jjakucyk

For once I have to kind of agree with E Rocc. Apple is and has always been a very insular and secretive company. This building is an obvious expression of that. If they're going to build an isolated fortress then at least they're not doing it in the middle of downtown. I still think the building is a turd, but it's not surprising given the corporate culture.

The thing is that putting transit into already low density areas requires some fairly heroic actions to get upzoing approved, even just around the stations. Look at many of the new (and old!) railroad suburbs of Chicago to see how many stations are right up against large-lot single-family development that is frozen in its current state due to zoning. Even along the highly developed lakefront suburbs of the North Shore, there's abysmally underdeveloped stations like Kenilworth, Indian Hill, Braeside, Ft. Sheridan, Lake Bluff, Zion, and Winthrop Harbor, several of which are next to nature preserves. Alternatively, newer suburbs have bigger park-and-ride lots or garages, but it's still more of a Kenwood or Tyson's Corner type development pattern that's not particularly walkable. So at least in my opinion, transit shouldn't be extended to places that don't intend to use it to their advantage and want to just keep their low-density sprawl patterns intact.

This is a good explanation of the double-standard that is sadly all too common. http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/09/22/every-nyc-traffic-crash-should-be-investigated-like-the-central-park-fatality/

^ I hate to say it, but there's very much a "boys and their toys" macho dick-measuring mentality with firemen. It's super wasteful to have these big trucks go out on medical calls, but they lobby to make that the standard practice because otherwise they'd never get to take their big red trucks out with sirens blaring. That's not to diminish the services they perform, but it's being carried out in a very counterproductive way.

The only trouble with being a "good citizen" cyclist is that nobody notices them, just like nobody notices the "good citizen" motorists. It's only the bad apples that get any sort of press, but the cognitive dissonance leads to "bad motorist -> that person's bad" but "bad cyclist -> all cyclists are bad."

NYC is one of the few places where using bike lanes is mandatory. As to the notion that cyclists are self-entitled and arrogant...excuse me but what about the motorists who think they "own the road" and have no qualms about breaking the law? How many people are killed by cyclists per year in the US? 2? 3? It gets news coverage because it's so rare. Car crashes kill over 30,000 people per year. That's where the enforcement needs to be. NYC already is vastly unbalanced in targeting cyclists for minor infractions while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of motorists who are speeding, running red lights, double parking, making illegal turns, tailgating, you name it. They're the ones who are endangering lives on a regular basis. That's just written off as "the cost of doing business" while cyclists get slapped with fines for going 16mph in a 15mph zone, or for riding in the street to avoid a *police* car parked in the bike lane (!!!). Enforcement is definitely lacking, but it's the opposite of what eastvillagedon thinks it should be.

Was that a real response or ironic?

And heaven forbid that government might turn a profit on something, anything, that can be used to help fund other things. A lot of people actually believe that the only things government should do are the things that are money losers, but if that's the case then you end up with bankruptcy. The whole point of government, and this includes projects like the streetcar, is to take on endeavors that have an INDIRECT return on investment. If something is directly profitable then it makes sense for a business to operate it. But things like police, which do cost a lot of money, still cost less than not having any police, because a crime-riddled city has lower land values, fewer, businesses, and fewer residents, thus less economic activity and lower taxes. That's the part people forget. The cost of the police, AS A WHOLE, is less than the cost of not having the police. Where you get into trouble is by cross-subsidizing and not doing proper accounting, especially long-term. This is how our suburban development pattern is bankrupting cities, because the TAXABLE wealth generated by such low-density development is less than the long-term costs of maintaining the infrastructure and services used in those developments. Most road/highway projects will outline something like a $30 million cost and $400 million in benefits. Sounds like a no-brainer. However, when 90% of that supposed $400 million in benefits is just "time savings" then how much tax is collected on that? Zero. Even if the benefits were an actual $400 million in improved property values, a 2% property tax rate only yields $8 million, so that project is a dud. Private benefit, public risk. The streetcar's 2.5 to 1 benefit to cost ratio (or whatever the actual number is) DOES factor in the actual rate of return to the government, unlike all these other highway analyses. To pay back the construction and operating costs requires billions of dollars in improved property values, as well as the increased sales taxes and income taxes from new jobs. Even with all that, the project still comes out ahead.

Do you have anything to back that up? The cost of that land not being available to be built on is a significant opportunity cost to the city. Plus the wider streets require more drainage, more plowing, more asphalt/concrete, crack sealing, line striping, etc. A simple milling and resurfacing with asphalt costs at least $700 per parking spot ($40 per foot per lane). That doesn't sound like a whole lot but wow does it add up fast, especially if more extensive rehabilitation is necessary. I tend to agree that Cranley's objective here is merely punitive. While the proposed cost is not out of line with reality, nowhere else does it reflect reality either, and we don't want to be the ones to have the most expensive permit parking in the country for no good reason. Either way, it IS fair to charge something for street parking, because those people who don't own a car aren't getting a break from their property and city income taxes that go to pay for that parking space. This isn't some public good that everyone needs to pay for because we all benefit whether we use it or not, like education, fire/police protection, or sanitation.

