clvlndr

I actually think the D.C. Metro farecard machines are pretty simple -- it's the mileage-based fare system that's screwed up and complicated. Also, there are few, if any, 30-year-old, unaltered Metro fare machines in use. They've either been replaced and/or extensively retrofitted with a newer light-touch system. They also now dispense smart cards and take credit or debit card payments... ... I don't like RTA's machines, but they're here to stay and, actually, I've gotten rather used to them by now ... I still feel sorry for visitors or other 1st time users, cause they can be extremely confusing and frustrating... and when you DO finally figure them out, you're rewarded by an ear-piercing chime from the machine as it spits out your farecard... ... hey, whatareyagonnado?

Once again, I'm not too worried about the overhead walkway b/c it's on Higbee's/Horseshoe's back side... Question: are there any proposals for the Goldfish Army/Navy block next to the parking garage/former Columbia site? These aren't beautiful buildings, but maintain an old-time traditional feel on Prospect and would be a nice bridge/in-fill between the casino and E. 4th. Seems this group would be ripe for our typical adaptive-reuse, mixed-use apts + ground-floor retail development. Are the Marons (or somebody) already on this?

I'm OK w/ the purple; to me it's kinda hip 'n funky. RTA has definitely built it's rail stations as peices of art. Each is different (though some are similar -- the new E. 55th station has that Waterfront Line wavy thing going on although it's miles from the Flats/Cuyahoga or Lake Erie,... no matter)... The new stations are museums in themselves.... personally, I think that's a good thing... Just keep the damn things clean and in good repair!!!!

I'm convinced trains will someday squeal and reverberate through these tunnels as they should ... Keep up the fight, Cincy! The know-nothing forces will be defeated eventually.

Wow, you mean 80 mph (!) and not the 39 mph the Kasich-crew said they'd go??

You're so right, EC. West Blvd is just over a decade old, yet from the inside, it looks like a dingy, worn-out station from decades ago. Same w/ W. 25, where maintenance has upticked lately (although, can someone please trim the weeds growing up under the station-level walls? it looks sooo tacky, esp given the efforts that the Cleanland Ohio (or whatever that group's now called) in trimming the grass, picking up trash and creating the cute garden nearby)... no doubt RTA's had serious cutbacks, esp from stingy Ohio re its operating expenses, and yes, station upkeep is a shared responsibility btw RTA and the riding public... but, as KJP noted elsewhere, when RTA spends the elbow-grease on the day-to-day maintenance, it spends far less on replacement costs when crappy facilities need wholesale replacment/refurbishment, ie, because of rust for example...

RTA has done a nice job with it's new stations. I'm a little disappointed that they ditched escalators at Puritas -- one of the busier stations -- when they were in the old stations. I know they are expensive to maintain and often break down, but escalators are far and away the most efficient means of moving large nos. of people from one level to the next. And from my understanding and appearance from the photos, the new Puratis bridge level over the tracks is extremely high, no doubt to accommodate the taller freights on the adjoining NS ROW... Still, it's a nice looking station, architecturally; bright, airy and safe-looking, like all RTA's recent builds... E.55 is probably the most dramatic upgrade for RTA to date; maybe even more than the W.65 upgrade 7 years ago... it's an eye-catching facility and was wisely moved to the other side of the street, away from busy I-490 traffic... Let's hope this very attractive/inviting purple + steel + glass rail transit facility will attract TOD to its struggling Slavic Village nabe... Given the immediate access to 3 rail lines, busy N-S E. 55 and I-490, it seems a natural for some kind of compact/dense office and/or retail, residential development...

Not sure I agree this is a WHD project... at least I sure hope it's not. The complex addresses the Flats and the planned restaurant complex, IIRC, sits closer to the water. All the big warehouse apartment adaptive reuse buildings that are half in the Flats, are all oriented to WHD. The last thing we need is for E & W/Aloft hotel complex to be a WHD project shoe-horned in a dead corner of the WHD. We need this project, badly, to re-spark interest in our former jewel waterfront entertainment district... What makes you believe so strongly this is a WHD project, clueless?

^Laminated paper signs held up in the window by clear suction cups on your city's rapid transit system... "amateurish" isn't even the word. Red Line cars haven't been renovated, but Blue-Green cars have, and I'm shocked RTA didn't switch these to LED signs like practically every new and renovated rail cars w/in the last decade has done.

