WestBLVD

All of those short hop flights are what made CLE a hub. Sure, very few people fly from Cleveland to just Dayton, Columbus, Erie, and other cities within 250 miles... But they are essential for making a hub work. If you live in Dayton or Erie and want to fly to San Francisco or Providence or Montreal, etc you need to fly to CLE and switch planes. It may be easy to say "well, for most travelers the loss of those markets isn't a big deal." But don't forget, it was people connecting from and through those smaller cities that helped to fill flights to San Francisco and Denver and Boston that local Clevelanders enjoy. CLE was fortunate to have a strong O&D numbers, but it remains to be seen how the remaining destinations will do without the feed from these smaller markets. Sure, there are a lot of key destinations left non stop. But at what frequency? It's one thing to have 6 flights to Boston, it's another to have 2. Using every other de-hubbing as a proxy it's naive to think that there won't be a continual decline in United service over the next two years. Then add in the anti United sentiment that's running around now and it'll accelerate the loss of what non stops remain. If people start choosing Delta or American with connections in hubs versus what United non stops remain just to spite United, you'll see an even further reduction in non stop service.

I made it by taking a list of current non-stops at Cleveland and then took into account the 20 locations that United has said it would keep. It looks like a reduction of about 35 non-stop destinations. I'm sure that list will likely change a bit over the year as the airlines ultimately decide what they are going to do.

It looks like the following cities will likely no longer be served by nonstop service from Cleveland (cities that United cut, but are served by another carrier won't be on this list). You can clearly see all of the feeder airports that were cut and likely have minimal local demand. But, you can see a lot of major cities and markets that lost nonstop service. I'm doubtful that more than 3 or 4 of these destinations would be picked up by another carrier. Austin, TX Bradford, PA Buffalo, NY Burlington, VT Columbus, OH Dayton, OH DuBois, PA Erie, PA Flint, MI Franklin, PA Grand Rapids, MI Greensville/Spartanburg, SC Harrisburg, PA Hartford, CT Indianapolis, IN Jamestown, NY Kansas City, MO Louisville, KY Madison, WI Manchester, NH Montreal, Quebec New Orleans, LA Oklahoma City, OK Parkersburg, WV Phoenix, AZ Pittsburgh, PA Portland, ME Portland, OR Providence, RI Raleigh-Durham, NC Richmond, VA Rochester, NY Seattle, WA Syracuse, NY

It would be nice. But I'm afraid we'll probably see a pretty big reduction in what little international service that exists. It's extremely disappointing news, especially considering the release of last year's passenger figures that showed tremendous growth in the international segment. Currently: United: Toronto, Montreal, Nassau(Bahamas), Cancun Frontier: Cancun, Punta Cana(Dominican Republic) Air Canada: Toronto One can presume all those United flights are gone in a few months. Air Canada will probably pick up the slack and add a few more flights to Toronto, that's just too large of a market to not have decent service from Cleveland, especially as a hub for all Canadian connections. Folks in Cleveland are likely going to be very angry with United for this and as such will probably choose other carriers over UA if the price is comparable and now results in a connection regardless. I'm sure even after the drastic cuts take place in spring and early summer, we'll see United slowly cut more flights at the end of the year as passengers choose other airlines in favor of UA. It's happened elsewhere and it'll probably happen here. Just look at US Airways presence at PIT today. Delta and American have both been beefing up their presence at Los Angeles. Either of them could easily add a flight to "pick off" United. What I'm fearing most is what fares are going to be to New York! With American Airlines being "forced" to drop the LaGuardia route and the United dehubbing, you've got to think that seating capacity will be slashed and obviously result in $$$$$ fares. United has said that they will keep the LGA route, but how many of their current flights will they keep?

Sorry, didn't catch the sarcasm over the internet. But yes, CAK should be very concerned. One of the reasons CLE is getting dehubbed is because the era of the regional jet is over. They are costly and fuel inefficient. The vast majority of cuts that United is going to do is removal of the regional jet. As airlines look to save money, does it make sense for the merged American/US Airways to operate regional jets from both CAK and CLE ... and to pay people to operate both of those locations? They could consolidate at CLE, dump the regional jets, and with the combined traffic operate larger aircraft. According to early reports, it looks like CLE will be served by 20 United destinations once the de-hubbing is complete. United has been serving roughly 65 non stops the past year (some only on a seasonal basis) from CLE. And ... the bigger question becomes ... what happens to the D gates at CLE? It's the newest and nicest terminal, but obviously meant for the regional jet, and come July this will be empty. Will all air traffic be consolidated to B and C?

