WestBLVD

The new fencing is going up at the Cedar University station, replacing the temporary chain link that was there before. Does anyone know if the continued work at the south end of the platform is for reopening pedestrian traffic to the south side of Cedar or to block off that old entryway?

Oddly enough, bricked over windows seemed to have made their way down to the lowest of the low in terms of urban design. The newly rebuilt Taco Bell in Lakewood was built with faux bricked in windows on its side! Yep, a new fast food structure was designed to look like it once had windows but was now bricked over. I hope this is a short lived fad in design. I'm with you, it would be nice to keep the windows as decoration, even if it's a wall behind them.

Unless the cop told them to pull into a sidestreet. But enforcement of a new law (a new occasion of enforcing it) sometimes requires short-term pain to achieve long-term behavioral modification. I know you mention this a lot, but the problem really isn't cars driving in the new bus only lane, but rather the cars that were parked there overnight and have yet to be moved. That's the behavior that really needs to be changed. But with the population on Clifton often short term and rentals, changing behavior is hard when you have a constant new flow of residents; people are going to oversleep their alarms and forget to move their car, have overnight visitors that don't know the parking restrictions, etc. For years these vehicles have always been ticketed, but the problem never got better. I'm all for the bus only lane (because it reduces lane miles), but how much faster will it make the bus? Whenever I ride the 55, it's not as if cars driving in the outermost lane are slowing the busses down.

I understand that, but how are checks completed? If I have an activated 5 ride card, but a machine doesn't print the time on it and I'm asked to show proof of payment, is showing the 5 ride card "enough" even without the stamp? Does RTA use hand held devices to check the validity of a ticket? One person could have a 5 ride card that they validated but the machine didn't stamp and another rider could have a 5 ride card that they didn't validate. Both cards "look" identical, but could only be substantiated by an "honor system" on board, unless the spot checks on the train have the ability to read the cards.

I've been using a monthly pass lately, but had previously been using 5 ride cards. I noticed that about half the time, the machines at the red line stations were never marking time stamps on the card to begin with. I'm sure that makes the random spot checks to make sure people have paid for their fare very difficult to enforce. In 2009/2010 you could count on a random fare check every other week on the red line or healthline. However, I haven't seen a random spot check in about 2 years now. That's creepy. Is the fare collection system that spotty and easy to bypass??? The red line stations are completely honor system except for Tower City. The majority of riders will start or end at Tower City though. I have no idea what percentage of US heavy rail transit lines are honor system, but I'd imagine it can't be that high. I know that the Portland and Denver light rail systems were honor system for the routes that I took, off the top of my head I can't think of any others.

I've been using a monthly pass lately, but had previously been using 5 ride cards. I noticed that about half the time, the machines at the red line stations were never marking time stamps on the card to begin with. I'm sure that makes the random spot checks to make sure people have paid for their fare very difficult to enforce. In 2009/2010 you could count on a random fare check every other week on the red line or healthline. However, I haven't seen a random spot check in about 2 years now.

What's it going to take to get the Soldiers and Sailors Monument People on board for this public square redo? I find it so baffling that they aren't embracing this redo. Are they trying to make some sort of statement?

Airlines do lots of flight shuffling during the holidays. Business travel falls off a cliff during the 2 week period of Christmas and New Years. As such, routes which are business heavy see reductions in service as airlines shift aircraft to serve more leisure routes. After New Years, the airlines go back to normal schedules.

I think the dips were a safety feature so that emergency vehicles could cross the medians where there once were intersections to access homes down those streets.

The best part about those two new establishments is that they are at the far western fringe of Detroit Shoreway. A block or two to the west and it's into Cudell. Hopefully within 5 years redevelopment can finally break past the intersection of Detroit and Lake.

This route has been operating since early June. Its quick demise is no surprise considering how close it is and at only once a day, not convenient for business travelers who would be the primary users of the flight. Sadly, the Frontier flights to New York City will only be running for 2 months at the end of the year, instead of year round.

The new Cedar-University station is such a drastic improvement over the old one! However, there is one extremely cringe worthy design element - chain link fencing on all the stairs and pedestrian paths leading out of the station! I'm surprised that would even be used in modern public spaces. It really looks out of place with everything else at the station. I wonder if this would be updated in the future?

