jjakucyk

Do parking lots pay anything into the sewer system now? If not then this makes sense, because they're still adding load to the system. If there's a building, then there's already sewer fees based on the water bill, and a multi-story building doesn't add impervious surface beyond a single-story building or a parking lot. That's one of the points often missed when environmentalists decry all the pavement and buildings in cities; a five-story building generates only 1/5 as much runoff as five single-story buildings. Plus since a parking lot is an entirely supplementary use, in that parking doesn't exist unto itself, it's always there to support some other use at another location, then it's also displacing those other uses and causing a net increase in runoff per capita. I suspect the low rate is a way to get the thing passed in the first place. Rate increases can come later. Either way it's a good recognition of the fact that empty lots in a city still have costs associated with them, and it's unfair to make everyone pay for those services.

The sad thing about Camp Washington is that it has probably the most shuttered neighborhood business district in the city. There's four full blocks of Colerain Avenue between Marshall and Hopple that are full of storefronts, but they're nearly all empty since Colerain goes from nowhere to nowhere thanks to I-75. There's some other perfectly serviceable storefront buildings north of there neat Bates as well. Even Hopple itself used to be somewhat of a business node, but it's little more than a highway rest stop now. That could present an opportunity though, to treat Colerain sort of like Short Vine, since it's not a major thoroughfare anymore.

:-P he's probably one of the people who ride on the sidewalk and the wrong way in bike lanes :x I couldn't believe it when I saw this story. Hey, how about cracking down on bicyclists who ignore the law and endanger the safety of pedestrians!! (something people have been begging the cops to do for years!)-- NYPD Cracking Down On Motorists Who Drive, Park In Bike Lanes http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/05/16/nypd-bicyclists-initiative/ If a driver doesn't pay a ticket their license can get suspended. Not so with bicyclists. Your point? Do pedestrians who jaywalk (a "crime" developed by the automobile lobby in the first place) have their license suspended? Oh wait no, there's no such thing. Plus, "crack down on bicyclists who ignore the law and endanger the safety of pedestrians"? The NYPD itself has been doing that for years, but not in the sense of "cracking down" but deliberately and unfairly targeting cyclists. Police would park their cruisers in the bike lanes and then ticket cyclists for not riding in the bike lane. They'd set up speed traps in Central Park and ticket cyclists for going 2 mph over the speed limit. All this while ignoring truck drivers and other motorists driving 50 mph in 30 mph zones. All this while motorists who kill and maim cyclists and pedestrians are let off with no criminal charges and in many cases no ticket whatsoever, because the motorist "felt bad about it." The actual danger caused by cyclists is so small that suggesting a crack down is absurd. Plus if the problem is sidewalk riding and salmoning, then that's a very good indication that facilities for cyclists are sorely lacking and should be fixed.

*sigh* the definition of suburban isn't ONLY low-density or ONLY automobile-oriented, there's aspects of both. Some even define suburban has having a hierarchical (disconnected, funneling, tree-branch-like) street network, regardless of the density. Many areas considered suburban in other cultures would be "OMG teh inner-city ghetto!" to Americans, but they're mostly bedroom communities removed from the commercial city center.

They painted over the white, it's that boring pale green you see all over I-71.

There's probably language in various city ordinances from the days of slaughterhouses that allow for such things.

Columbus has annexed less than 20 square miles in the last 16 years. About 210 square miles and 711,000 in 2000 to about 225 square miles and 850,000 in 2015 -adding 15 or so square miles(much of it in the extreme south of the city and not developable land)while adding nearly 140,000 people. The rapid annexation talk was played out about 20 years ago. And Cbus is about to pass Indy(and may have by now)-only 3,000 people behind in the latest estimates-while Cbus has 225 square miles and Indy has 365 square miles. That population surge from 787,000 to 850,000 happened with virtually no new annexation since 2010 Doesn't that just mean they annexed a bunch of greenfields in the past that have more recently been built out? Indianapolis still has quite a lot of farmland in its city limits on the southeast and southwest sides so they don't have to annex anything to still see sprawl population growth, assuming other areas don't lose.

I didn't think the spur was used anymore, though they sometimes parked cars on it. That said, just now I saw they'd removed all the old metal railings and have started putting up plywood to, I assume, pour some concrete stem walls on top, like they did on the mainline bridge a year or so ago. That would suggest they expect it to remain at the very least.

Grandfathered status perhaps? I believe that paths in a railroad right-of-way are now required to have a concrete barrier if they're too close together, otherwise a fence will suffice. Not too big a deal if it's only over the bridges, but along the entire length would be very prohibitive.