I wouldn't be so sure of that. AirTran was bought by Southwest and is expected to be fully integrated into their system by the end of the year. AirTran was Akron-Canton's prize. With this United announcement, who's to say that AirTran/Southwest won't leave CAK for CLE to fill the huge void? With United out, Southwest could grab a huge market share in Cleveland versus Akron. Obviously it's incredibly early, but who can say what the airlines will do? Anything seems to be on the table.

If you look at the O & D numbers for CLE, they are very good. If United were to cut 60% of their operations, the other airlines will pretty much have to add flights very quickly to fill the local demand (regardless if a new carrier were to enter the market). Or else ticket prices will skyrocket if no one jumps in. For those complaining about the regional jet service, your wish has been granted. You'll probably see more mainline service to other US hub locations.

In terms of cuts, I should clarify that the seating capacity has been substantially reduced. Flights to Newark used to be all mainline, CRJ and ERJ are now used a few times a day. The same is now true for flights to Houston and Denver, the latter often used with an ERJ! Even mainline flights to Tampa have been reduced to ERJ's. So even if departures stay similar, aircraft has been downgraded, reducing seats. Those are cuts by United in my opinion.

This is actually quite significant news given the fact that United has pulled back flights from Cleveland this year. It should also be noted that the Akron-Canton airport saw its passenger numbers drop 6% last year or roughly 114,000 less people year over year. In addition, Pittsburgh and Columbus both saw passenger losses as well. Considering many of the airports in the region saw passenger levels decrease and United pulled back flights, yet CLE was still able to show some growth this past year shows that local demand is starting to pick back up. I'm sure some of CLE's slight growth came at Akron-Canton's expense. And with AirTran expected to be fully absorbed into the Southwest system by the end of the year, it will be interesting to see what Southwest does with Akron-Canton. AirTran was the Akron-Canton Airport's success story and what really drove down fares and brought in many passengers from the Cleveland, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh markets. It's a little too early to see what Southwest will do there, especially considering Southwest uses planes with larger seating capacity than AirTran. If Southwest can't fill up the larger aircraft replacing AirTran's at CAK profitably, it wouldn't surprise me to see them move a route or two up to CLE where there's a larger market to work with. Sadly, I think a lot of CLEs growth potential in the next year or two ultimately rests on regaining those passengers who are driving to CAK or PIT. If CLE could take a million of those passengers who now choose CAK back, there'd be more support for several additional non stops from Hopkins.

There's also a sort of "drive-by" optical illusion. The set backs on Clifton in Cleveland are much closer and as you drive westward become exceedingly farther from the road in Lakewood. Lakewood also has a better stock of mature trees and has done a much better job at maintaining them than Cleveland has along Clifton. Otherwise the housing stock is pretty much the same. If you're on foot, the section of Clifton between West Blvd and West 105th is extremely well maintained, with wonderful landscaping, homes kept up, and of course the Wine Bar/Coffee Shop. I'd say that West 103rd between Clifton and Baltic likely has the best maintained non cookie cutter "middle class" housing stock in the city (i.e. 1500 sq ft 1920s homes). But bringing this back to the Enhance Clifton part, once completed in Cleveland, there'll be a noticeable "seam" between the two cities. I think this is a good thing for Cleveland to differentiate itself from its neighbor. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people refer to Don's Lighthouse, Starbucks, Clifton Wine Bar, Diner on Clifton, etc as being in Lakewood.

I've been extremely excited and anxious for this project to finish for years. However, I was shocked to see SO MANY beautiful mature trees chopped down! I attended several of the town hall meetings and this was never brought up. I can understand a tree or two, but wow, they've ripped out a lot so far. It's a shame they couldn't they have just made the median the size of the current turn lane and leave the road width as is. Hopefully the plantings they do in the median aren't too small. But nonetheless it'll likely be at least a decade (or two) before the trees planted mature out.

That might be just a case of site selection. Official weather records have pretty much been at Hopkins Airport since the 50s, which is well inland and away from the warming effects of Lake Erie. The 1900 data thing is very misleading ... take a look at the official records by the NWS: http://www.erh.noaa.gov/cle/climate/cle/records/allmonthnormals.html You'll see that 14 of the record low days for January in Cleveland are from the 1800s.