It is a good letter, but watch out for the slippery slope. Mariemont, where the author lives, got its own highway back in the 1930s-60s: Columbia Parkway and Wooster Pike. Places like Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout, Linwood, Fairfax, Mariemont, Indian Hill, and Terrace Park have a much easier drive to downtown thanks to that highway which destroyed hillside neighborhoods, reamed through Columbia-Tusculum and Linwood, and created excessive hillside stability and noise issues throughout the East End. It also led to the collapse of all the east side streetcar lines in the 1940s, and by extension Peeble's Corner in Walnut Hills which was an important streetcar transfer point. So I wouldn't get too righteous about living in Mariemont because it's still a fair distance away from downtown, and it got its highway at the expense of other neighborhoods too. That doesn't make the Eastern Corridor a good project by any means. This 1970s idea that no road is a bad road has to die, but you can at least see where the folks in Clermont County are coming from, even if it's based on outdated and flawed beliefs.

It's important to understand the difference between mobility, access, roads, and streets. Mobility is about getting from point A to point B quickly and unencumbered. This is achieved on roads, highways, and railroads. Mobility is connecting BETWEEN places. Access is about, well, access! Streets, streetcars, sidewalks, plazas, these all directly serve places that people go to. They are the platform or framework upon which buildings and places are constructed, they're the network WITHIN places. You don't directly access buildings from a highway. There's an interchange, a connector road, a driveway, or something else to transition from high-speed mobility to low-speed access. The same is true for railroads. There's sidings, spurs, and stations at destinations, but little to no interface in between. This keeps speeds up. Conversely, you don't go 55 mph on a city street with buildings right up to the sidewalk, street parking, pedestrians, etc. without stopping or slowing. When the distinction between access/streets and mobility/roads gets confused you get things like stroads, the arterial strips of suburban hell. These street/road hybrids are engineered for fast speeds, but they're encumbered with driveway accesses, cross streets, lots of traffic signals, and sometimes wary pedestrians. They try to provide both access and mobility, but achieve neither. Because of all the lights and driveways, they're too slow to provide quick transit between places, and they're too fast and dangerous to provide good access to adjacent property, which retreats from the harsh environment behind berms, parking lots, fences, and gates. That's what the focus on mobility has gotten us. Awful suburban environments that are neither rural nor urban places, highways through cities to try to increase mobility while limiting access, and difficulty implementing transit solutions because of the misunderstanding of access and mobility. It is also a self-fulfilling situation. Mobility begets mobility. It's not enough that you CAN go from point A to point B quickly, but you're now REQUIRED to go from point A to point B, which get further and further apart as time goes on.

I can certainly see how a privately operated toll road is at a disadvantage when surrounded by highly subsidized "free" roads. Rail of course has the same problem. There's two ways to deal with a situation like this. Add subsidies for the travel modes that have been put at a disadvantage, or remove the subsidies for the mode that's being given an unfair advantage. Generally we as a country have only done the former, which helps a little bit to level the playing field, but which continues to distort the market for transportation as a whole. Few seem to be advocating for the latter with any seriousness (it's a total blind spot of cognitive dissonance for the libertarian/tea party types), with the exception of Chuck at Strong Towns http://www.strongtowns.org/journal There's also a very relevant analysis of the subsidy situation at http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/09/are-transit-subsidies-justified.html