“You get all walks of life, all demographics,” McNulty says of why he chose Ohio City for his first bar. “It’s a microcosm of all the crazy things we have in Cleveland, all distilled down into a dense, walkable neighborhood.” This guy GETS IT... Count me among the Sam McNulty fans. http://www.clevelandmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=E73ABD6180B44874871A91F6BA5C249C&nm=Article+Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=1578600D80804596A222593669321019&tier=4&id=2B54627481D4444087D7A2D5E90110CB

A couple things: I hate tearing down beautiful old buildings like Columbia, but we had a Hobson's choice between Columbia and Stanley, and a lot of people wanted to save the older smaller Stanley; probably not my choice. Columbia's now gone; I think people need to move on. It kind of reminds me of how folks objected to a convention center on the empty space btw Public Square and the WHD. I wasn't wild about it being there, either, but now we still have an empty, ugly gaping hole that still keeps WHD isolated from the rest of downtown (unlike E.. 4th), with no prospects for development for the foreseeable future. - But Columbia was sitting empty and, frankly, few people cared about it or had serious designs for it (that I know of) even when struggling David Myers College was still there a decade ago. At least the parking garage will have street-level retail (including a few more leveraged shops than planned + a narrower driveway), on a totally dead strip of Prospect which, hopefully, will bridge the gap btw E.4th and Ontario. - In Detroit's historic, bustling Greektown, there's an overhead walkway directly into the casino. Also, Detroit's elevated People Mover squeezes thru G-town, but it's not the end of the world; Greektown still rocks!... I don't like the overhead walkway into Higbee's, but it's not the end of the world here either as this is the back-side of Higbee's... Again, I don't like it, but on balance, I'm still excited about the overall prospect (no pun intended) of energy the casinos will bring to an area of largely empty buildings, regardless of how historic they are. -- Gilbert will have hell to pay if he doesn't build the new casino in tandem with Higbee's. Didn't he get a legal clause into the law the voter's passed specifically for the 2-phase project? Plus, it would be suicidal P.R. for Gilbert to not build Phase II, esp considering the heat he's taking for Phase I. Also, from what we've seen of Gilbert, it's not in his DNA to pocket the $$ and sit on simply a reno'd Higbee's; he's too brash and arrogant for that... We're used to lazy, do-little/nothing Cleveland types (like Miller/Ratner... I'll throw in Bob Starks, too, who only shoots off his mouth and keeps building in the suburbs); Gilbert's not from here... and in that sense, I think it's a good thing.

I'm still pissed at Matt LaPorta for hitting into a double play and helping us blow a bases loaded, no-out run deficit last night. Not only are pundit saying (I followed the game on computer;didn't see it) that LaPorta had a terrible at bat, swinging weakly at pitches in the dirt, he was slow getting out of the batter's box allowing him to get beat at 1st for the double play. If he even gets the normal 4-6-3 double play, at least a run scores and, at worst, we go to extra innings... LaPorta's a bust. Pundits, even Tom Hamilton say and hint he has a low baseball IQ. And he was the centerpiece in the CC trade. Even his defense sucks... a shame.

Funny sounding, greater Cleveland: Chagrin Blvd Random Road Marginal Road Funny, Chicago: Wacker Street True to place, Greater Cleveland. (in Cleveland) Carbon Industrial Parkway Train Tungsten (Euclid) ... and speaking of Euclid, give props to a major City that names it's MAIN STREET after one of the smartest mathematicians of all time (... OK, it was really named for a street extending to a TOWN named after one of the smartest mathematicians... but we won't tell anybody). Name totally out of whack with its surroundings: Philly: Spring Garden Street (that goes for a few Philly neighborhoods as well, like: Nicetown and, ... really bizarre, Strawberry Mansion (you have to know Philly to understand what I mean). ^^agreed from above, ... Majestic -- Ave of the Americas Unusual, but semi-majestic: Lost Nation Road Finally, best image, LA: Sunset Blvd. Best feeling + image, Greater Cleve: Pleasant Valley Road

^re Harrisburg-Pittsburgh service -- yeah, the Capital "Unlimited" gaffe is revealing. It also highlights a continuing issue with the Avg. Joe/Josephine public. The words "high-speed rail" are as much a curse as they are a blessing. As was the case here in Ohio with Neanderthal John Kasich and the local anti-rail hitmen, the term can be used to pooh-pooh any service that can't reach (immediately) at lest 110 MPH, let along 125 or 150 MPH, the top speed of which the nation's best, Acela, can only reach in a few stretches NE of New Haven... The anti-rail hitmen know exactly what they're doing: if anyone suggests building a 150 mph service, of course... it's too expensive.... But being slick and not wanting to seem the backwards, anti-rail boobs that they are, they promote the ignorance that the logical, necessary buildup for conventional systems to true high-speed rail produces trains that are too slow/not worth the taxpayer $$ -- and we know, here in Ohio, the whole 35 mph train crap was totally distorted by the dishonest hitmen,... and a phony hypocrite like Kasich seized upon it... But I digress... ramping up the PA corridor west from Harrisburg to something approaching high speed will be challenging, but not impossible. I think a key strategy for the pro-rail faction is to try and the words "high speed rail" out of the popular vernacular for lines like the Harr-Pitt service or the 3-Cs... Better, I think, to get the public excited about the prospect of frequent, reliable, comfortable reasonably fast passenger service --- certainly the Pennsylvania drawing board is wide open for a workable service between the high-speed Nirvana tossed around vs. the current, slow, once-per-day crap Harrisburg-Pittsburgh riders face today.

