Everything posted by 327
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Peak Oil
The move to electric cars, which will probably be sooner in China, is going to have a serious mitigating effect.
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2016 U.S. Senate Race
True, but I think the bigger problem is people choosing to tune out. News is still there to be read.
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2016 U.S. Senate Race
That's the problem in a nutshell, trying to unseat an incumbent with a candidate who excites nobody. Both of them are relatively centrist but that approach doesn't work as well on offense as it does on defense. And just like at the presidential level, when the party stands against open primaries it prevents its next generation of candidates from developing any stature or name recognition.
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2016 U.S. Senate Race
Strickland's main strength was with rural voters, but he changed his position on guns and blew that. And yet the state party was so insistent on not having debates or even a primary. Fitzgerald was a catastrophe and now this. The Ohio Democratic Party is an embarrassment. Time to clean house.
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E-Check
I had a similar experience. When I took my car to the state-approved inspector to have the engine damage checked out, he "found" a previously non-existent transmission leak. At that point I sold the car for scrap.
- E-Check
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Cleveland: Filling in Euclid Avenue
The only thing I liked about Cadillac Ranch was their outdoor patio. Hoping Taco Bell does something similar to make good use of that space, but it's unclear from the renderings. The bar was terrible but that fire pit was perfect. I wish those were more common, it's cold for half the year here. Fire good.
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Cleveland / Lakewood: The Edge Developments
Part of it is in Lakewood so there's no combined promotion. It's all one big walkable happy place, but it's technically several neighborhoods in two cities, with the border street tying everything together. Edgewater, The Edge, Gold Coast, Birdtown, Cudell, and "Highland Square" which may involve Detroit or Madison it's never quite clear. There's no consistent branding and no entity charged with treating it as a thing. And it's still the coolest part of town, with a full range of nightlife and a half dozen live music venues, plus its own skyline. Promotion on the Lakewood side centers on Birdtown with its distinct branding. There's no apparent interest in tying Birdtown to anything across the line or toward the lake. The Cleveland side considers Edgewater a part of Cudell, which extends down to the Lorain/Denison area, which definitely needs more help. Edgewater has stronger ties to Lakewood than to Cudell but the political setup makes coordination difficult. For good urban living I recommend it to everyone, I just don't know what to call it except "Anything around 117th north of the tracks... no, the other tracks."
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Cleveland: Downtown: The Avenue District
If you can reproduce the rendering with a basic Lego set, it's probably not good enough for real life architecture. Do these 3-story single-use structures front a side street or do they front Superior Avenue? Address is on Superior but orientation isn't clear from their map.
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Cleveland: Public Square Redesign
Yes... it's The Grand Army Of The Republic Highway and it spans this entire continent. America's longest and perhaps most important road passes through Public Square. And here we are lamenting that it can't become yet another downtown lawn, all because of that pesky transit system and our unfortunate neighbors who depend on it. I cannot recall ever seeing so much anti-transit sentiment on this forum. I grow more concerned every day about the increasing economic segregation of the city. The comments on this topic are beginning to bother me on a visceral level so I think I'll step away from it for a while.
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Cleveland: Shoreway Boulevard Conversion
The primary alternate route is also under construction at the same time.
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Cleveland: North Coast Transportation Center
This kind of comment... look, I don't generally talk about NCTC at the bar. Who does? We're on a forum called Urban Ohio in a thread called NCTC. In light of NCTC not getting a TIGER grant, is there a more appropriate thread for comparing it with projects that did? Open to suggestions, other than "screw that because I want to make a different point." Go ahead, make your point. You don't need to shut down other people to do it. Glad you approve now. Thanks for derailing another discussion by jumping in and saying it's off-topic. Oops, sorry, never mind. Recently someone asked about the shoreway conversion, I wasn't involved, but you called me out by name because you didn't like an opinion I expressed about it several years ago.
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Cleveland: North Coast Transportation Center
I'm going out of my way not to malign the greenway project because I do like it, within the context of what it is, all things being equal, etc. And I fail to see much separation between RTA and NCTC, if for no other reason than the "T" they share. Consider how NCTC would retroactively make the WFL a better investment by tying the Rapids directly to interstate bus and rail services. When random locals are asked about rail funding, they still bring up the WFL's low utilization as an example of waste and a reason not to support the system. The Public Square renovation got a lot of people to come give it another try, and I believe NCTC could have a similar effect for RTA.
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Cleveland Guardians Discussion
I think the "Dolans are cheap" legacy is still at work here. They aren't as cheap anymore, but they were so cheap for so long that fans felt exploited and insulted. That said, I don't believe in grudges and it's time for people to start showing up. I've only been to one game this year myself but I'm shooting for several more.
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Cleveland: North Coast Transportation Center
I'm not comparing to those things, I'm comparing to public transit which I consider to be a much higher priority. It helps people pay rent and feed kids to a greater extent than libraries or parks (especially) ever will. I realize we spend a lot on RTA, but not nearly enough, as the severity of its current funding crisis is well known. This community simply does not face a crisis-level lack of parks, or even a mild lack of parks, and yet their position as Plan A seems unassailable.