It's a rather one-sided view to take that all new development is bad. Some of the most iconic buildings we have replaced nearly as amazing buildings that came before, but it was a trade up and that's not a bad thing. If all that's old is sacred, then incremental development is impossible, and we're consigned to sprawl, stasis, and decline. Following is something I wrote in response to someone specifically asking about Corryville: It’s a difficult situation to parse, because there’s several factors at play and no true “right or wrong” answer to anything. I’m of a mind that in general development in already built-up areas is good. Cities have historically always been able to “grow up” by densifying, and it’s only the most recent 70 or so years that have been a perversion of that natural trend due to zoning laws. We also waste so much space on excessively wide streets, useless and undefined “green space” and of course parking lots that I find the idea of any place being “built out” to be patently absurd. In places like Japan where they never restricted development in the way we do here, you see much more fine-grained densification and mixed use neighborhoods. The critical thing is that rents are actually very low in such places, because the market for units has not been artificially constrained. Such isn’t the case here, and even in Cincinnati which has some of the cheapest housing in the country, specific neighborhoods have very high prices and rents because of their desirability and the inability to build more units to satisfy demand because of restrictive zoning regulations (Downtown, Mt. Adams, Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout, Clifton, etc.). Part of the reason we see big developments like Stetson Square and the new stuff on Short Vine is because everywhere else is so constrained from densifying. Granted there’s proximity desirability to UC, but most blocks surrounding the university are constrained to be nothing more dense than what they already are now, which is small lot single family or duplexes. That so many houses have been converted to apartments, often illegally, shows that the laws are preventing the market for housing from working. So the only way anything more dense can be built is when a large parcel can be assembled by a developer who has the resources to get the zoning changed. That’s what I don’t like about the situation. It favors the big developer doing whole-block teardowns and shuts out the little guy who might build a 4-plex or a couple of townhouses in place of one or two single-family houses. So we lose the “in between” densities that are much less abrupt of a change, and also much less expensive to build. These projects are all coming with sizable structured parking, which is also something I’m very concerned about. Because of the cost of the garages, the project needs to be even bigger to not only amortize the cost of that garage, but to compensate for the space it takes up. Even without garages, every square inch of the site is turned over to surface parking which could be a nice courtyard or more building. It also leads to lesser construction quality and detailing for the rest of the project. I’d call Stetson Square a success on that front, as it hides the garages underneath, addresses the streets at least decently on all sides, and has quality materials and design. The Short Vine projects, McMillan Manor (or Campus Park or whatever it’s called now), University Edge, and 65 West are fails in that respect. It’s not just limited to Corryville either of course. I have the same criticism of Oakley Station, the Drexel, Brookstone Village, and everything going on in Columbia-Tusculum (Delta Flats, etc.), not to mention The Banks. So to bring this all back around, I want to see development happen, but I also want it to be more doable “as of right” in all neighborhoods, not just in a few planned unit developments with huge developers. In doing so, there’s less pressure on any one particular property to maximize its built area, and it should mean there’s less pressure to redevelop historic properties as well. Either way, if people want to live in a particular neighborhood, they’re going to find a way to do it. If the zoning doesn’t allow densification then buildings get renovated and upgraded or demolished and rebuilt with something only slightly bigger, eventually becoming too expensive and pricing people out. By allowing densification to happen more gradually in all scales, it relieves the pressure on remaining properties which have a better chance of surviving at a manageable cost, while at the same time bringing in more people and enhancing opportunities for pedestrian amenities, and hopefully allowing some better construction and design quality. Here’s some favorite blogs of mine that really help synthesize and clarify a lot of my feelings on the subject. http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/ http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/ http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/tradcityarchive.html http://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/

Rural --> urban migration most likely.

^ And why is Firehouse supposedly doomed anyway?

If the panels weren't charcoal gray/black I don't think it would bother me nearly as much.

Huh, I had no idea it was even empty. How long has that been the case?

I would assume much better. That street had gotten HORRIBLE in how much of it was sinking & collapsing. It's never going to be smooth because those are belgian blocks, not cobblestone and they aren't nearly as smooth as brick or pavers, etc. but they should now be stable and last a long long time. Yes but that's not what I was talking about. Sinking and such will definitely be fixed with the concrete base, but I don't see anything to prevent the blocks from sliding down the street in the direction of travel. I've seen this in a few places, especially at intersections, but I can't find a good picture. I don't see it being a big deal since there's not much truck traffic or buses, but I'm curious how this performs in that respect.

To be fair, there is a new 12" thick reinforced concrete base under the sand bed. Seems like a very sturdy construction method, though I wonder if it's better or worse for keeping the blocks from being shifted in the direction of travel over time by cars and trucks.

^ Isn't that just the point though? People ostensibly move to these places for the nice weather, but they can't actually DO anything in it other than drive their cars or maybe walk the dog in their subdivision. Few seem to acknowledge just how oppressive the heat and humidity is in the summer down south, which negates a lot of the benefits of escaping harsher winters up north.

5 Logical Fallacies That Make You Wrong More Than You Think These guys are textbook examples of #1 and #5.

Seeing just the new renderings I couldn't tell what was different, but with the original rendering I can see there's some improvement. There's a bit more "urban storefront" at the base, and the addition of several more window mullions helps to make the facade more vertical than horizontal, which is important.

Don't you mean a little less than $8 million? Their property tax rate is 1.7%, so it should actually be more like $14 million in revenue. Detroit by comparison has a property tax rate around 4% which is the highest in the whole country, because that's the only way they can fund anything with so many empty and depreciated properties. Unfortunately it also punishes redevelopment efforts, which then calls for tax abatements, but that just squeezes the people and businesses who've stuck it out with the city through the years.

Never mind how much longer both the tracks and rolling stock lasts compared to a road and buses. Yeah when the time does come it's not cheap to rehab rails or train cars, but in the long run it's still a winner.

^ I know I've mentioned this in other threads, but the owners of such a garage/lot SHOULD have an incentive to develop that property more fully, but since our property tax code rewards land banking, depreciation, and marginal uses through vastly lower assessments, they can sit on such property and not be penalized for it. That's a bad thing from not only an urbanistic standpoint, but also from a city financial perspective. These underutilized downtown properties have, quite literally, millions of dollars of public infrastructure serving them, yet they're paying a pittance in taxes and essentially getting a free ride on the backs of everyone else.