jjakucyk

How does validation work? Is that for tickets bought elsewhere? Do the kiosks print tickets that aren't already validated? In much of Europe there's tiny validation machines on the vehicles themselves (they're just time stampers really), so you can buy a ticket anywhere and the clock only starts ticking when you actually board.

email me and I'll tell you

Lack of information (such as timetables) is made up for by frequency. Lack of frequency is made up for by strict adherence to a schedule. With neither, then the systems are mostly relegated to use by only those who have no other option. Online connectivity and tracking is the new normal today. Saying that real-time arrival information is unnecessary is no different than saying wi-fi or cell service is unnecessary. People got along just fine dialing from home or using a payphone on the street corner after all, amirite? What did people do before wheelchair ramps, level-boarding, or kneeling buses? Life just sucked for those people unfortunate enough to have a disability. What about computers? People still wrote letters before computers. They did it by hand or had a typing pool and secretaries took dictation. Try selling that workflow to any business nowadays. Ignore technological advances at your peril, that's true in pretty much everything. What was a luxury just a decade or two ago is now the bare minimum expectation, and if it's not provided then people won't bother.

It's not a storefront, it's a patio door. This is the rear of a building on Dayton Street backing up to Naehler. There's a carriage house right on Naehler too so it forms sort of a rear courtyard. It's the house with the green roof in front, they tore off the little one-story addition in back. https://goo.gl/maps/9WWgmds89wx

It's like strategery, only with more actionable synergies.

Wait how does that work? 2/15 means a 30 minute loop, 3/12 is a 36 minute loop, and 4/10 is a 40 minute loop, but frequency shouldn't have any impact on time to traverse the route, and in fact I'd think the lower frequency would have slightly slower times, not faster, due to making more stops and more people boarding, etc. So wouldn't it be more like 2/15, 3/10, 4/7.5 or 2/20, 3/15, 4/10? Does anyone know what the full loop time is now during the week versus the 40-50 minutes it was taking over the weekend?

The low gas prices today are a combination of factors. Increased US production is one, but these are hard to extract, dirty, fast-depleting fields that require a lot more refining and money to produce. Their effect is temporary at best. OPEC countries are also keeping production up, in part to try to undercut and drive out some of the more expensive shale producers. That's a long term strategy whose endgame is higher prices. More efficient vehicles and a softening Chinese economy has cut demand as well. The trick is that relatively small moves in production and demand can have a huge influence on prices. Slight excess supply leads to a crash in prices whereas a slight shortage causes huge price increases. Unfortunately instead of using demand destruction as an opportunity to invest in alternative fuels and rethink transportation priorities, we in the US anyway are squandering it on more driving and yet larger vehicles again, as the recent surge in VMT numbers is showing. That's not a path to future prosperity but volatility. Hopefully advances in electric vehicles and continued interest in more compact city living will be enough to continue a positive trajectory in spite of backwards Federal policy and string pulling by the likes of the Koch family and other oil interests.

I did a full loop from the Race Street Findlay Market stop during the height of rush hour and it took 50 minutes (5:05 to 5:55). Standing room only, so boarding and people figuring out if they wanted to try to get on or wait certainly added time. It's some of the traffic signals that seem to be the real issue, having to wait through a full cycle for the streetcar signal to give the go-ahead at Central/Walnut and Walnut/2nd especially. Crossing Liberty both times and also Main/Central involved a lot of sitting, as is the case with all traffic. With some timing tweaks and getting out of rush hour I bet that can easily shave off 10-15 minutes, and then you're at just 15-20 minutes to go from Findlay to the Banks which is plenty reasonable. That's 1.5 miles which at a brisk walking pace takes 30 minutes easily, more if you can't time the street crossings right.

Since a bunch of press and others have already been riding around on it for a week there really isn't a "first" to be had. I assume John Schneider has already been on it multiple times.

I don't see this Edwards connector thing happening due to the right-of-way constraints, impact to existing buildings, and proximity to I-71. They say as much in the proposal document.

This is a good example of what a consistent cornice line can do. Sadly the last few infill houses have kind of screwed it up. You can go consistent in some places or be wild and crazy in others, but it helps to establish the rules first so you don't miss the opportunities that present themselves. https://goo.gl/maps/TrnxQyLDNLF2

The only thing is that orchards tend to be rather messy. Unless it's well-curated, whatever fruit comes to be either gets eaten by bugs or squirrels, or it falls on the ground and rots. The trees themselves also tend to not be all that attractive. Granted, what sort of park doesn't require a fair bit of maintenance and attention? The easiest is just some mown grass and trees, with maybe a few benches and flower beds, but those kinds of spaces are a dime a dozen.

