Foraker

In the US, most trackage is owned and maintained (or not) by private freight companies. But who owns and maintains the track in the EU? And who should own and maintain the track in the US?

That's a great start (although the West Side Market was already a draw there) (and like Geowizical I look forward to further completion of that plan!) -- can we have more of this -- what's the plan for placemaking at W65th, E55th, etc.? We need every station (or almost every station) to be a place that people want to go to.

Confirmed -- https://www.clevescene.com/food-drink/rising-star-coffee-lands-new-cleveland-heights-location-45228522

And are they aggressively working with Cleveland and the County to push for more TOD (marketing and financial incentives) around the stops? This is where cooperation could lead to more effective results.

No, just my opinion that if RTA and governments worked together they could actually achieve something.

If only GCRTA would listen to @KJP!

But sadly GCRTA isn't interested in developing new BRT either. If the county and municipalities and GCRTA would all work together, we could get that "Van Aken to Collinwood" BRT with a some financial incentives and hype to encourage development along the line and the system would improve dramatically. I think it could be done, with the right leadership and cooperation. Certainly pushing harder for more development around existing transit stations would be easier and there is no reason why GCRTA and local governments shouldn't be pushing harder for it.

And in spite of all the new sports Ignatius still doesn't have 100% participation -- there are still a lot of kids not playing any sport. And there are plenty of potentially talented kids who really don't even get much of a chance -- you're not going play on the top hockey team unless you were playing elite hockey before entering high school, and the same is highly likely for lacrosse and baseball as well. Kids get sorted early and its tough to break through that early sorting even though teen bodies and minds change dramatically over four years.

Would the police have a way (drone video footage?) to photograph the cars and their license plates and go after these guys later?

Basically agree -- transit is not a draw, it's just a means to get to interesting places. I also think that Van Aken was not a destination before (strip mall with a big parking lot), but now it is an interesting Place that people want to be. It's the Place that is the draw, and transit makes it easier to get there without a car. We need more Places that people want to go to that are served by transit -- that doesn't mean we need more transit, it means we need more interesting Places near our existing transit lines. The more Places on our transit lines that draw people, the more useful those transit lines become. Unfortunately, there's nothing between Shaker and Van Aken, for example, and likely never will be. And the Green Line is worse.

Perhaps, but I always thought that the whole point of TOD was to create a PLACE that people would want to come to. It's a huge lift to accomplish, and just developing one or two sites generally won't do it. RTA has not be very good at it. Shaker did it well with Van Aken, but other examples of success (even in Shaker) are lacking.

If you look closely, you'll see that this emperor also wears no clothes...his cloak of "reasonableness" fails to materialize when you look at his actions.

Tracks in grass -- that would be awesome. And it would keep cars out of the streetcar lane. (Although now the bus lane does provide a convenient way to get around the delivery vehicles that just double park in the travel lane.)

Maureen O'Connor, a Republican, is one of the leaders of the Issue 1 effort, which was drafted by a very bipartisan group. In other words, Steve Stivers should be endorsing this bipartisan effort.

Fingers crossed -- I hear the manager of the Hop resigned last week and there are still (!) openings for bands.

The reason for government to regulate school lunches is that kids generally are not able to make the best choices for their own health. Schools shouldn't be seeking out the lowest-priced vendor for food. And it shouldn't be objectionable to say that school lunches should include vegetables, protein, fruit, and less sugar and processed food.

Yes, highly processed food is not good for you (so maybe it should be taxed; maybe we shouldn't be subsidizing corn syrup; maybe we need a marketing campaign against processed foods -- all things to consider). But I disagree with the idea that "just" eating better is going to solve the problem. You can find junk food in Japan (7-Eleven rules!) or Europe (and the best desserts), but you won't find so many obese people. They're not hitting the gym, but they eat smaller portions and move so much more than the average American. The car-centric design of our lives is absolutely part of the problem and something that has really changed from the 1950s -- more so than kids not being competitive in gym class, which I find laughable given my own experience with kids. Even more so than in the 1950s, every family has a car or multiple cars, and we have built so many more neighborhoods where it isn't practical or even possible to live there without a car, developments where there's nowhere you can even walk to if you wanted to. Add the internet, air conditioning, and remote work and you can socialize, eat dinner, and be entertained from the comfort of your sectional sofa, and many do.

Yeah. Despite the "concrete lasts longer" mantra, the seams between concrete sections seem to be brittle and break quickly, and are not easily repaired. Ideally the Healthline would be moved to rails....

