Foraker

...as long as you are comfortable with the idea of relearning the alphabet. Don't forget the public subsidies for emergency rooms.

Heavier trucks should pay exponentially higher fees. Not only do they significantly increase road wear, they're more dangerous. They will stop slower and further outweigh passenger vehicles.

If we have too many highways, why should we maintain all of them? Logically, if we have too many highways, then we should maintain fewer highways. Fewer lanes should be our future.

until the price of baseload generator fuel (coal, uranium, natural gas) rise substantially. Not exactly "never."

While pv cells are not very efficient, if we put them on every roof in the US they would generate enough electricity to avoid building a power plant or two. Certainly would help during summer a/c season, which seems to have been a lot longer the past few years.

Batteries, capacitors, and/or hybrid engines seem to be the future. I've heard discussions of designs that permit the overhead wires to be located at the stations only so that there is some recharging while the trolley (and not just a bus, but rail-based trolleys as well) is at a stop. This makes building a new line much cheaper and looks better too not having to run overhead power on the entire route.

Eric Wobser is being presented with the Comcast/City Year Leadership Award for outstanding CY alumni this week.

*cough* waterfront line extension *cough*

Indeed, if the left and the right would talk about what they want to achieve, I think there is a lot more common ground than the press would lead you to believe. Since we're talking about transportation, I think a lot of people would agree that taxes should cover the cost of maintaining the highways. But which taxes? Tolls, vehicle registration fees, fuel surcharges -- that is where the left and right stop listening to each other or skewing the facts to please their particular agenda. How do we get the politicians to talk to each other? and listen, and respect opposing views, and attempt a compromise -- those are today's big problems.

Sorry, I couldn't find it -- could you be more specific? What am I missing?

Gramarye and jjakucyk both make very good points. In my opinion, the biggest problem with ever-further-from-city-center suburbia, and perhaps a place to look for a solution, is exactly the problems highlighted by jjakucyk concerning further burdening on utilities that the new suburbs do not pay for. Water, sewer, electric lines, etc. -- how can we make new suburban developers pay the full cost of the burdens the new development will impose on the regional utility networks? If they did have to pay those costs, far-flung developments would be a lot less attractive.

Interesting interview. I look forward to part II. I was dismayed, however, to see that the interviewer referred to highways as having a dedicated source of funding and the ODOT director failed to point out that those gas taxes don't cover the full cost to maintain the roads. Without that caveat, the casual reader is left (again) with the impression that gas taxes make highways self-sufficient.

On the contrary, it does matter. The funding source for airlines and highways is primarily us taxpayers. None of these modes of transportation is self-sufficient.

Great idea for some Cleveland-area journalism students, a report on each rapid station in Cleveland; a similar project was done in Chicago. http://streetsblog.net/2010/07/01/telling-the-story-of-chicago-one-train-stop-at-a-time/

Good questions ccars. Here are my thoughts on the issue. I don't think I would mind having county-wide police, as long as there was a "local" police station, fast police response times, and a continued police presence in the neighborhood. In fact, regionalize all you want, just don't give me less service. Trash, tree-trimming, park maintenance, snow-plowing, street maintenance, fire departments -- I probably wouldn't notice whether it was my city doing those jobs or the county. The bigger the organization (corporation or city government), the less responsive they seem to be, however. It will be difficult to ensure that everyone feels like their problems are being addressed in a larger government entity. Perhaps that's where you would hope that your ward/borough representative would have a good staff, but if not ? That's something the new county government will have to address if they want suburbs to give up their own government to join the county. Each ward/borough of the county should have it's own local "downtown" commercial district where people of that community can gather together. Since you brought up Cleveland Heights, good examples would be Coventry, Cedar-Fairmount, Cedar-Lee, etc. Everyone is protective of their local schools, that might be the hardest area to consolidate. My own feeling is that everyone ought to have an elementary school within walking distance. I think that helps to maintain local involvement in a school, which encourages a sense of community. Yes, if money alone is considered, some areas will lose their schools. But this is one area where I think it is worth spending a little extra to have a local elementary. I'm probably in the minority on that issue. I have no problems with middle/high schools farther away. Those kids aren't so eager to have their parents around the school anyway, and parents are less concerned that they can't take care of themselves between school and home. Based on my limited information, I think Cleveland Heights has a very good police department. Very professional, if a bit of a stickler for following the "rules," like speed limits. (You would think I should know that by now.) I don't think they are overstaffed, nor would I want fewer officers patrolling my neighborhood. East Cleveland probably does need more officers though. My understanding is that for some time Cleveland Heights paid the salary of one East Cleveland police officer. I don't know whether that is still the case, but it wasn't done just out of charity, there was a definite benefit for Cleveland Heights.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. The fuel taxes only pay about half the cost to maintain the roads. (thank you natininja) Income taxes make up the difference. The income taxes are not included in the $0.55 per mile estimate.

