DaninDC

Hell, why not sell off other publicly-owned assets? You could sell the State Capitol to a developer, who will lease it back to the State of Ohio. The possibilities are limitless!

Just like the motorists will pay once the State leases the Turnpike to foreign investors.

Yeah, what a ripoff. We all know that it costs virtually nothing to construct and maintain 240 miles of roadway designed to Interstate highway standards.

KJP, you make an excellent point, and that is the splitting of electrical utilities and real estate from streetcar operations instantly rendered the streetcars unprofitable. Without the real estate component, the Pacific Electric Railway would have never blanketed Los Angeles. At the same time, many local jurisdictions dictated where streetcar companies were required to provide service, and placed artificial caps on fares, further limiting profit margins.

Noozer, I'm sure you know that General Motors is already a large manufacturer of locomotive engines. DCX's Orion division makes buses. I know what you mean, though. It would be nice to have a U.S.-based rail car manufacturer instead of having to get 'em shipped over from Europe and assembled here.

Cars??? Buses, people. Buses.

Hell, I'd love to be able to buy a studio apartment for 160k-200k. LOL

I was teasing, of course--my parchment says "Michigan" on it. :-P And I happen to know that Lloyd Carr is a heck of a nice guy.

There used to be these things called "neighborhoods" where you lived AND did your shopping. What a concept.

Seriously? Like shopping malls ever deviate from the pre-packaged homogenized crap you seen anywhere else? Who moves to a place because of "great shopping malls"? This is UrbanOhio, right? I'll buy the "socially" part. :-P

It has taken 25 years. Remember, the Euclid Corridor "Improvement" Project was originally conceived as the Dual Hub subway, way back in 1983.

I don't believe in doing something just because you can, or just because it's different. I believe in doing things that work. This idea, in addition to being late to the table and expensive, in effect causes the Clinic to turn itself inside out by focusing inward instead of outward to the city. It's important to integrate this large institution into the community, both physically, psychologically, and otherwise, rather than reinforce the "bunker" mentality. It's already taken 25 years and $250 million to get this lousy bus line. Time to start moving on to bigger and better things. The Clinic, while an important business, does not run the City of Cleveland. Both parties need to realize that.

It's a little disingenuous to blame Cleveland's business woes on exactly three people (who all happen to be Democrats) isn't it???

I love the mosaics in the NYC subway. They look even better since they started to clean up the stations a few years ago!

^^^Yikes. I can't believe RTA could be so bush league as to treat the Rapid as a red-headed stepchild. (no offense toward anyone who might actually be a red-headed stepchild) The situation described above is completely unacceptable. Get turnstiles on the Red Line, and proof of payment on the Blue and Green. All stations should have farecard vending machines. Considering RTA already uses farecards for buses, this shouldn't be a stretch. The whole system (bus and rail) would be a lot more user friendly if there were actually some consistency once in a while. When they keep changing things (staffed/unstaffed, pay boarding/pay leaving, routes, method of payment), it just discourages potential riders.

That's exactly what we meant by "disconnect".

Damn. Why the disconnect between MickeyD's majoriity ownership and the quality of food, then?

That is a nice touch, to have bus arrival information! Does RTA have bus maps and schedules available at rail stations too? One thing I forgot to mention is that the arrival signs on the Washington Metro are actually tied into the train signaling system, ensuring accuracy. You'd be lucky to have RTA install something similar on the Rapid. In my experience, the GPS-based systems just don't work as well.

As I understand it, McDonald's only owns 40% of Chipotle. Favorite foods? Grandma's pierogi, Slyman's corned beef, panang curry (with chicken) and big, dumb, greasy, floppy, cheesy Jumbo Slice Pizza.

This question came up a few months ago on the Washington Metro. There are real-time arrival signs on all the platforms that give information for the next three trains in each direction: line, length of train (# of cars), destination, and minutes until arrival. Someone asked why there aren't signs like these at street level, for the same reason (and especially late at night, when headways are only 20 minutes). The response from Metro was that such an installation at street level would lead to more people running up and down escalators and through stations in a mad rush to catch a train, thus increasing the chance that other people get hurt.

I'll buy that. I'm sure it was far easier to build CUT, though, than Grand Central Terminal or New York Penn, which involved a heck of a lot of tunneling through rock.

I would guess this has more to do with the geography of downtown Cleveland than anything else. Considering that Public Square sits 70 feet above the level of Lake Erie, the underground train station was easier to build than if elsewhere, as it would be more an excavation than a tunneling project. The development above the station was likely used to finance the construction of the terminal. Anyone more knowledgable, feel free to correct me. While Baltimore's Penn Station is in the Mount Vernon Square area uptown, Camden Station (B&O) is smack downtown, right behind the warehouse you see in right field of the baseball stadium. Unfortunately, that station is only used by a handful of commuter trains a day. Kinda curious as to how Grand Central Terminal fits into this picture, though. While not downtown, it certainly is in the middle of a large business district.... :-)

And therein lies a major problem: short-sighted localities expecting the state to pick up their tab for their crappy planning decisions. Maybe Garfield Heights can use their "windfall" for the necessary road improvements that their vision has mandated. I'm so tired of crap like this.

^^^You're impressed with the art on the Metro? We need to talk.... LOL

KJP, how does ADA treat low-platform stations? Are they grandfathered in? I've been at low platform stations (say, Alexandria, VA) where the conductors help handicapped and elderly people board and alight. Never mind that some of these stations on the NE Corridor (like Alexandria) also serve as commuter rail stations. I don't see how a low-platform Oxford station would be such a problem, especially since it would see (at most) one train a day (for now).