DaninDC

The bit aired on Thursday's Daily Show. I watched it today on the TiVo--what a riot! Looks like Carl was a bit uncomfortable being exposed for the hack he is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmYl_R5eb58

Suburbia is already overplanned.

Retailers do that all the time. The term "flagship" generally refers to the largest store in the market. The DC Macy's flagship is the Metro Center store, which was recently Hechts, although this store is not one of their "national" flagship stores. It's just larger than any of the other stores in the DC area. I worked on a store for Polo Ralph Lauren in Chevy Chase, Maryland, which was their DC flagship, although it was most definitely not THE flagship in Manhattan.

Actually, the building under construction in Photo #5 is the new MGM Grand permanent casino. Michigan Avenue is in the foreground, with the Lodge Freeway running under the bridge. The black skyscraper is the DTE Energy building. Motor City Casino is located on Grand River at the Lodge, a few blocks off to the left of this photo. True, Detroit is rehabbing more than they used to, but they're also tearing down a lot too, leaving more empty lots. Major upcoming renovations include the Book-Cadillac and Fort-Shelby hotels. One could say these are "reclamations", as they've both been vacant for decades. At the same time, historically significant structures such as the Statler-Hilton and Madison-Lenox have unfortunately bit the dust. The casinos are by far the largest and most significatn projects currently under construction in Detroit.

Makes you wonder when Old Sam is going to have an original idea.

Hooray for taking steps to eventually expand MARC service. I think the idea to extend the Metro to BWI is idiotic, though. BWI already has MARC Penn Line and Amtrak service, with trains arriving about every hour during the week. Why not spend the money to increase frequency of MARC trains (including adding weekend service), and if anything, build Metro lines in the densely-populated inner suburbs, where it actually makes sense. Between this and constructing a new, unneeded $3 billion freeway that will only cause more sprawl, I'm convinced Maryland has no idea what the hell it's doing transportation-wise.

At least you guys have meters....

The cab stands at the hotels aren't really that hopping at 2 or 3 AM, though! Another question: what area are cabs required to travel in? In other words, are Cleveland cabbies required to take you anywhere in Cuyahoga County, or just the city limits? Any suburbanites ever have a hard time getting a cab home from downtown (or nearby)?

Two bucks to get in, and then another 2 bucks per mile? It makes our goofy zone system seem downright appealing. I have a couple gripes about cabs in Cleveland. First, it's never really been clear to me whether or not you're allowed to hail a cab on the street. Most cabbies look completely perplexed when I try to flag down a cab downtown. What's the rule on this? Second, I would say there aren't nearly enough cabs in Cleveland. If you've ever tried to get a cab on Public Square or the Warehouse District, you know what I mean. It takes forever--most times I end up catching an RTA bus while waiting for a cab to show. How do they determine the number of cabs allowed on the street? By guessing? If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd be extremely gratified.

Sounds like they hired the finest geotechnical engineers money could buy. Not.

Doesn't NYC Transit have a "no photography" policy? I had to laugh. I can just imagine a tourist in DC getting a beat-down from the transit cops because they were filming the subway.

Maybe because those who say Columbus is too sparsely populated are just guessing. I'll agree that Columbus is too suburbanized in a lot of places to make a rail line effective, but there are certainly corridors where it would work well. The other side of the coin is that transportation shouldn't be designed to service the status quo, but also used to guide future development. In DC, the Metro was designed on the premise that it would lead to increased economic development clustered around the stations. It's no wonder, then, that 30 years later, we have the second-busiest subway in the nation. The funny thing about transportation is, since it goes hand-in-hand with land-use, and vice-versa, it's pretty much a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Out of the three, I like the arch. It speaks more to Cleveland's industrial heritage, as well as the character of the Flats down below, not to mention that the arch is more harmonious with the rest of the structure than the piers and cables are (see rendering #3). The cable-stayed designs are almost cliche--everyone is building 'em just because they can. ODOT, in particular, has a hard-on for cable-stayed designs anymore. Why does everything ODOT does have to be so damn difficult?

Yes, the signs at Hopkins do need to be more consistent. Even if they just said "Rapid", with a little train logo, that would be fine as long as the terminology remained the same througout. The "RTA" logo means absolutely nothing to an out-of-town-visitor.

I don't buy it. "Metro" doesn't translate to "train" either, unless you're Parisian, but it seems to work okay here. Even though the signs at National Airport point to "Metro" (and not "trains to city"), people seem to get the gist--about 15% of passengers (highest percentage in the nation) arrive at National Airport by transit. I think the lack of use of the Rapid from Hopkins has more to do with the incredibly decentralized nature of the region, and the lack of extensiveness of the Rapid system, than what the damn sign says.

