Jeffery

^ I think if one is doing routine commuting it works OK, but yes, impromptu use is a good way of putting it...and not really viable here. This is not the CTA of the 1960s, that I grew up on, where you just wait a 10 minutes or so and a bus shows up. and they run on all the busy streets (so transfers are a piece of cake). I guess the Cincy Streetcar will permit this kind of impromptu use..hop on/hop off...if and when it opens. I think the idea is to have short headways, no? For transit use here in Dayton...I figure I look at the Dayton area as a set of sort of walking/cycling "zones" or "ranges" (WSU, downtown, the "Mall Area") and then the bus system as longer-distance connectors between these zones of human-powered transport. @@@@ Today is my first bad weather day on the bus, and so far Bus 17 is working fine. Yesterday I made reservations at Avis downtown for a car to take a daytrip to Lousiville with a friend on the weekend. Very easy. Avis is actually open on Sunday downtown (which is NOT the case for the rental places near me out in suburbia..believe it or not), so I bring the car back Sunday morning. Got a real deal on the rental, too. Getting back to the "Mall Area" bus hub no problem, made my connecting bus, and then spent some time doing computer work at the library next to the bus hub, before catching my last connection home. Also, Im noticing that Greene Counties "CATS" paratransit system looks like it has some sort of scheduled service between downtown Xenia and the downtown Dayton bus hub! Wow! This is news to me as I thought CATS was a strictly on-demand system. No transfers, but apparently Xenia and Dayton are connected by public transit again.

The article headline tells us what to expect: High Gas Prices Not Affecting Food Prices..Yet ....but believe it or not, right now, gas prices don't have a lot to do with the rising food costs. It's mainly the demand for commodities like wheat and corn driving up prices. According to the Alabama Grocers Association, food retailers are often very hesitant to pass higher energy prices on to you. "But some retailers may consider raising prices to remain competitive," says president Ellie Taylor. No one knows exactly when that will happen, but the USDA expects food prices to go up between three and four-percent this year. The article is more interesting in that it says people are cutting back on certain food purchases to afford gas. Purchases on things that are "good for you" like fruit & vegtables. Go figure.

Your comment made me go read that article, and while no direct Dayton-bashing it makes me wonder a bit about if there is a lot of this going on. That Dayton life sucks so bad people choose to commute from Columbus or Cincinnati to work in the Dayton area. Yes Dayton does truely suck if you are a "pwogessive" and/or a pseudo-bohemian urban hipster (like I used to be...too old for that gig now), but does it suck so bad to suffer such a long commute, which would be a bear even without high gas prices? Not for me. I was seriously considering doing this, though, after about a year living in this dreary burg. I was thinking about moving to the Clifton/Correyville area of Cincy (around Bellvue Park), or one of those then-new lofts on 4th in Downtown Cincy, or off Piatt Park, and driving in. It took just one test drive down I-75 to my target areas during rush-hour to disabuse myself of that notion! Though I do know of at least one or two people who had work in Dayton and commuted from the Northside and Clifton up to jobs in Dayton. This was more becuase they were native Cincinnatians, and I figure they already had houses and family in the area. I think there is this also a subset of what I call "country commuters", people who live on farms or in farm towns and commute in to the Dayton area for work. Some of this is becuase these folks have family connections to their respective rural communities (something you saw a lot of in Louisville, too), but also because of this cultural bias toward "country living"...where people will live in a somewhat rural area, but dont really farm, just to be out in the fields. Something that never struck me as "worth it" (in terms of time, isolation, etc), but that is a preference here in the Dayton area, "...farm livin' is the life for me...." While I don't walk to work the advantage to living in a more built-up area with tolerable bus service and a some walkable amenities (as I am finding out) trumps exurbia for me. Some of the advice my dad ever gave me: "Live close to a bus line"