CAK enplanements have risen more than 120 percent since 2000 while CLE's has fallen before UAL dehubbed CLE. Of course CAK has stolen from CLE, and from PIT too. Agree. CAK's growth was from stealing passengers in PIT and CLE (which had an overpriced US Air hub and then the CO/UA hub at CLE). That growth in passengers didn't come from explosive population growth in Akron-Canton in the early 2000s. The tide has turned though. CAK's passenger counts have been steadily declining since they peaked in summer 2012. I think I read somewhere that summer 2014 counts are down close to 20% from summer 2012. And with discount Frontier starting up at CLE this summer and now ultra discount Spirit this winter, CAK won't have much, if any, of a price advantage over CLE anymore. The vast majority of fliers will fly from the airport that has a combination of destinations, convenience, and lower fares, which for many in NE Ohio, will end up being predominantly CLE. Now that Spirit has announced non-stop service to Los Angeles from Cleveland (at fares of ~$230 r/t), US Airways, American, and Delta, while not offering non stop flights have lowered fares in the $230-260 range with a connection for many dates through next summer. Those fares from CLE to LAX were virtually unheard of the past few years. So even if flying on one of these discount carriers is not your thing it will likely still reduce your cost to fly on a legacy carrier. This will end up having a positive effect on stimulating more traffic through CLE in the coming year.

Here's another view from an aerial vantage point. Took this the other day flying into Hopkins; you can really see how big this project is.

I feel as if the concept of "destination" shopping has declined dramatically in the past 5-10 years. Now, nearly every store has some sort of on-line presence that generally offers much greater selection than they would in their store. Before, people actually had to go to the cities with that particular store or to the regional "upscale" mall for that shopping. Places that were destination stores 15 years ago, are no longer destination stores today (which could explain some of the downfall of the Galleria and Tower City). While certainly an overwhelming number of people are still shopping in physical stores, the growing number of online purchases can't be ignored. Even everyday items that one would normally buy at target or walmart can often be purchased from Amazon for the same price and automatically delivered right to you when you need it. The concept of e-retailing might actually be encouraging people to live in places that don't have much retail presence simply because the availability of retail stores might no longer make a place more "livable". Perhaps that might be why it's going to be an uphill battle to start retail in downtown Cleveland. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the mindset of people choosing to live in downtown, Tremont, and O/C over the past few years is much different than those choosing to live in the suburbs. If not, downtown would already have an Applebee's, Longhorn, American Eagle, Aeropostal, etc. But with all that said, downtown realistically should be able to support decent destination retail. Downtown Cleveland has no problem at all attracting thousands every evening for restaurants, theater, concerts, and sports. Clearly any perceived "lack of parking" or "too expensive parking" or "not safe" isn't deterring these people from coming downtown in droves. I'm sure these are the same people that shop at their suburban strip malls every weekend as well. Obviously all the restaurants, sports, etc downtown are destination attractions. We just need a few key destination stores to open up to change the retail scene, the problem is that every year there are fewer and fewer destination retail stores.

It's about time for some new infill in this area! It will be interesting to see how Clifton/Cudell looks in 5 years. I'm hoping these projects, plus the corner of Clifton and West Blvd, enhance Clifton, and the 117th/Clifton redevelopment really set the momentum in the right direction. It's been stagnating for way too long while D/S, Ohio City, and Tremont on the west side have exploded.

Frontier is adding more flights to Cleveland this fall and winter. Frontier will now operate a flight from Cleveland to Las Vegas 7 days per week instead of 2, they will also increase service to Orlando two times per day instead of 1, increase service to Fort Myers to every day of the week instead of 4, and increase service to Phoenix to 4 times per week instead of 2.

Yeah, that list is very accurate to me. LA is much, much denser than most people realize and it extends pretty far out from downtown. Santa Monica, for example, is still over 10,000 people per square mile. It's 15 miles out from downtown. Hollywood is pushing 25,000 per square mile. The entire Wilshire corridor is about 20,000 to 40,000 people per square mile with exceptions being Beverly Hills and a few park areas. As an urbanized area, Los Angeles is not nearly as far off from New York and San Francisco as people think. Rust Belt cities are remarkable in the density they have lost. Keep in mind cities like Detroit and Cleveland were at one time pushing 15,000 people per square mile. Toledo and Columbus were pushing 10,000 people per square mile. The density losses have been incredible and heartbreaking... What you have in Rust Belt cities are incredibly-gap-toothed cities. You might have one census tract with still over 10,000 people per square mile, but right next to it there is a mostly-destroyed one with 2,000 people per square mile. It's not contiguous density, which is what is most damning from a pedestrian or transit perspective. Cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles do have large areas of contiguous density. Very true about LA. Density is also somewhat visual/psychological. If you are on a street that has houses that front the street but have huge backyards it will look and feel denser than that same street with houses that are at the back of the lots and front lawns are huge. Likewise a street with lots of apartments and homes tightly packed together will look and feel just as dense no matter if there's 1 person occupying each unit or 10. Conversely a suburban development with huge lots but huge family sizes will be denser than if the homes had 1 or two people living in it. Density is a lot based on perception of the built environment. So even as rust belt cities lose population and density, the built environment density still exists. Take for example Tremont, OC, and D/S. To reach the densities that these neighborhoods had 60 years ago, we'd need 2-3x the number of housing units because family size has shrunk considerably. The built environment density of these neighborhoods would look much denser in person to achieve the same density on paper. So in essence, neighborhoods need to be built denser today to achieve the same density of yesteryear.