I seem to recall that when the Washington Metro changed is closing time from 2AM to 3AM on Friday and Saturday nights, they said it would cost an extra $1.5 million per year to stay open the extra hour. Granted, this is for a system with 5 lines, 105 miles of track, and at least one station manager for each of the 85 stations. I imagine RTA's costs would be far lower, but I'm not sure how this would jive with their budget.

It is a shame that RTA has cut late-night service on the weekends. I have to think that only leads people to drink and drive, since they don't really have other realistic transportation options should they close the bar. It's especially a bad idea since you can'teasily hail a cab off the street in Cleveland. I didn't know that Minneapolis ran the Hiawatha Line so late. Good for them. I'm grateful that our Metro is wise enough to run trains late on weekends, unlike other cities. (I'm talking about you, BOSTON). Our trains used to run until 2 on Friday and Saturday. Problem is, District bars are open until 3 in on Friday and Saturday, so DC ponied up extra money to run the trains an hour later on weekends. Metro also charges rush hour fares between 2-3 AM to help pay for the additional service. There are still idiots who drink and drive, but at least you have the option of not sharing the road with them.

Buildings falling out of favor due to old age are one thing. Buildings abandoned due to subsidizing unsustainable development on greenfields is something else entirely.

That's two of us. You point out something really worthwhile, though. Even if we build high-speed intra-regional rail systems in the U.S., we still need slower trains to serve the smaller cities, like Oxford, and commuter rail for intra-metropolitan-area service. For example, the East Coast has the Acela trains, which mostly stop in the larger cities. There is also the Regional service, though, that stops at more stations (like Newark and Trenton, which get missed by Acela). On top of that, each region has commuter rail that connects suburbs to their core city. Within the cities, of course, there is the local rail transit service, but that's a different mode entirely.

"15,000 students" isn't demographics--it's the population of Miami U. You conveniently ignore places like Carbondale, Illinois (home of SIU) that have existing Amtrak service. I suppose Carbondale should just close its station, huh? Nowhere did I say that there should be rail stations every 10 miles in SW Ohio, because that's certainly not even the case on the densely populated East Coast (at least with intercity service). You make it seem, however, that Oxford is just outside of downtown Cincinnati, which it is not. Perhaps part of the disconnect is in calling the Ohio Hub "regional". I think that's an abuse of the term. Regional rail more often refers to commuter rail. The Ohio Hub is most certainly intercity, but over a limited area. UncleRando, what you describe isn't much different from the SNCF <<reseau>> in France. If we had a network like theirs, sans wildcat strikes, our rail system would be the envy of the world.

Why not? Please elaborate on both points. Now you're just being a patronizing idiot. I presume you're intelligent enough to read what I wrote. If you have a counterpoint to make, then make a statement and support it. This statement by you is just a bullshit excuse for the status quo.

It doesn't seem like you quite understand how passenger trains operate. Railroads operate linearly, not on a point-to-point hub-and-spoke system, like airlines do. Furthermore, high-speed trains operate at "normal" speeds when in the urban core. Do you really think the TGV enters Paris at 200 mph? How close is "too close", anyway? East Coast cities have suburban rail stations that are closer to the core city than Oxford is to Cincinnati. New Carrollton, MD and Alexandria, VA, are fairly busy stations, even though both are within 10 miles of Washington Union Station.

Shame on both of you. The flight of the white upper and middle classes from industrial cities began in the mid-1940s with subsidized VA and FHA loans for new construction in the suburbs, and a new wave of suburban investment by factories, who were retooling for civilian production once again. To blame a single (black) mayor, for whatever reason, fails to understand the real causes of urban disinvestment.

I think we can agree, though, that the Quiet Zones would be more for mitigating noise from freight trains than passenger trains, which are extremely quiet by comparison. Why attribute this cost to the commuter rail project unless you're looking to kill it, or at the least, tie it up in red tape? It just seems like another obstacle to me, that should be considered independent of the commuter rail project.

KJP, can you explain why Quiet Zones would be necessary for commuter rail? As someone who used to live almost next to tracks with heavy Amtrak, commuter, and freight rail traffic, it was the freights that were a pain in the ass. The commuter trains were never more than 8 cars, and were inaudible inside the house (save for the horn on the locomotive). Even the long-distance Amtrak trains with coaches, sleepers, lounges, baggage cars, and dinettes didn't make much noise. Basically, I'm concerned that the Quiet Zones would be an extra cost for a problem that doesn't really exist, and potentially jeopardize the project.