With all of the empty lots in Tremont, Ohio City, and D/S over the past decade that have had new builds and town homes built, I've been puzzled why this West Blvd parcel has remained vacant for so long. It will be nice to see something new here. There have been permanent for sale signs on this parcel for years, about 2 years ago, they added the "tax abatement" notice along with the for sale signs. As for the Cash for Gold place ... ouch. That retail strip is great with the coffee shop, martini/wine bar, and salon, it's really odd that an establishment like that would even choose that spot. It doesn't fit in at all.

Did United drop their summer non stops to Seattle from Cleveland? I was searching for fares and did not see any non stops for the summer season. I know last year United decided to swap the summertime Phoenix nonstop for Portland, OR. Now both of these appear to be gone from the schedule for next summer as well. Anyone know if these locations will show up in the schedules in a few months? If not, losing 3 mainline west coast destinations is a pretty bad blow to United service at CLE, especially during the busy summer travel season. United used to fly a 757 last summer between CLE and SEA and it always seemed full. Perhaps there's demand for another carrier, Southwest?, to perhaps scoop up at least one of these.

That off-ramp had a traffic light pedestrian crossing so it wasn't dangerous at all for pedestrians. You press the button, the light turns red for motorists, and you cross the road like you would any other intersection in a city. I tried to use that bridge multiple times this summer once the Malls and Convention Centers were completed but the bridge was always barricaded and padlocked. I tested it out again for one of the Brown's Thursday games back in August. It was closed on Wednesday, opened briefly for the Thursday game, and then padlocked tight at lunch on Friday after the game. So it appears, unless things have changed very recently, that our Lakefront access bridge is only available a couple days a year. Before the CC was under construction you could use this bridge everyday. Anyone know what prompted this to bridge to be essentially "permanently closed" year round? You'd think with the new hotel going up across the street that you'd want to have permanent pedestrian access to the Rock Hall and Science Center from this location, and considering that access already exists, there's no reason to purposefully block that access like is being done now.

I'm curious how well Frontier will do with these flights. The introductory fares on these are ridiculously cheap ... $78 roundtrip! But with only one flight per day, just two days a week initially (Thursday and Sunday), and not much in the way of connections on those days in TTN, I wonder how full these flights will be with O&D traffic? It does look like they bump these flights up to 4 per week once May hits. I happen to frequent Trenton/Central Jersey, so this is a welcome for me and I can now avoid the Newark or Philly airports. Trenton/Princeton is very transit friendly and very easy get to Philly or NYC. However, the airport doesn't appear to have public transit (commercial aviation is very new at this airport so perhaps this is in the works), but an $8 dollar taxi cab will get you to a train station a few miles away that will whisk you to Philly or NYC for about $16. I'm curious how much advertising Frontier will do with these flights. The fares alone will be some of the cheapest found from CLE in years, which should raise some eyebrows.

That's ironic considering of those 5 grocers, Giant Eagle already has a store closest to this new spot: at West 117th and I-90. (Ok, Constantino's has a store on Detroit but it's more of a convenient store) The Giant Eagle as a potential anchor is kind of a disappointment. Do we really need another one of those? Not to split hairs as they are almost equidistant (it shows the Giant Eagle saturation), but the Giant Eagle on Bunts between Clifton and Detroit is actually closer to this spot (1.1 miles away) than the Giant Eagle at I-90 and 117th (1.3 miles away). I know that the Market District stores are apparently a bit different than the typical Giant Eagle, but what unique feature would this store offer that the neighboring stores don't already provide? I think the store on 117th recently remodeled their wine area to include tasting, has an extensive cheese market, deli, salad bar station, and prepared hot food stations. I'm wondering how much new business they'll end up attracting, compared to the sales that will just cease at the stores a mile away in either direction? I know most would have loved for a Whole Foods, Heinens or Trader Joe's, but those seemed pie in the sky. If we're going to go with the theme of grocers who already serve the immediate market, I would much rather see Constantino's vacate their extremely tiny space a few blocks away in favor of a larger full scale market on this site. On another note, this parcel has been vacant now for more than a year, and almost approaching the 1 year mark as a vacant weed lot. It's definitely been an eyesore as you enter the city for the past year with the chain link fencing.