Not sure, Paul. I suspect both spots will have lunch before long. Market Garden probably needs to get its sea legs first. I remember how long it took Bier Markt, in the pre-Bar Cento days, had practically no menu at all- just beer. It's come a long way since then. Not being a restaurateur, myself, I recognize that understanding, and even trying to influence, customer habits and patterns is such a tricky business. The explosive evening/night patronage of Market Garden would give one hope for a lunch crowd, but it may not exist right now -- at least in numbers enough to justify opening such a huge facilities. Cleveland is still ramping up to a more 24-hour city; we too have come a long way in a short period of time. If Market Garden was downtown with the more captive audience of 100K or so workers, then lunch would be an easier proposition... Being in a residential neighborhood, even being one close to downtown, may make opening for lunch iffy, at least during the week (Saturdays, with the WSM jam packed with folks, no problemo)... I suspect McNulty will try a pilot plan to test patronage... One thing's for sure, the other joints on the W. 25 strip are reaping the Market Garden bounty... The Turkish place, in particular, had empty outdoor tables at dinner time as of a few weeks ago. Friday night? Every outdoor table was taken. What will be interesting is to see if MG will suck patrons away from Bier Markt/Cento... McNulty vs. McNulty.

You're absolutely right, Phillips was a jerk, but some organizations/managers can handle them better than others, and it seemed Wedge was more stand-offish than others. I don't think there was no-indication he would be a star, even a super-star. Don't forget, like Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore, Phillips was one of the prized, up-'n-comers we received in the Colon trade -- I'm surprised Shapiro didn't have a ski-mask and a gun when he pulled that one off. Many scouts had touted Phillips' natural ability... impossible to see his potential vs. his headaches? ... that would be the subject of prolonged historical sports debate.

Market Garden was packed Friday night... very well done; huge. Word (via wait-staff) is that McNulty will add rooftop dining next summer... makes sense given the squat 1 floor architecture of the former Mediterranean Market... It's a game--changer for Ohio City -- has a major impact on W.25/market square. Never saw so many cabs ferrying people back 'n forth across the Detroit-Superior Bridge. MG really is helping punch Ohio City's ticket as a big-city, urbanized, exciting hood.

Liked what I saw of Dredger's Union. Got an inexpensive shirt and a decortive ashtray -- no friends/family smoke so it's a conversation piece. A good no. of people were milling about Sat. afternoon which was a good thing. I wish them all the best; nice looking space. Well done.

I hope you guys are right... Again, I'm not saying JJ was the 2nd coming of Karl Malone or that I'm sure he would have been a star here. No, he frustrated Byron Scott as much as he did Mike Brown (I will say it's kind of maddening that the one player who Scott really worked with who seriously upped his game in last year's post LeBron disaster season, was JJ -- now, all that hard work is down the toilet-- kind of a waste)... I just wish we'd waited a bit to maximize JJ as a trump trading card. Casspi's a nice player and will help us; I just wish we'd gotten more... and, no, not a protected lottery pick. Hey, whenever the NBA plays again, the Kings may play themselves into the playoffs which means, the pick would be ours to use. And maybe Casspi will flourish with a PG like Irving and power forwards like Thompson or Samuels or Jamison or even Andy, if Erden and Hollins nail down the 5. We can always hope.

Your right, drafting hasn't been a Shapiro strong suit, but locating young talent generally has been. Shapiro's been here a decade now, so you got to give the man credit for locating talent, mainly via trades, and keeping the farms pretty well stocked. No question John Hart started the tradition under the Jacobes in the early 90s of signing promisin talent to long-term deals... but there as been a complete turnover since the go-go 90s, and Shapiro's been at the helm durin that time... Has he had some misses (Andy Marte) and some big-time flops (Ryan Garko; Ben Broussard) and some trades that have backfired (Brandon Phillips -- yeah, he was a bit of a knucklehead here, but we should have seen his sheer talent and tried to work it out)... Overall, though, you've gotta tip your cap to Shappy. For a team to on the cusp of a World Series (2007) trade back-to-back Cy Young winners and yet, 2 years later, be in the hunt (1st place in the Central having played 1/2, 81 games) is amazing. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, KC and Toronto (to name a few) should be so lucky.