If you don't understand how the library is being made out to be the bad guy, consider that the Cleveland Heights community doesn't want to be run by bean-counters and the history of this building. Also there is a deed restriction on a portion of the property that would make commercial development much more difficult (and a creek and ravine on one side). That deed restriction might have to be removed in court before any development could occur. Who wants to incur that expense when construction is already expensive? That deed restriction also meant that the library could not rent space to commercial organizations, which is part of the reason why they couldn't charge higher rents (and even so only 60% of the building is leased). The Coventry P.E.A.C.E. Campus nonprofit has ideas for improvements to the building that would make it more desirable (fixing the HVAC and renovating the elementary-school bathrooms for one), and they dispute the library's cost estimates for necessary repairs. They have a funding source lined up, but cannot apply for the loans without control of the building. (Frankly, I think they did a poor job of setting forth how they would manage the finances after a take-over in their application to the library, and the library doesn't trust them to be able to do what they say they can do.) So far the library hasn't wanted to make more than the minimal investment in maintenance, which contributed to the inability to fully lease the building. When the school system decided to close the Coventry Elementary building, the community outrage was really intense. Under Ohio law a school system cannot divest itself of property without first offering it to a charter school. To avoid doing that they sold the property to the library at the very generous price of $1. (We also could say that the school system violated their fiduciary duty in doing so, if financial considerations should have been the primary consideration.) I'm not a fan of the building and its unusual layout (I don't think the library will be able to reuse it without substantial investment that to date they have been unwilling to make). I can understand that the library does not want to be a landlord (and it appears that they weren't good at it). But tearing it down is going to be unusually expensive as well due to its unusual construction, and we do not know what that cost will be yet. Tearing it down also is going to create bad feelings on the part of the arts community that has formed in the building. Cleveland Heights thinks of itself as a "Home to the Arts" and thus the community support for the artists extends beyond the artists in residence. To the extent that the library is the "bad guy" here, it's in the fact that they have now decided to think only in financial terms and only what is best for the library, not on what is best for the community (as it did when it bought the building), and not on finding a win-win for everyone who will be directly impacted by their decision. I don't really understand why they aren't willing to talk to the Coventry P.E.A.C.E. group. That makes no sense to me. Unless some other roadblock appears, I fully expect the library to conclude that maintenance costs are greater than a tear-down, all of the tenants will be evicted by July 2025, and the building will be mothballed until the library can find the funding to tear it down. Community outrage will fade over time. And what happens next is unknown. Maybe it will all be a park.

CHUH Library declines offer from Coventry P.E.A.C.E. Campus nonprofit to buy the former Coventry elementary building for $1 (what the library system paid to obtain it). More study. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/we-follow-through/would-be-a-massive-loss-heights-libraries-unanimously-rejects-1-purchase-of-coventry-p-e-a-c-e-building The nonprofits in the building predominantly have leases that expire on December 31, but there are a few leases that run into 2025. HeightsArts is particularly desperate to retain their space in the building for their artists as there is no other comparable space available in the Heights. My own opinion is that there is no way that the library can recoup the $500,000 they claim to have put into maintenance since their purchase, that's ridiculous. The nonprofits do not have the resources to take on maintenance AND pay the library for their past expenses. (They bought the building because they wanted the parking lot and the playground. The building was not really something the library wanted, and it is understandable that they wouldn't want to be a landlord. But demolition is not going to be cheap either. Selling the building would leave them with the parking lot and the playground that they want while unloading the future maintenance expense and avoiding the demolition expense. Just consider the $500k to be the purchase price for the parking lot and the playground, and let the building go!)

Even with your workaround, it's still more than 34 hours -- double the drive time. Can we get it to 24-hours, please?!? And yes, it seems we would be much better off with Brightline than Amtrak. Strong federal enforcement of the requirement for passenger train right-of-way also would go a long way. If the freight company doesn't have a siding long enough for their train to get out of the way, the fine should be steep enough that it makes financial sense for the freight companies to build longer sidings or shorten freight trains. The current slap on the wrist isn't working.

38 hours to West Palm Beach. Ouch.

As @KJP noted in his article, even if the FAA agrees to close Burke, we're going to have to spend money to upgrade another local airport to be a reliever for Hopkins. But I agree -- now is as good a time as any to get started. Wasn't there a plan several years ago to build offices along the southern edge of Burke? Maybe a strip of buildings with a mix of small business/worker housing could be built now, without waiting for Burke to close.

I tend to agree on better-uses-for-that-money but I like flying back from DUB -- wish it was an every-day flight. Part of that $X million is going to be upgrading another airport in the region to be the reliever airport for Hopkins. Brace yourself for the NIMBYs around the county airport to go nuts when they realize that is part of the plan.

I guess it has some value as a"makes you think" post, but I disagree with his idea that city-suburb relations are worst in the midwest. That's far too much generalization and he doesn't present great data to support it. Sure, cities and suburbs developed in different ways in different parts of the country, but what is the basis for defining relations between the city and suburbs good or bad? Whether the suburbs have a walkable core? Moving on...