What is with this bike thing? Yes, I understand the benefits, but its not for me just yet. @@@ Yesterday was a “lessons learned” day. In other words I learned about the necessity of planning out trips better and what I can and can’t do downtown. What I can’t do is use the little branch post office on Court House Square, which was closed by the time I got there from the bus hub. So…I hoofed it to the main post officeon 5th Street just beyond the Oregon District, than spotted a bus going back into downtown on 5th. Figured I could take it to Patterson, get off, and then walk up to UD. No. Doesn’t go to Patterson via 5th…it turns and goes ‘out of the way’ by going up Wayne to 3rd. So I got off two blocks further north on Patterson than I wanted to be. So, instead of the bus, a nice late afternoon walk up Warren and Brown to UD to get two Ohiolink books ready for me from UD. I would have taken bus 17, but missed it due to the wild goose chase to the closed PO branch. So it becomes faster to walk places than catching buses, as I learned. But no complaints at this time since I wanted to do a longer walk, for fitness purposes (and something I did in the afternoon anyway). After the visit to the UD library I thought I might be able to catch a bus south. Instead I waited 45 minutes or longer for the next 17 bus. Turns out it would have been faster to walk back downtown to the bus hub and catch the X5 express. So, I walked south, up Brown Street some more, and waited at the Patterson Homestead stop for the bus, noticing how much traffic on this stretch compared to further in. I guess UD and the hospital must generate a lot of commuter traffic south. Also noted how they tore down most of that old Chevy dealership (and old streetcar barn headhouse) for some new UD housing. This could really suck or could be a great opportunity for infill. Knowing Dayton it stands a good chance of being mediocre urban design (havnt seen the plans). Brown Street is the big missed opportunity in this city since it connects a very desirable suburban area (Far Hills corridor) to UD and a big hospital. But the planning has been weak or disjointed, some good things, but a lot of missed opportunities to do things better, to develop a Ludlow(Clfiton) or Coventry(Cleveland Heights) style retail/food/drink corridor. Anyway, a part of the city I havn’t seen on foot before. Anyway, finally made it home, but the bus service, in terms of frequency, is poor for this part of the city, heading to the south suburbs, during rush hour times (say after 5 PM). I notice the north leg of bus 17’s route has more service but this northern leg ends downtown during one or two of the rush hour runs and doesn’t continue south.

Agreed! There's enough out there to keep us on-heading. I see gas is now around$ 3.44, though I paid 3.46 this weekend out at the Speedway @ Social Row & Yankee. That was the highest I've paid before going back on the bus. Sharply rising oil prices having widespread effects in U.S. Chicago Tribune reports...for Chicago.... Yiannis Melidis, co-owner of Pegasus Restaurant & Taverna, at 130 S. Halsted St. in Chicago, said fuel surcharges on such services as seafood delivery and garbage pickup have boosted the cost of running his business by 3 to 4 percent. Pegasus is absorbing those costs, but to keep profit margins from shrinking it has been cutting employees' hours. A waiter who had worked 32 to 36 hours a week, for example, now works 28 to 30 hours a week. ..but also quotes an expert who thinks prices will settle out (nationally) at $3.50/gallon if things settle down in the Mideast. So it will probably be lower in Ohio? Seems prices here are lower than what was reported in that article for Chicago, and they are lower than what I recall in New England when I was there this past Fall.

I figure I save $150/month for commuting costs by taking the bus. That article is sort of biased in favor of transit.

Wrong. Cars offer some things that all other forms of transportation dont: 1. Enclosure: Cars are enclosed so you are protected from wind, rain, snow, and cold. They are more comfortable than all other forms, which require some exposure to the elements. 2. Convenience: You can use them without being forced to follow a schedule. Yes, one can do this on foot or with a bicycle, but that brings up the third benefit: 3. Time and Space Compression: You can get further, faster, with a car. These three combined do provide a better quality-of-life for car owners and users. There are situations where these benefits would be cancelled by issues of congestion, but these are limited, and usually found in places that are really dense, like NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. Though I am experimenting with going "Car-Lite", its not really possible to do all I want to do without a car...things like performing arts events downtown at night (either downtown Dayton or downtown Cincinnati), travel, hiking at forest preserves that are at some distance from my house, etc. I get a little annoyed at some of these attempts to minimize the benefits of cars. They are the best form of transportation and the problem with them is how they are powered, a technological issue. Aside from that they do improve the quality of life of people who use them and can afford them.

