biker16

there is a reaosn I run my mouth here. not everywhere else. the actual set aside for counties and municipalities from the gas tax is 583,898,755. If the tax was distributed by population Cuyhoga County would receive 65,910,000 dollars an increase of 25 million dollars. or %60 increase in funding. 839,580,660 is the revenue for highway maintenance, how that money is is distributed i don't know.

or maybe a call to action.

so the facts. Cuyahoga county deserves at least $144 person of state gas tax revenue. Yet only receives $30 per resident or 18.75% of it's share in gas tax revenue or only . while rural areas like receive Vinton county, received $225 per person or 140% of its share of revenue.

if the county recived back 90% of the state average of $160 per person or $144 per person it would add up to $187 million per year, now that is a good chunk of money.

This is partially correct, however, municipalities and townships (can elect to, if a greater number) receive a share of the revenue proportional to the number of vehicle registrations. The actual distribution of gas tax revenue is fairly complicated, see an explanation at link below. Based on the data from 2009, each county received 2.4 million in an equal allocation, but after cities and townships were factored in, all entities in Cuyahoga received 40 million, compared to 4.5 million total for all Geauga county entities - see table 4 in PDF link. 2010 data http://tax.ohio.gov/divisions/tax_analysis/tax_data_series/motor_fuel/mv23/mv23cy10.stm http://tax.ohio.gov/divisions/communications/publications/documents/motor_vehicle_fuel_tax.pdf The % breakdown in presented on the web (and not the pdf) for the previous year: http://tax.ohio.gov/divisions/tax_analysis/tax_data_series/motor_fuel/mv23/mv23cy09.stm thank you very much I will porcess these numbers later it still does not sound fair to me that Medina gets 7 million and Cuyhoga gets 40 millon. while Vinton county gets 3.7 million, for it's 16,000 people or 225 per person. Cuyhoga gets $30 per person. well below the the state average of 160$ per person.

Westlake mayor's complaints about Cleveland's water system are just a ruse: Brent Larkin

That's definitely not a Cincinnati conservative way of thinking! And you do not want to manage your city's government by the ballot box. Ask California how well that is working. well unless you will be able to convince the Ohio assembly to do the right thing. A Constitutional amendment would be needed to change the gas tax. Either way something has to wake the Urban municipalities to how much they are being screwed, by state policies.

I think the term urban is seen as a bad word. i feel people are not educated on the aspects of "urban" life they really love, they hold on to misconceptions about ghettos and that like and their initial reaction wants nothing to do with it. they ask why Lakewood is not westlake, and why things are they way they are. they do not understand the importance of medians on wide streets or traffic lights in a business district, they like to drive places and while they will embrace the idea of shopping local, do most of their shopping elsewhere. they ask why is the movie theater closing, when they have never seen a movie there before. they complain about things without understanding the process. I pose a riddle to you, if the city turns over 25-50% of it population every 5 years, how can we develop a knowledgeable populace that can move things forward? In the end you have a small group of active people with their own short sighted goals, that abhor change that does not fit their vision for the city. this isn't just Lakewood this is everywhere in the US. you want to know why no one in Portland complains about the urban growth boundary? because it has been there for so long that people no longer fight it, progressive people enacted it before opposition could be raised against it. In my opinion big change either happens very fast or it never happens. If Cleveland could have finished the Shoreway within 5 years of it's proposal people would not have cared, it is allowing time for opposition to form that dooms transformational projects and thinking. lakewood has wonaderful youthfull population, but is it reflected in it government? councilman, public works, mayor?

I am taking a transportation planning class at levin, with Steve Litt and taught by Howard Meier head of NOACA. Home rule is not conducive to planning nor sustainable development. it create too many freerider issues that we have today. I am coming around to the Cincinnati conservative way of thinking about ballot amendments. package ballot amendment that angers people and sneak some other non relating language into the amendment. example: the gay marriage amendment passed a few years back, that also banned common law marriage. I want to frame this a as a fairness issue. the top 10 counties in Ohio have 52% of the state's population, or over 6 million people. yet by law those counties only receive 11% of gas tax revenue. It basic redistribution of wealth. :clap: then Top 5 MSA in Ohio, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Akron and Dayton, have A GDP of 352 million dollars, of the state's 471 million dollars of GDP or 75% of the state's GDP comes from it's 5 largest MSAs. This is holding our state back. :shoot: I would put on the ballot that 90% of all gas tax revenue taken our of the county must come back to the county. I would also allow gas tax revenue to be spent on transit and other forms of transport, other than roads. Providing a secure source of funding for transit in Ohio.

It could but didn't. There were public hearings last year on the commuter rail project, including a hearing at the Lakewood City Hall. But there was no NIMBY uproar. In fact I don't remember anyone taking a stance of outright opposition. Maybe they would if a branch of the Red Line was offered, but that's not what has been proposed. I know I am being a bit pessimistic about things, but I also remember the public support for the street scape plans for Detroit and Clifton, only to see an public uproar at the last minute doom the project. I also know about the public reaction to the removal of Stop lights on Detroit, when in fact the public was informed of the removals 18 months ago. Often we can go though a public process build consensus, only to fail by the fear and paranoia of people late in the process. there has been nothing in the last 10 years that makes me believe that Lakewood would be anymore friendly to transit than rocky river or fair view park. like I said there is alot of small town nostalgia, and that has been hindering their vision.

