Foraker

The continued of these smaller cities might be enhanced by improved connections with nearby big cities -- better transit options for lower income people between them, better coordination between the services/industries offered in each to promote more reasons to travel between them, etc. It will not be easy.

I have several objections to vouchers, but one thing that maybe we could agree on is that the expenditure of public money should be transparent and there should be oversight of how public dollars are spent. How would you structure oversight over how schools spend public dollars? I don't think the State can afford parallel systems of private schools and public schools, and you seem to be advocating for eliminating the public school system entirely. What do you propose for unruly kids of unruly parents? What about developmentally and physically disabled kids? How do we ensure that there are schools near where kids live?

I saw this article about walking as a mode of transportation, and was particularly intrigued by this graph. https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/124359-fair-share-walking So even in the most "walkable" western countries, people only walk for about 20% of their trips. That should be a goal for improving walkability in the US. This also suggests that we ought to be specifically allocating transportation dollars to walkability improvements. Overall I recommend that article for its collection of other articles about infrastructure and walking, and its cost estimates for maintaining a pedestrian network.

Love to WXZ, indeed. But no part of Euclid Avenue is in Cleveland Heights...unless East Cleveland were to agree to merge.

Interesting. How did the city’s Director of Economic Development have the authority to release the liens?

The Synagogue between the Taylor Tudors and the sledding hill is tied up in foreclosure — but the city would like to include it in this project. Last I heard rehab on the Tudor buildings is expected to get under way in Q4 2023

Or maybe families can just reduce car trips, go from two cars to one, or from a new car every few years to once a decade — either way, overall savings.

Ah, Mr. Negativity -- I see your "it's not possible" and highly recommend the book "we can make it incrementally better." Look, I agree that it is completely ridiculous for anyone to think that the US, which has a built environment designed for everyone-has-a-car, could simply buy an electric bike and no longer drive anywhere. It's not going to happen. What if you did ride your bike to work -- you'd take a car off the road and make driving slightly better for your coworker who drives 20 miles to your office building. Now think how much more pleasant driving would be with even 30% fewer cars on the road. If just 30% of all trips now taken by car were done on foot and by bike, we'd be healthier and happier. (Even with electrification, we shouldn't need so many cars, and increased brake dust and tire debris and road damage that cars bring.) I'm not suggesting that we banish cars and we all revert to our own feet, bikes, trains, sailboats, horses for all of our transportation (even if that was my ideal). I'm suggesting that we start thinking about that 15-minute city in our planning and future development so that there will be SOME places where people CAN live without a car, and a lot MORE places where car use can be decreased. Maybe you only need a car to go to work, or to take the kids to hockey, or to visit grandma, or go to the building supply or garden supply store -- but you don't need a car to go to the pub, a park, the library, the grocery, school, or work. "OR" being the operative word here. Having no other way to get anywhere other than by car is the problem that not everyone can afford but is the reality in our 20th century city development pattern. It took us less than a century to build a dense rail network throughout Ohio and another century of driving to dismantle almost all the rails and build out cities to accommodate driving personal cars. If you are saying we should continue on that path, I disagree. Cities around the world provide proof that public and other non-car transportation systems can work and create really nice places to live. People still drive cars in the Netherlands, the world's cycling capitol, as they do in Tokyo, which has an arguably redundant system of subways. Making our city centers carfree is achievable in the US, over the long term, if we plan for it and make incremental improvements over time to get there. Making our cities car-optional or less-car-dependent is an ideal objective, even if it isn't going to be possible immediately.

So you're saying that people are poor because they have poor morals, or just that they lack discipline? Oh boy. -- because of all the cars. Replace 90% of the cars with bicycles -- problem solved for your delivery men.

Amen. Can we get t-shirts?

Time for a little midnight guerilla repair -- who's going to make the run to the Big Orange Box for a couple of bags of cement? Can someone bring a couple of buckets of water? I've got a spare length of 2x4 we can use as a trowel....