Well, today and tomorrow are the big days. My first visit to Bockfest and the Prohbition Resistance Tour. Yay. AND I get to cash in my crepe card at that crepe place on Court Street. Double yay.

Carolina lost a lot of its cheap industry to offshore, I think. Back in the day the Carolinas where a cheap manufacturing site, similar to what Mexico was and Asia now is. The growth rates are pretty astounding, though, coming from living in a low/no growth state..

Columbus grew in an odd fashion, so there are or where these fingers of apparently undeveloped land reaching deep into the city. I'm thinking here of that area along the Olentangy River, the west side of the river, or the open spaces along the Scioto. This area looks like it has a lot of newer developement, so it must have been open country before WWII. There's about as much "old town" in Columbus as there is in Dayton (the places were somewhat similar in population during the 19th and early 20th century), it just that the city developed in an unusual fashion.

More like..."where's my bonus?"

That this is Shell doing this forecast should send warning bells to anyone familiar with Shell and its involvement with scenario forecasting or scenario planning. Royal Dutch/Shell had long relied on forecasting to guide strategic decisions. But by the early 1970s, Shell had come to realize that traditional forecasting created a narrow, blinkered view of the future and invested in scenario planning. As a result, Shell did not make a prediction about the future price of oil; instead it systematically developed a set of plausible scenarios about what could happen to oil prices in different contexts. When Shell saw the indicators for one of its scenarios — one that featured a rapid rise in prices — were coming to pass, it changed its strategy accordingly. Other oil companies thought Shell was crazy, and that a rise in prices was impossible. But it wasn't. Shell was the first oil company to profit from the 1973 oil shock because it was the first to see it coming. source ...and a bio on the guy, who developed scenario planning at Shell: Guru: Pierre Wack "Pierre Wack (1922-1997) was an unconventional French oil executive who developed the use of scenario planning (see article) at Royal Dutch Shell’s London headquarters in the 1970s. So successful was he that the Anglo-Dutch oil giant was able to anticipate not just one Arab-induced oil shock during that decade, but two."

Here is an interesting chart (cant vouch for the accuracy) showing the trend in gas prices since the early 1970s, in "todays dollars". Current Gas Prices and Price History ...you can see how the prices were rising in the 00's, but this was stopped for a bit by the recession. So once growth returns one can anticipate the trend to continue upward, independent of what is currently happening in the Middle East.

Took off work today and did some experimenting. Alternate Routes to Downtown Seems like I can use Bus 17 pretty easy to get downtown. If I wasn't into this walking for fitness jag I would probably take it instead of walking to the hub to catch the express downtown since 17 stops right in front of my apartments. I will probably use it if I need to drop things off at the library in the morning, and sure will use it if I need to get things from UD library or go shopping at DLM (thankx to Dayton Bike Rider upthread for that good tip!) or during rainy weather. It's a good solid alternative route into the city and gives me time to spare for my connecting bus to work. Downtown, notice I can get to an Avis rental place downtown just before they close if I need to rent a car. So access to another set of wheels is set. Downtown banking won't work since I wont be their early enough after work, since the bank closes early. But I can use the no-fee ATM and I can use the suburban bank. RTA to Greyhound I was wondering about this and finally tried it out. I took a bus from downtown (the Salem Avenue bus) up to the new RTA stop in Trotwood, which is integrated into RTA's hub operations. Looks like this will be an easy connection if I ever want to use Greyhound (though their busses, the ones waiting, looked like cr@p compared to what I remember of Greyhound from the 1970s). No paper schedules available (cheap!), but the ticket guy told me they have four busses to Cincinnati per day. So good connections to Cincy! But $18 one-way. $20 on weekends. Ouch. (I was considering doing a trip to Louisville from Dayton via Greyhound, and also some day tripping to Cincy via the bus, but this isnt too reasonable, and the busses in Louisville are pretty weak when it comes to suburban service, at least the part of Louisville Im going too). It was sort of jarring, though, seeing the bus destinations....Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus, St Louis,....etc......seeing that little Greyhound operation as the gateway to the wider world if one didnt have a car and couldnt afford a plane. @@@ So, it is seeming more and more do-able, more and more a realistic lifestyle, to survive withough driving much in my corner of suburban Dayton. ]