I've stayed at that Colorado Convention Center Hotel a couple times before and it's very nice. What makes it extra nice is its top floor restaurant and lounge. If we are getting a hotel of that height, that close to the lake, a top floor restaurant and bar is a must! It would make for an incredible show piece highlighting both lake views and skyline views.

It's too bad we don't have another way to get downtown -- one that doesn't involve using any roads at all. Of course the rapid is a great alternative to the Shoreway ... that is if your ultimate destination is downtown. I would love to see a study of how much Shoreway traffic starts/ends downtown. It would not shock me at all if at least 40% of Shoreway traffic is bound for areas well beyond Cleveland. Sadly, I'm one of those folks who lives in Cleveland but work along I-271 and every morning it seems like more than half the cars keep going past the East 9th exit on their way to 90 eastbound. Unfortunately, to my dismay, there is no viable RTA option for my commute. And for many west siders who choose to live in urban walkable neighborhoods, but work in suburban office parks, the car still reigns and the Shoreway will still be full of cars no matter how easy you make public transit to Downtown. I love the concept of the Enhance Clifton project, because it will make it much easier to use public transit if you are fortunate enough to work downtown. It will also encourage the west side neighborhoods to be more attractive to those who work downtown and want to select convenient and reasonably priced housing. It seems in Cleveland it's been easier to bring transit to where people live, rather than bring people to where transit is.

That may be contributing. But it's pretty common for morning traffic to back up past my building which is just beyond the older building in the foreground. So it is worse that usual, but not significantly worse. It most definitely is contributing. West Blvd is packed every morning now with commuters side-stepping north to the Shoreway to avoid the innerbelt. West Blvd has always been popular as commuter short cut to downtown, but the increase in traffic the past few years has been very noticeable. The increase was so dramatic that West Blvd northbound was repainted to accommodate 2 lanes between Clifton and Baltic instead of one. Both of those lanes now frequently back up to Baltic during rush hour. As a resident I'm disappointed because it's very difficult to pull out of a driveway on West Blvd now and the decision to add more lane miles on a residential street is just a giveaway to suburbanites at the expense of locals. Just note how many vehicles have 47 on their license plate. It will only get worse next month once the innerbelt lane closures are fully realized. I think you'll also see a huge increase in Shoreway utilization in the evening commute as Dead Man's curve will probably back up farther than it does already forcing more cars onto the West Shoreway where they will inevitably cut up West Blvd to Berea or 117th to reconnect with 90. Then toss in enhance Clifton and the Shoreway conversion next summer and it's going to be a real treat!

Has anyone heard anything about returning to seven day a week service? The project page on the RTA website doesn't indicate so. http://www.riderta.com/majorprojects/cliftonblvd They point out that frequency will be every 10 minutes during rush hour. On the schedule now, I count 12 55 buses and 5 55F buses between 7 and 9:30am. That's a little better than a 10 minute frequency right now, however I'm not sure how they will figure the 55F buses into this project. I do, however, wish the ground breaking last month was an actual ground breaking! That event last month was nothing more than a ceremonial teaser. I can't wait to see Clifton ripped up and ready to go!

Here are some google street view shots of the building that came down this week on Berea/Madison on Cleveland's west side: It definitely had a distinct architecture to it compared to buildings in the area. Of course this would have made a great rehab, if TOD from 117th/Madison ever spread over to this corner.

Good point, there are slight, but noticeable elevation changes around some of those curves which will preserve some views. The trees will make for some better framing in spots for sure, and some areas will have blocked views. Give and take I suppose.

I have mixed feelings about this project. I want something new for this road, but I'm not sure a tree lined boulevard is the best idea. This road is known for iconic views of downtown Cleveland and sweeping panoramas of Lake Erie. Why then is planting trees which will ultimately block these views for pedestrians and cars alike lauded as such an improvement? It's ironic that one of the few roads in Cleveland that you wouldn't want to be tree lined will be getting tree lined. I wonder if anyone has explored other landscaping options that won't hinder views, but are still aesthetically pleasing? The tree lined palm tree boulevard works in warmer climates in enhancing views (tall slim trunks, no bushy branches), but how well does a tree lined boulevard work in northern climes when you want to enhance the views that already exist?

That beautiful building on the corner of Berea Road and Madison in Cleveland is no more. I figured it was destined to happen sooner or later.