Yes, if you buy a beater and have few major repairs and drive it back and forth between the 3C's forever, it might work out to be cheaper than taking the train. If you don't count the taxes paid to build and maintain the roadways. The state of Ohio is planning to spend around $1 billion per year maintaining its roads and bridges for the next few years. Those are your tax dollars that we are all spending for the privilege and convenience of driving. If we only look at taxes and not the cost to own a car, what if improved rail networks could cut 10% of the wear and tear on the roads and thereby reduce Ohio's maintenance expenditures by 10%? That would be $100 million. The $17 million operating costs for the 3C is peanuts in comparison. So if we can improve our freight network and get passenger rail service, it's a win-win. Fewer drivers on the interstates make the interstates more pleasant (and safer and faster) to drive on. An improved rail network means fewer trucks on the road, which means trucking on the highways will be safer, less congested, and will experience less wear. Everyone wins, except some long-haul truckers who will be replaced by short-haul truckers and railroad employees. Doubling the per-axle weight of vehicles on a road increases the damage to the road by a factor of four, and the per-axle weight limit on interstate trucks is about 9 times the average per-axle weight of a car. http://pavementinteractive.org/index.php?title=ESAL So even taking a few trucks off the road can dramatically reduce the frequency at which we have to repave our roads. $$ in our pockets!

As many of us have said on here before, that would probably be ideal. But ODOT doesn't like it seems unlikely that that will happen. See KJP's drawings up-thread.

I think you're being funny. But you know that is an old furniture supply store that used to be downtown. Postcard says it was at 420 Prospect Ave., now the parking lot across from E.4th.

South Africa (!) opens a new high(er) speed rail line (100mph) BBC News - Gautrain arrives in time for World Cup (with video)

Government can and already is affecting the market, however. Subsidies and tax credits keep oil prices artificially low, and the taxes on gas are fixed rather than a percentage and so have minimal if any impact on consumption as prices rise or fall. Phase out the subsidies, change the fuel tax to a percentage (currently $.17/gallon, so let's make it 17%). That's a start. The problem with waiting for the market is that the market doesn't always act quickly enough. Higher prices may make more fuel-efficient cars more desirable, but it takes years to design and build the necessary capacity. So by requiring higher fuel economy the government pushes car companies to do some of that design-build process now, rather than waiting for the higher prices that are certain to come in the future. Capitalism doesn't solve all problems. See BP.

I hope you can share some photos with us along the way!

Unfortunately I did not see a single cyclist on my city-streets commute into downtown this morning. (I should be cycling to work, but I don't and don't have a good excuse.)

OK, let me try to explain it another way. Although high-speed rail would be preferable, the up-front cost is prohibitive. The costs for start-up service are orders of magnitude lower, even though the speeds won't be as desirable. That significantly higher cost of high speed rail can only be justified (politically, to the masses; I suspect that most of UrbanOhio readers are already convinced) after they have SOME experience with rail travel, and we have the stations and at least some connecting service in place. Given the horrible state of Amtrak's scope and frequency, the new efforts to develop rail are essentially a new product that most Americans have never experienced. Focus groups have said that some people want more and better rail travel, but the masses are just clueless about this new product. There is a lot of concern about cost, so we have to start with the low-cost option, introduce the new product and see how much they like it. If not, it will die. But experience in other states implies that it will be popular once people have an opportunity to try it. You may disagree, but this is the rationale -- do you understand? The start-up service will have a slow average speed at first, but it will increase over time. We'll probably see 100mph top speeds within five years of initial start-up, and it's only when we want top speeds above 150mph that we'll have to build dedicated right-of-way. By that time, people will have a lot more experience with rail travel and can make an informed decision about whether to spend the money to make the jump to "true" high speed rail. (although a rail fan, I don't see the value in "true" high speed rail) The automobile provides an example of incremental development. We didn't go out and build the interstates and put a gas station on every corner at the same time that we built the first cars and even through mass-production in the 1910s. Roads were improved over time, and the speeds that could be traveled along those roads increased slowly as well, as did the services at the roadsides -- diners, hotels, rest areas, signage, etc.

I agree with others arguing for longer school years, or at least spreading the break around. Such as a fall break weak, two week Christmas break, spring break week, six week summer break. A longer school day would have to include more supervised free time, particularly for the elementary grades, but it would definitely help with the majority of families now seeming to have two working parents (or only one parent). But I disagree with privatizing schools. Charter schools often do not perform better than public schools, and yet they can more easily remove any student who isn't cutting it. http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/statepressreleases/Ohio.pdf It's OUR money, whether we pay private operators or public workers. We should reform how public schools operate rather than giving the money to some private company. Private schools have been around for a long time, even before the current chartering system. We should be looking at what the private schools do that makes them successful, and what are the impediments to doing the same things in the public schools. I also think that we need to be more pro-active in quickly shutting down or changing what is happening at schools, both public and charter, where students aren't performing. Of course, monitoring and intervention are expensive too. What do we do with the problem kids? Boarding school perhaps? I don't know -- we have an ingrained belief that kids should never be removed from their parents so there would be a lot of resistance. Maybe if the school is kept relatively near the parents. Some people might not like the stigma of kids sent to a special school either. Even if it costs $30,000 a year to educate problem kids for twelve years, the cost to society probably would be lower than the costs generated by the uneducated in this country -- more police, courts, jails, welfare rolls, fewer taxes paid, etc.