I get the impression they're going to paint both bridges, the 3-track wide mainline and the 1-track spur. I saw some temporary brackets on the spur bridge the other day. It would be a real shame to lose that spur bridge because there's so few connections across I-71. The only issue is that any pedestrian or bike crossing would still need to cross the other active track to connect to Harris Place at the old Norwood train station, or else take a very steep down then up detour via what's left of Duck Creek Road and Harris Avenue. I don't think a grade crossing is really that big a deal, they can even put mini crossing gates there, which is currently being done where the bike trail crosses the railroad up in Loveland to make it a quiet zone.

Is Milacron planning to demolish part of their building but not the rest? The highlighted area cuts rather arbitrarily across it while leaving a bunch of fairly open land untouched.

Final photos!

Is there online access to ODOTs drawing archive? They always have a bunch of stuff posted on their FTP site ftp://dot.state.oh.us just go to /pub/districts/d08 to get to southwest Ohio. Folders associated with particular projects usually start with the 3-letter county name then the route number, and project ID. This isn't an archive though. It's generally for drawings and documents for current projects or that have been requested by people that are too big to e-mail. Since these are all public records you can also just e-mail them and ask for something if you know what you're looking for.

I'm not worried so much about fading as it getting dirty and grungy over time. I hate that they paint so much concrete white because it always looks worse after a few years than just bare weathered concrete. It gets all streaky and blotchy, and it peels too. I wish they'd use more of the "bridge orange" or whatever it's called that's already on the other bridges around there.

Apparently the "drab gray" paint on the railroad bridge was just a primer. It's now white. Bright glossy white! If that's the final color then it's pretty sharp looking, but I doubt it will age well, and it looks a bit out of place with all of the weathered tan concrete around it.

Myrtle's is interesting because the arched stone vaults in the basement aren't under the sidewalk but a side access drive/alley. They do have a stair and trap door to the sidewalk though. The basement changing rooms at Bob Roncker's Running Spot in O'Bryonville are two stone vaults that go under the sidewalk too. I wouldn't hazard a guess at how many of these are out there, but I bet there's a lot, even if only a small percentage of building have them.

Looks like only the one chimney on the end is gone, but the big mass of 6 (?) flues a bit farther back is remaining.

Wow, good riddance to that addition! It looks like there was even a small fire once in the rear first-floor window. https://goo.gl/maps/LtCYEBpbjQR2

The thing is that pinch points act as relief valves for the system farther downstream. Before the new southbound auxiliary lane was added between Pfeiffer and Cross County it would cause a big jamb back up to Fields Ertel. In a way it acted like ramp meters, restricting the number of vehicles that could enter the highway or proceed through the interchange in general, allowing for freer flow beyond it. Now the whole highway jambs up from I-275 through Montgomery because of all the vehicles being barfed onto the highway. So what this new Ridge/Red Bank lane will likely do is just shift the jamb up the Kenwood cut. Besides, it's not like it clears out after there even in today's evening rush. It's solid through I-275.

Here's a link to the full project documents. It's a 71MB PDF: ftp://ftp.dot.state.oh.us/pub/Districts/D08/HAM-71-8.42%20PID%2091826/71%20AER/HAM-71-6.86%20Final%20AER%20%209-19-14%3B%20PID%2094741.pdf Supposedly construction was supposed to start last year, so I assume there's been funding issues or other objections.

I do believe they plan to add a lane northbound between Kennedy and Red Bank to try to ease the pinch point.

Correct. Here's ODOT's original drawing for the Victory Parkway exit. You'll notice the modifications made to Gilbert Avenue which were made anyway, as well as to Victory Parkway itself. Also note the old Deer Creek railroad tunnel just to the west of the new Blair Avenue overpass. http://www.jjakucyk.com/urbanohio2/i71mlkvictory.pdf

That's starting to sound like a land value tax. Well, yeah, but it doesn't need to tax only the land, it can tax the land and the improvement value at different rates. Currently the total improved (land + improvement) value is taxed at a single rate, say 2%. You can massage the numbers so that by taxing the land at a higher rate and the improvements at a lower rate you still end up with the same net tax income, but it incentivizes improving the land rather than letting it sit fallow either as vacant speculative property, parking lots, or empty space. Some zoning reforms would be necessary too in order to help things along.

Tall fences are an alternative to the ugly curved ones used to discourage people from throwing things onto the highway below. I do wish they'd go with black like on the I-75 Monmouth Avenue overpass. https://goo.gl/maps/sUVS5NEaj9p

Curb to curb is 70' so the lanes are all 10' wide, which is pretty much what they should be.