There's no little variances though. Not only would you need a variance on the minimum lot width (which is either 20' or 25' I don't recall offhand) but also a variance to eliminate the setbacks as well. Most residential zones, even high density ones, usually have a total of 5' of side yard setbacks, so that 13' wide lot only allows an 8' wide building. Plus historic review and all that. This is a lot of administrative overhead for what should be a simple affordable project, being as small as it is. That's not the point. The point is that Indian Hill has an extensive greenbelt program whereby property owners can (and very often do) donate land to be restricted from development, even though the area is already so lightly developed compared to most suburbs. They still fight tooth and nail against adding just one single house on a street. So it seems for some people no amount of buffering, woods, or nature is ever enough, so as I said before, maybe that's not really the problem. It's the "most sprawl is caused by people fleeing sprawl" principle. Again, that's not the point. The millions of tourists who go there every year just to be in Venice obviously disagree with you. Doesn't mean it's for everyone, but neither is OTR. I've compared Venice to OTR myself, but that's mostly because of its run-down state. What it has going for it is a much more intact built environment and of course no traffic. You'd really take a federal prison over that? Give me a break. Look at Florence, or any other town in Tuscany, or central Copenhagen, Prague, Bruges, Amsterdam, Salzburg, or Munich if Venice offends you so much. You're fixating on things irrelevant to the discussion. Tourists flock to these cities because of their architecture and their intimate people-oriented places defined by buildings and small walkable streets. It's not pocket parks or urban orchards that attract people to these places.

But today's zoning won't allow anything to be built on a lot that small.

But see a pocket park or urban garden is something that has some merit as a negative space (negative in the figure/ground sense, not negative as in bad) when it's discernible amongst the built environment. Pocket in this sense doesn't just mean small, it means carved out of its surroundings, something different than what's around it. When it's just one more empty space among many, whether vacant lots or excessive lawns and berms then it loses its appeal. We as Americans are so blind to anything other than open green nature as a solution to all problems that if even in a place like Indian Hill they don't think they have enough open space then maybe that's not actually the problem. Here's some good reading material on the subject: ‎http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2015/072615.html http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2009/101109.html

Also the fix for damaged urbanism isn't "green" it's better urbanism. In the US we have this bizarre fetish for emptiness to the point that people will protest redeveloping a parking lot because "hurr durr open space!" It gets to absurd levels when people in Indian Hill sign away development rights to preserve "green space" in a city (no Indian Hill is not a village anymore) where most of the lots are 3 and 5 acres. Is there really a shortage of "green space" where 100 foot setbacks and huge single-family residential-only lots are the norm? Believe me the Italians, Danes, French, and Japanese aren't collapsing in the gutter writhing in agony due to a lack of grassy berms, overgrown weedy lots, and useless lawns.

Maybe it will sell Jimbo T-shirts and become a police sub-station. It seems like CPD has phased out their police sub-stations. All the ones I knew about are closed, or are there still some left?

They just carried passengers and wagons at first. http://www.jjakucyk.com/transit/streetcarinfo.html

This happened a few years ago right in front of my apartment on Madison Road. It's a pickup truck I believe, which burst into flames, and the driver was killed. They estimated speeds around 80 MPH. Incidents like this show just how dangerous streets are when they're designed for rush hour traffic, because they're so empty during off hours, and especially at night, that they invite reckless speeds.

Oakley Square's openness and comparative lack of buildings along it, plus lesser pedestrian presence communicates a "more speed is ok" message. A week or two ago someone drove straight into the HP Square esplanade, taking out a big chunk of the concrete curb/wall and the fire hydrant. https://goo.gl/maps/37R4Gn4DJsJ2 I can't find any news report about it though.

Ironically, the city's only "skyscraper" was torn down for the bell. It was about 7 stories tall and a pretty interesting building, from what I remember. This?

Many contractors and subcontractors also haven't re-staffed equivalent to the level of work they now have coming. That puts extra pressure on timelines and prices.

Now that's a "because it's what the standards say" answer if I ever heard one.

Seriously. Saying someone is being in over their head, even if they're trying to do the right thing, is being pretty damn fair in the grand scheme of things. Defamation is "the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual person, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation." There really aren't any facts in dispute here that I can see, so there's nothing defamatory about any of it. The opinions of others about this person are just that, opinions, which they have every right to express. I have no relationship with nor knowledge of the person in question, nor do I know enough about the situation to really have an opinion on his preservation tactics one way or the other, I was merely pointing out that calling statements defamatory does not make them so just because you think they're mean.

It's not defamation if it's true.