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Cleveland: North Coast Transportation Center
Cool project, no doubt, it's just that the adjacent rail line often travels at less than bicycle speed. And RTA is roughly $18 million in the hole, so if there's $16 million available...
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Cleveland: North Coast Transportation Center
No, it comes down to the application and local support. It isn't just a "hiking trail" - which isn't even a truthful term, but the northernmost segment of the Ohio to Erie Trail. There are years of engineering that has gone into the implementation and planning of the bike/pedestrian corridor, which includes a new linear park, rehabilitation of existing deteriorated parks, and connectivity to other bicycle facilities. Just because your pet project didn't make the TIGER grant doesn't mean that it will never happen. After all, look how long it took for the Cincinnati Streetcar to get off of the ground with a combination of funding sources - including TIGER. It's competitive. The Ohio to Erie trail is fine in my book. The Red Line Greenway is weird to me (running a hiking trail next to a live rapid rail line that is mainly in an open cut ditch) and it wasn't that many years in the making; there was even some talk at one time of eliminating some of the tracks on the Red Line's viaduct to make it easier for hikers to walk into Tower City or whatever. It's salt in the wound that, while this "Greenway" is being funding, nobody seems to be able to find funding for the transit system running the Red Line itself and the level of interest in finding such funding seems very low. The NCTC isn't my "pet project," but it is an important project toward advancing rail. We haven't been able to get any positive rail project done in recent years, save the relocation of the E. 120 Red Line Stop to Little Italy -- I don't count the station rebuilds on their existing site (University-Cedar, Woodhill, Brookpark, etc) as advancing or expanding rail. You can't deny there always seems to be a groundswell of support and consensus for road or hiking trail but none for rail. The confusion about NCTC (should it be East or West of E. 9th street? Is there interest only because a private developer wants Greyhound's current property? etc) certainly had some influence on the TIGER grantors. The Cincinnati Streetcar is a bad example. There had been local political fighting over whether to move forward with it at all including, IIRC, opposition from Cincy's current mayor. It's almost a miracle that the line is even being built. Here again, though, the Cincinnati's "controversy" regarding the streetcar is not unlike the opposition and strife regarding rail projects in Cleveland -- the only difference is that in Cleveland, Joe Calabrese, the transit GM, is often the one who's against rail expansion which is bizarre. I like the Greenway project, but your point is well taken. Urban hiking trails can't possibly have the impact that a similar-scale investment in transit would. At a time when transit is struggling to hold on, as are a lot of the people it serves, public investment in hiking trails seems rather foolish.
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Greater Cleveland RTA News & Discussion
Considering how often they have to accelerate from a dead stop, I don't think the electric aspect comes into play very much.
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Cleveland: North Coast Transportation Center
It's plenty feasible. The only obstacle is leadership choosing not to do it, and leadership is fleeting. Theoretically.
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Cleveland Guardians Discussion
Frazier hits but hasn't shown as much power as expected thus far. If now isn't the time to make these moves, when is? We already have a solid young core and we're drafting a lot better these days, so I'm not super worried about the farm system.
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What are you watching?
Just finished the 3rd season of BoJack Horseman-- strongly recommended. The first few episodes are like a bad Family Guy knockoff, but keep going. It turns out to be the opposite of that.
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Cleveland: Lakefront Development and News
Lakefront or not, there's only so much we can do with land right by an airport. And I'm not sure we need an "Inner Harbor" development over here when we're already doing that with FEB. Besides, I think in our case the river provides a better waterfront for that sort of thing. This plan has a number of issues and IMO it needs to include a good WFL connection. But overall it's a plan I'm happy to see.
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Cleveland's Hough--50 years after the riot
I've put a lot of thought into this and still don't have a solution. I think everyone would be better off if Hough were built up as it was before the riots. The people who live there now disagree. Hough's bias against urbanity seems like holdover resentment from the riot days, when density and mixed-use were forced on blacks as whites went the opposite direction. From that perspective, the planning concepts I support for could be seen as tools of oppression. And it's not like they weren't tied in with it. But at the same time, the classic urban form has seen continuous and near-universal use. It doesn't need to involve exclusivity or coercion, and often doesn't. But here it did. Things are starting to balance out, maybe, as money moves downtown and poverty moves outward. Arguably, that setup could worsen poverty. But at least it offers choices for everyone. Ultimately the city can't afford for Hough to keep struggling on as an attempt at Solon. For fifty years we've tried that, when do we move on? How do we move on?
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Greater Cleveland RTA News & Discussion
This occurred while I was waiting at the West Park station so I tried to take a bus instead. For the next hour, there was not one bus of any type heading eastbound. I ended up walking. On the good side, I donated $5 to the RTA cause.
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Cleveland's Hough--50 years after the riot
From the article, there were plans for an entertainment district around League Park, the site of considerable investment already. TJ Dow opposes even studying this idea on the grounds that the area needs to be "strictly residential" because current residents say so. At this rate, the answer is no-- Hough will not benefit at all from the growth around it, because Hough refuses to be an urban neighborhood. There can be no success on the path that Fannie Lewis and TJ Dow have chosen. Hough will never be a suburb and it needs to stop trying to become one.