As much as I dislike the Dolans, I have to admit that they did at least 2 things right: hiring an astute, really smart baseball man in Mark Shapiro, and then overriding Shapiro and ordering to fire that stiff Eric Wedge a couple years ago. Shapiro clearly does his homework, and his quality drafting for the farms as well as picking up quality prospects in heartbreaking trades, like CC and Lee, is the reason why this team is promising today. Philadelphia, though riding high with their Big 4 rotation, still is smarting over losing a promsing pitching prospect like Carlos Carresco, wo we got in the Lee trade a few years ago... This year, for once, the Dolans should do their usual at trading deadline -- NO DEALS mortgaging the future for an established bat. Yes, our excellent young pitchers (sans Fausto Carmona and Chad Durbin) the weak AL Central gives us a shot to make a pennant chase. But I'm not willing to trade away our promising youngsters at this point, even if we take it on the chin this year. Plus, I think once we end this torturous NL/interleague road trip and am able to get Pronk's (DH Rule) bat back into the regular lineup, our hitting and scoring will pick up... and we'll still have a shot for the post season THIS year.

Maybe I'm missing something, help me out... We draft a stretch 3-4 in Justin Harper and trade him away for 2 Orlando 2nd round draft picks that Chris Grant (and Hts) pray will be valualbe IF Dwight Howard leaves and, IF, Orlando can't get value for him and IF Orlando then becomes a Lottery team (remember, Denver traded Carmelo and Chauncey Billups and still went to the playoffs ... and were stronger than the Knicks who traded for Melo/Chauncey). Then we trade our most valuable asset, JJ Hickson, for... a bench-riding Casspi (a bench rider on a 24-win lottery, at that) plus a lottery-protected pick we probably won't be able to use for years given the still weak status of the Kings. I agree with Terry Pluto; I didn't have a problem trading JJ, but we didn't get nearly the value we could or should have... and I don't buy this (alleged theor) that deep pocket-Gilbert somehow got skittish and had to move JJ before the Lockout for fear of a hard salary cap after the strike. And what if we moved on JJ too soon? Supposedly Gilbert didn't want to give JJ a Varejao contract, but what if JJ (at the ripe old age of 22) continued on his growth arc and becomes the solid 20-10 power forward we know he could/should be? ... so now we're counting on reach no. 4 draft pick Tristan Thompson to step right into the NBA and pick up the mantle of JJ... Lots of luck, hope and prayer will be needed for that. ... and as for the sought after stretch-4 we've been searching for... how will it feel if Justin Harper, who we had then traded, turns out to be BETTER than Omri Casspi, who we traded our best player for? And if Casspi becomes a journeyman and Harper becomes an All Star? ... better lock up the tar & feathers. People can defend Grant all they want, but after coming out of the box strong with the Mo/Moon for Davis+ (eventually) No.1 pick (Kyrie Irving), Grant has had his pocket's picked by his trade partners. The JJ trade was a panic move imho. He's signifcantly better than Casspi and there was no reason to hurry up and do this deal... ... oh yeah, and the vaunted $14.5M trade exception for LeBron appears to have died unused.

My car will bless RTA once the Van Aken/Green Line Shaker grade crossing is repaired. The cycle of shock absorber repairs has probably been seriously shortened by my abusing my car, esp the front end, on the moon-like craters at that intersection.

Here's the Cavs' Blog reaction to the draft. Another Cavs Draft Reaction – by Kevin Hetrick June 24th, 2011 by Kevin Hetrick The following post is fairly critical of the Cavs’ draft day decisions. I will preface the post by noting that the Cavs have much more information at their disposal than I do and surely have very talented people working on their player evaluations. They could also have a big trade in the works. Finally, it is foolish to evaluate a draft one day afterwards. With that said… My reaction to the Cavs’ draft is confusion. Draft day started with so much promise. The Cavs had the 1st and 4th picks, two second rounders, a huge trade exception, and an owner willing to spend money. The options seemed limitless and, at a minimum, it appeared the day should end with the Cavs having two long-term starters and a quality role player in tow. Something completely different happened. No picks were bought or traded for; instead a pick was traded away. At #4, the Cavs reached for a player that most had in the 8 – 10 range; who also plays the same position as two of their three best players under the age of thirty. Of their fifteen players, the Cavs have four point guards and six power forwards. Are the Cavs trying to remake themselves as the Minnesota Timberwolves? The trade exception expires in two weeks. Surely a trade is coming. This can’t be the last memory prior to a depressing lockout, can it? For pick by pick analysis: http://www.cavstheblog.com/

Amazing tour, Nexis. Thanks for that (and the train ride back to NYC, too)... ...speaking of trains, I'd just love to grab a bunch of these Republican lawmakers from backwards, car-crazy regions (ie Ohio), to see what great rail transit can reap: clean, historic, high-density, walkable mixed-use (can you say TOD?) Development towns centered around regional rail stations like NJ Transit's; whose half-diesel, half electric sprawling train network makes New Jersey like a mini-Europe... ... naaaa, Republicans these days are to ideologically driven and intellectually dishonest to concede to reality.