Back on the bus (and on foot). I cheated a bit yesterday since I drove to the bus hub, due to the rain. I woke early to driving rain and thunder and thought "uh-oh" and fell back asleep. Then finally woke for good and decided not to walk in the rain to the hub. The rationalization was that it was too much thunder/lightening and wind and rather drive than walk in that with an umbrella. I think if it was ligher outside and the rain was more of a steady rain I would have walked. @@@ You might say its silly not to drive to the hub since its only a mile or less away, but the idea is to be as car-free as possible, or within reason. I did walk to the bank, though, which is reasonable. And I did most of my city stuff on foot (post office, Charlies market, bus pass, etc) this Saturday. My first serious attempt at doing groceries by foot & bus will be this month, probably next week.

Gas was 3.35 or so on Sunday, last time I filled up (and wont be filling up till I drive down to Louisville this weekend). This was at one of those cut-rate 'Speedy' or 'Speedway' places. I think you can get cheaper gas at Valero, too. The pump prices really spiked last week, into the weekend.

What would Glenn Beck have to do with the census? @@@@ I think the interesting thing will be when they have the age cohorts in and the tract-level info in. I've been playing around with cohort data from the 1990 and 2000 census. Here is a shocker. For the city of Dayton, for the cohort that was ages 50 through 59 in 1990 and 60-69 in 2000, the population dropped 24.5%. Nearly a quarter. ...and for the cohort that was ages 60 through 69 in 1990 and 70-79 in 2000, the population dropped a whopping 54.3%! And for the cohort that was aged 70 throuh 74 in 1990 and 80-84 in 2000, the population dropped 53.4%. Again, I suspect mortality is coming into play here, but maybe people are moving off to nursing homes, too? And these drops in later life, also, perhaps, implies a big exodus from the city by people moving into their retirement years. For the rest of the cohorts, for the city of Dayton, between 1990 and 2000: For children moving into the teen years between 1990 and 2000, a drop of 14.5% For teenages moving into their twenties between 1990 and 2000, an increase of 14.6%, so Dayton city has attracted some young adults. The growth of UD perhaps, and revival of inner city living? Or just a younger population overall? One has to drill down to tract-level data to find out. Then the declines start: For people in their 20s in 1990 moving into their 30s by 2000: drop by 24% For 30 somethings ageing into their 40s: drop by 19.6% For 40somethings aging into their 50s: drop by 13.4% ...then the declines accelerate, as noted above. What does this have to do with the 2010 census? By combining the 1990 and 2000 with the 2010 numbers we'll have a good picture on how age cohorts are affected by city and suburban population shifts. Particularly the 1950s and 1960s era suburbs, maybe the 1970s ones, too.

It looks like a railroad line is running along the stretch of the (former) canal in that viaduct map. @@@ I just noticed it, but the second map has a neat statistical table showing shipping data. You can actually plot the growth in shipping with that data. I wonder if stats like that were kept beyond the date of the map. Could be an interesting source for economic historians.

^ That guy has what we used to call 'styled' hair. Men having fancy hair like that (beyond a simple barber cut) came into play in the 1970s, at least in Kentucky. The hotels are cool in a retro sort of way. Bond Court is a bit too much, but Hollenden House is a lot of fun. I notice they have the ground floor pretty open to the street...a lot of glass. Interior of the Presidential Suite is done up in a somewhat "Mediterreanean" interior decoration style, which was popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Sort of heavy Spanish-esque influenced aesthetic. Or sometimes called "Italian Provincial". Often done in molded plastic as much as wood. @@@ I like that red neon Highbees sign. I see Cincy had those big illuminated signs, too. ...and isnt River Road what became the modern Flats?