What about all those people who don't work at a "good" restaurant? And what if you have to provide your own vehicle for delivering pizzas -- can you make more than the cost of the car? That full time warehouse job sounds awesome -- with "over $50k" minus taxes you could even afford a NEW car to live in with your kids. (Who needs food?!) Seriously, with the cost of buying and maintaining a car these days, your arguments for "just get another job" or "just get a better job" completely miss the point that MOST jobs would be a lot more desirable at lower pay levels if the workers didn't HAVE to have a car to get to or do the job. Car-centered design of our cities is a hidden tax that particularly hits start-up and small businesses hard, the business that can't afford to pay top dollar for new employees.

If it is "likely" that speed limiters will prevent more accidents than they cause, that seems like a good reason to implement them. Aren't most school buses speed limited to the highway speed limit? Are they particularly prone to accidents? I don't think so, but I did not find any information about speed-limited school buses in Ohio or a large number of accidents involving school buses. If EVERY car was speed-limited and the system had the wrong speed limit for a particular stretch of road, wouldn't that mean that everyone would be driving at the "wrong" (but same) speed? Differences between the speeds of vehicles on a roadway has been cited as increasing the risk of accidents. Maybe the "main" reason cars don't have speed limiters, and GPS-enabled ones specifically, is that car makers don't want the added cost and the liability. Plus many Americans want to be able to drive as fast as they want to and don't obey speed limits if they think they can get away with it -- they don't want "someone else" telling them how fast they can drive....

The "leading progressive" newspaper in the US, the New York Times, has similarly fallen off the progressive wagon. While existing "15 minute cities" are very rare, they do tend to be more expensive and cater to the wealthy. That shows their desirability, but just because that is the current situation doesn't mean that a 15-minute city can't be affordable. I would argue that they're not more expensive as a result of their design. Fewer cars means narrower roads that don't have to be repaired nearly as often, for example. And even a somewhat more expensive neighborhood can be more affordable if it removes the NEED to HAVE TO own a car to live there. 'Cause cars ain't cheap no more. https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-car-price/ https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/cost-of-car-ownership/ Even the average used car, at $26,510, is nearly half the median annual family income in Ohio -- which is only $61,938! That's the median, which means that half of Ohio FAMILIES live on less! https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/OH/INC110221 NEEDING to own a car to live in Ohio is likely a huge obstacle for the poor to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" to get out of poverty. If you want people to climb out of poverty, you have to provide sufficient support to make it happen -- affordable housing, affordable transportation, affordable healthcare, affordable childcare, affordable food -- if you can manage all of that at minimum wage you can look for a better job, improve your education, start a business -- and climb out of poverty and pay more taxes to help the next generation and support social security for preceding generations. You can buy an electric bike for $1,000, and if you have balance issues, an electric trike for under $5,000; annual maintenance under $200. Either would generate a lot less noise and pollution in our neighborhoods. Our cities would be a lot more pleasant (and safer, and healthier) if we could save the car for the roadtrip, and live our daily lives within 15 minutes (at a max speed of 20mph on an electric bike, that's about a 5mile radius, about 30 square miles).

It would not be a terrible thing to give every American teenager a trip to a foreign country -- South America, Asia, Africa, Europe -- that would open some eyes. Too many Americans have never been anywhere outside the US other than Mexican and Caribbean resorts and Canadian casinos. Brightline in Florida is going to open a lot of eyes to what train travel can be like -- something few Americans have experienced.

It sounds like the speed limit is being displayed in kilometers per hour! There's probably a setting that could be changed to make it more accurate.

And surely you could lower some of the tracks 6" or a foot to provide additional clearance if that was a concern -- but nice to see that there actually is sufficient clearance already!

Or maybe it's much more complex than that black-and-white view of the world. Sprawl has been in full swing for most of the past 50 years -- the metro population has stagnated (Cuyahoga County's population dropped from about 1.7m in 1970 to 1.2m in 2020) even as Avon Lake and other far-from-Public-Square suburbs have seen the most construction. https://planning.clevelandohio.gov/cwp/pop_trend.php https://www.cleveland.com/news/erry-2018/07/c013564bfd6696/find_out_when_most_homes_in_yo.html Since GCRTA is funded by a sales tax, its funding fluctuates with the economy. I couldn't find sales tax revenue data or historical RTA revenue data, but Ohio overall spends less per capita on public transit than all but five states, so unlike the transit systems in Detroit or Pittsburgh, RTA isn't getting much assistance from the state. https://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/ohio-spends-less-than-most-states-on-public-transit-a-recent-analysis-shows And despite its service woes, GCRTA still moves more than double the number of people as the transit systems in either Cincinnati or Columbus. Transit works best when moving lots of people around dense areas where people live and work. GCRTA cannot work efficiently with a diluted population, diluted job locations, and increased area that needs to be covered, and unpredictable (and minimal) revenue. GCRTA needs more revenue and more TOD to improve service.

