. The public would be left with a deserted complex that has limited utility outside of its intended civic role. In advocating the mall site, if they were to do so, the city would be pushing the interests of the many over those of the few, and favoring the big picture over immediate personal gain.

And which one had a conflict of interest? The GCP process was fatally flawed-- it allowed FCE to nominate themselves. They shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the decision process. Why Nance was willing to put his name on it is beyond me. He apparently has credibility to burn. It is entirely appropriate for MMPI to ignore that recommendation.

There aren't 4 facing forward, there are 2 together at most. You get clusters or 3 and 4 together facing inward. Some of these clusters sit more than a foot higher than others nearby. This doesn't hurt anyone, it's just weird. Standing room is definitely more scarce than on regular buses. It's also frustrating because you look around and it seems like there should be more. Bottom line is the interiors leave a lot to be desired. They make poor use of space and they put riders in all sorts of awkward positions. And people can call me fat all they want, I don't think the decision to go with narrower seats was advisable. Ms. Coppola makes a very salient point about the summer and the shorts. I guess I should point out that I still like this project a lot overall. Suburbanites who hate it hate urban development and mass transit in general. Certain missed calls do seem like they could have been avoided or could be fixed now with relative ease. --Solidify the shelters, maybe install heaters. The ones in the middle of the street really need help because of the additional wind-tunnel effect their design and placement invites. --Get landscaping into all the planters. You don't spend that kind of money on a street, then line a premier section of it with gravel beds. I don't understand the explanation that blames the property owners, when vacant lots got grass planters and playhouse square got gravel. --Turn off the 1980s robot voice. It often announces the wrong location, and it sounds embarassingly cheap. Why do the words sound cobbled together like a ransom note when it's reading off an entire essay about personal belongings? There wasn't one employee who could have just read that into a tape recorder, with normal human inflection?

The skinniness of the interiors is caused by massive plateaus built around the wheelwells, not by any failure of perception. It isn't the customers' fault. Somehow, regular buses are able to have wider seats aligned in an sensible fashion. Trains also have lots of doors yet their seats are sizeable and orderly as well. The healthline buses make most sitting riders face each other (awkward) and puts many in small clusters at different altitudes. I don't know what machinery is needed to operate those wheels, but it takes up a ridiculous amount of cabin space. I don't understand why it's necessary in these but avoidable in traditional buses. It really makes passenger seating seem like an afterthought.

They have to bathe somewhere.

Perhaps if they made the fountains work, the square wouldn't look so dead. Seeing the ruins of a fountain in front of key bank tower is almost as sad as seeing people sleeping on the benches there. Are we so poor we can't shoot water into the air? Fix that thing. Little aesthetic issues add up. We don't want our front yard to scream out "disrepair."