If you are asking about specfic geographies it is possible to narrow it down. Brookings based their findings, in part, on the census, so census stuff should be available by tract. For the EITC the data is aggregated by zip code, and Brookings has this interactive search feature on their website where you can do time-series by zip, assuming certain zips have rough equivilance with certain suburbs: EITC Interactive All this is national level, or comparable across the US. For Ohio another great source to track declines in income over time is the Ohio Department of Education database. They track an "economic distress" measure down to the school level (I think this is based on eligibility for free school lunches). So you can track this back a few years as low as the elementary school level, measuring how an elementary school catchment area might be declining in income, as more and more kids become eligible for free lunches due to their parents earning less.

There are some great victorians in these pix! Somehow I missed this part of Fort Wayne when I was up there.

...and on the viaduct plan, you can still see the outline of a basin on the canal, just before it meets the Cuyahoga. It's on the 1830s map, too, as an actual part of the canal. I guess by the time of the viaduct plan the canal was filled in?

The outlot pattern is interesting. I guess the eastern boundary of the outlots was 55th street, so that fanning effect of the streets in the near east side of Cleveland reflects the outlots (such as Payne Avenue).

(not sure if this is worth its own thread or should be under the Suburban Sprawl news) Big new national study from Brookings has data on the big 7 Ohio metros: Responding to the New Geography of Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the Earned Income Tax Credit (wonkish title hides a lot of cool data) Brookings looks at EITC and Census/ACT data from 1999 thru 2007, and draws some conclusions for 2008-2010 (the Great Recession), since data limitations prevent them from using more recent numbers. Yet a good measure of how the 2000's was a good set-up for the 2008-2010 debacle. Some definitions: The Brookings researchers define "low income" to cut off at 2 times the poverty line income, so its more than "the poor", as officially defined. EITC eligibilty cut-off points vary, but you have to meet these to claim the credit: $12,590 (single no kids) $33,241 (single, one kid) $37,783 (single, two kids) $14,590 (married, no kids) $35,245 (married, one kid) $39,785 (married, two kids) So, for the Big Seven Ohio metros, the core cities apparently have bottomed out when it comes to increases in low-income/EITC earners, while people claiming EITC in the suburbs has ballooned. The differences are pretty large: Percentage increase in EITC filers between 1999 and 2007: Akron City: 19.7% Akron Suburbs: 45% Cincinnati City: 2% Cincinnati Suburbs: 44.6% Cleveland City: 3.9% Cleveland Suburbs: 44.9% Columbus City: 38.6% Columbus Suburbs: 64.1% (this was the largest increase) Dayton City: 9.2% Dayton Suburbs: 47% Toledo City: 21.8% Toledo Suburbs: 47.8% Youngstown City: 3.7% Youngstown Suburbs: 25.5% (interesting to see Youngstown the lowest here. Hitting bottom?) Percentage Increase in "Low Income" (per Brookings' definition of 2 x poverty rate and less): Akron City: 11.0% Akron Suburbs: 24.9% Cincinnati City: 6.2% Cincinnati Suburbs: 33.3% Cleveland City: 13.2% Cleveland Suburbs: 29.6% Columbus City: 27.4 Columbus Suburbs: 32.2% Dayton City: 6.3% Dayton Suburbs: 23.4% Toledo City: 3.1% Toledo Suburbs: 21.7% Youngstown City: 7.9% Youngstown Suburbs: 11.2% (as with EITC filers, Youngstown had the smallest % increase in low income. Yay rust belt chic.) National averages: Core cities: 5.1% Suburbs: 18.6% To see how this plays out in one Ohio suburb, back in 2007 I did a post on this subject for Kettering Ohio (using EITC data in part): Kettering's Changing Socioeconomic Complexion I think the interesting thing here is that for Ohio (exception is Columbus), things within the "city limits' are not getting as drastically worse as they are in suburbia. One would like to think these are gentrification effects (more well-off people moving into the core cities), but it could also mean low income households are already concentrated in the city, or that urban shrinkage is reducing the numbers of people, especially if poor neighborhoods are becoming more vacant.

Gas went up 20 cents in one day at the Shell station near where I live. Woah.