There are 2 counties. Each are exactly 10 miles by 10 miles wide, which makes a 100 square mile grid. County A has 10 people living in each grid. County B has 999 people living in only one of the grids, the rest are empty. Which county is denser? County A with the sprawled out population is denser than the county where everyone lives next to each other. That's why when looking at density, the boundaries are critical. If you have an area with low density sprawl that extends far from the city center, it will skew that area as denser than an area that has a high density core, small area of low density sprawl, and moderate area of empty lands.

In fairness, for programs doled out directly to municipal governments, the City of Houston should get more $ than the City of Philly in most instances, because Houston really does have more people in it. The real issue is making sure the other jurisdictions surrounding a place like Philly (and Cleveland, etc.) also get access to the same kinds of federal aid where needed, or identifying mechanisms (county-level eligibility, MPOs) that look past the municipal boundaries to make sure the region gets its fair share for things like transportation $. I love fresh cuts like this beltmag post, but how and whether to standardize really depends on the question you're asking. My favorite fresh look is the weighted population density stuff that the Census Bureau and others have been cranking out in recent years. This post highlights some of this data, which, sadly, shows just how fast Rust Belt metros are de-densifying within their defined areas: http://www.austincontrarian.com/austincontrarian/2012/09/the-50-densest-american-metropolitan-areas-by-weighted-density.html Addendum: and sadly, the typical Houston area resident now lives in a denser neighborhood than the typical Cleveland area resident. But that last point is still very deceptive. Northfield, Macedonia, etc are not part of the Cleveland metro. Yet, the farm fields of LaGrange, Lodi, and Middlefield much farther away from the urban core are. By that measure, having an empty farm field 40 miles from a city center makes Cleveland less dense, but the continual urban agglomeration down 77 and route 8 adds nothing to the density.

Does Cleveland.com save these stories for slow news days? This was announced a long time ago and has been available for booking for over a month! Not sure why it's suddenly newsworthy today.

Southwest Airlines did announce a new daily non stop from CLE to Phoenix earlier this summer. That flight begins this December (a few months after the flight to PHX that the newly merged American Airlines also announced they'll be starting). I don't think the new Southwest flight was mentioned many places but it's available for booking on Southwest's website. Southwest at CAK hasn't done very well this year. Air passengers at CAK have dropped considerably this year compared to last (down 11 to 12%). New bargain fares at CLE have made CAK much less attractive to northeast Ohio travelers. It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out over the next year. Surely total CLE passengers will plummet as well from the United dehub, but those will be from people no longer connecting, versus a drop in O&D.

Yes I am! Do you remember how Davenport Bluffs was designed? A bunch of suburban-style hotels and condo buildings, each about 2-5 stories tall with gabled roofs and surrounded by big parking lots. It was pretty bad. It seems like the WKYC building and the FBI building decided to go that route! I have been waiting and waiting for the Avenue district to creep just a bit more northeastward. Lakeside Avenue from East 12 to the inner belt has so much potential. There are definitely a lot of buildings that have loft conversion written all over them (with amazing lake views). And of course connections to the WFL (hopefully made into a loop back into downtown) would be right there as well. As CSU creeps north and East 9th conversions to residential keep building out, we should see this momentum in the Avenue District and hopefully make it all the way up to Lakeside.

Ugh, is the name change to Edgewater Blvd really necessary? I think this will be one of those formal names for a road that never gets adopted by everyday public use. The Shoreway is a name that is so engrained in Clevelander's vocabulary. If you are going to change it, at least call it Shoreway Blvd or something to that effect.

What amazes me most, are the added volumes of people coming to the park during non special events. I took a walk last Sunday afternoon in Edgewater and couldn't believe the crowds. It wasn't even hot beach weather (72 and breezy) but the upper parking lots were filled to capacity with 100s of cars making their own spots wherever they could. The beach was mobbed and the lower lots near capacity as well. In prior years you would have never seen crowds like that in Edgewater for a nondescript Sunday with less than ideal swimming conditions. A few years ago I was even suggesting that they remove a ton of parking from Edgewater as it never filled up and was a waste of prime green park space. Now it seems that the lack of parking at Edgewater may become a problem soon. It's hard to believe the turn around the park has had in just 1 year. Do the Metroparks charge for parking anywhere in their park system? I'm sure a nominal charge at Edgewater would cause quite a stir, but it could cause more carpooling/walking alleviating some parking issues and also raise some cash to fund programming in the park.