Agreed. In the Noble Triangle (that triangular area at Noble-Warrensville-Mayfield), the city is working on cleaning up and moving out of the old Hillside Dairy building. Hopefully that will be demolished and remediated soon. The city still needs to find a place to relocate the salt storage and a few other things there. Maybe near Denison park or maybe shared space with Euclid Heights's salt storage? Several of the properties on Mayfield east of Noble also were rumored to be on the market (the dinette store owners are retiring, and the exotic car dealer). If the city had a functioning (and funded) CIC, maybe the city could buy some properties in this area and issue RFPs for redevelopment. That section of Noble between Mayfield and Warrensville could be a nice walkable business district if both sides are developed smartly. (Not an "entertainment district" as recommended by past consultants.) Not sure about who owns the vacant lots on the other side of Noble. I'd prefer to see an overall "plan" for the area and multiple developers involved in building different parts than one giant redevelopment by a single developer, but that would still be better than the "nothing happening" right now. Maybe Severance is a higher priority? I don't really know what is going on with the city government these days. They can't seem to do multiple things simultaneously, that's for sure. Cedar-Lee-Meadowbrook shouldn't be taking up much of the economic development efforts now that it's locked in and in the hands of the developer. Under Seren, however, the city doesn't like to talk about what they have cooking. (I keep hoping that Mayor Seren really does have a Secret Plan, but so far it remains to be seen...let's hope it's not like Trump's Amazing Healthcare Plan that we were all going to love so much, and Seren actually surprises us all on Severance or something equally impressive.)

Low-cost childcare and health insurance would go a long way to making it easier for entrepreneurs with families to start their own business, and would go a long way toward helping poor families struggling to climb out of poverty. If we could somehow guarantee 9-5 childcare for a small percentage of income it would be a boost to an economy that needs workers. Send me more engineers, please!

LOL. I don't think it's that simple. But of course, mall owners -- please gracefully control loitering around your stores. I think urb-a-saurus had it right, it is just one of several factors -- "loitering" by young people perceived as a safety concern: I think #2 will suffer just as much as indoor malls as their newness and trendiness falls off over time. And the construction of the next-big-thing at the next interchange...

I have no particular spot in mind, but what if a city could give a team a big chunk of land and say "develop it and we'll give you a percentage of the taxes and speed you through the approval process." In lieu of giving them cash subsidies. The team would have an incentive to build a high-density, year-round entertainment kind of place that would generate a lot of taxes to pay for the stadium. And if it was on a brownfield, the city also gets someone to do a bit of cleanup or revitalization of a corner of the city that might otherwise have been difficult to develop. Now, this is a really uninformed idea -- I'm no real estate expert and I have no idea whether this could come even close to generating enough revenue for a stadium or how much acreage would be required for it to be feasible, but it does seem like the city might have enough vacant brownfields that are too large an undertaking for the average developer -- in other words, the city has land, it doesn't have cash, so how can that land be leveraged?

Looks like the new canopies are "roofed" and sealed up top. What do they look like underneath? Any timeline on when the digital signage will be added?

Study uses biometrics to show that people are happier living in car-free places. (Duh. But empirical evidence rather than "gut feeling.") https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/car-free-cities-are-the-future-biometrics-reveal/

There was a rumor of an Aldi going to build a new store near Mayfield and Warrensville, on the site of the former theater that was torn down. I thought there had been a presentation to Planning & Development, but I can't find it. Site appears to still be up for sale. Anyone know anything about this? A better site might be further north at Noble-Monticello, in place of the former CVS.