I haven't encountered anything like this through years of living in Lakewood. Various parts. It's the most progressive and urbanist populace I've ever had the pleasure of joining. Residents are against the McDonalds on Detroit not because they hate change, but because replacing a mixed-use twin cinema building with a McDonalds drive thru is anti-urban and stupid. Similarly, many are against the West Shoreway conversion because they think it's just a bad idea. Too much connectivity lost for too little gained, at too great a cost. People were against RTA cutting the circulator buses, not because they hate change but because they prefer a transit-oriented lifestyle. The common theme is that being able to get around is a good thing. Lakewood by definition is a dense center of population and entertainment that's 5 miles outside downtown. Transportation will always be forefront issue. I think most people in Lakewood would welcome a rail expansion of any kind. How about the proposed land swap for Kaufman park that could have led to a lifestyle center in the center of downtown Lakewood? or the west end project, Or the Clifton BRT lite concept, that would have transformed the street into one more pedestrian friendly. or the rejection of the West shoreway conversion by some people. Even some people in some positions at the city who feel mixed use development has no future in the city. You can say these people are progressive, but their actions from a Economic development POV and even architectural POV are very conservative. How hard would it be to reform the Zoning of the city to prevent the abominations that SSA, CVS, and McDonalds, are. Lakewood residents think they are more rocky river than they are Gordon Square, but the opposite s true. there seems to be conflict between being a bedroom community and the most densely populated city between NYC and Chicago. the city does not embrace its urban roots and prefers to behave like it is a traditional suburb, which it is not.

Wait -- what? If the redline was extended to Lakewood As someone else proposed. In theory if you had you had 15-30 minute interval between trains serving a downtown Lakewood stop from 6:30am -10:30pm, that would be a lot of trains over those grade level crossings. even with a commuter Rail line as proposed it could trigger a Nimby uproar, in the city.

I beleive the Future of transit in Ohio, has to start with reforming the state laws governing Regional transit agencys. restrictions on: transit agency's range We should allow RTAs to be compromised of more than one county, and policy that does not penalized inter county collaboration between RTAs. We plan highways though multi-county agencys but transit is a limited to being one county at a time. limiting range and economies of scale, making transit more expensive than it has to be. Allow transit agencies to seek alternative forms Funding, other than taxes, TIFs and outright land ownership to subsidize transit expansion. RTA should be recieving revenue from developments that it has created, like tower city reform the state transportation funding mechanism, so that gas tax funding can be used for transit, just liek roads have secure state funding source transit needs reliable state funding sources. DYK, that by law, state gas tax revenue is divided equally between all counties in ohio. So while Cuyahoga county has ~10% of the state's population it receives only 1.13% or 1/88th of state gas tax revenues, and we wonder why Ohio hates Cities, it is because it is in the Ohio constitution. My hope would be to gather grass roots support along issues of transportation fairness, to reform the state's transportation policy, so that we no longer have Cities subsidizing Rural development, when >70% of Ohioans live in cities. I would like to share the gas tax numbers with the voters and put a amendment on the ballot to make sure a minimum of 90% of gas taxes collected in each county comes back to that county, and liberating the gas tax revenue to be used for more than Roads, but also for Transit and other nodes of transport. state Transit issues are a result of anti urban policies from Columbus.

Lakewood is a Medium city with a Small Town mentality. they abhor change. Imagine the protest from residents when 30-60 trains roar through those grade level crossings everyday.

It is interesting to note that CSU does not own the dorms on Euclid, they are owned by a LLC formed by CSU and the dorms were built by bonds issued to the LLC, those bonds are being paid for by the dorm fees of the residents. In essence the dorms are run like a independent business they are designed to make a profit, not to simply live up to the aesthetic expectations of people like me and you. the reality of the future project at Ohio universities is that they are unlikely to be funded by direct state funding, the universities have had to become creative in financing project, either through public private partnerships, Bonds, or out of their general fund. the last State funded building at CSU was the education building, everything else from the student center or Rec center was funded by either additional fees on students or collaboration with other non profits of for profit companies. When You Collaborate you lose some control over the project. this is what is happening.

My motivation is to Reduce the costs of creating an effective system. you do that by minimizing the use of dedicated ROWs, every time you seeks to separate Cars and Trains you add millions to the cost of the project, and you remove decrease capacity of the road way. the disadvatages of mixed operation is speed,dedicaed ROW are faster, but with loops like the one I proposed do not need to be fast, the loops are short enough to allow 20 min service with one tram, and 10 minute service with 2 trams. TRams are an extension of walking they allow pedestrians to walk further than they normally would, It is not a conventional commuter transit service but truly a connector of adjacent neighborhoods. I see trams like I see buses, 98% of the time they are not there, that 2% of the time drivers and trams operators needs to be aware of each other. all the leaglities of tram operations are know they have to follow trafic laws and drivers have to follow Traffic laws as well. there will be accidents, just like there are accidents beteen cars and buses on the Healthline, the difference is trams don't move. they have to follow the rails. drivers have to be aware of that, but that awareness does not come automatically but overtime as drviers adapt to the new environment, just like the health line. You would never Run heavy Rail at street level unless you had no other choice, why? because they cannot maneuver in a street corridors without an enormous effect on other Traffic. their turns are too wide, and much like a semi truck they require wide berth when they turn, in addition the width of the cars at > 9 feet, are a barriers to traffic, Trams on the other hand have tighter Turing radius, only slightly wider than 60ft buses, they can also be narrower than buses, as little as 7'7" wide. all these features allow the tram to have a smaller footprint in traffic. you even want to separate Light rail from Trams because of the footprints they have in traffic that make them a better fit in mix ROW. Depending on congestion, another option is routing the clockwise loop on 17th and the counterclockwise on 18th, or vice-versa. Of course, what you save on congestion you double in costs in station construction. the issue with 17th is the freight deliverys to the playhouse square, and the CSU garage creates a bottle neck. 18th street is much wider at 4 lanes and would have reduced risk for delays. I think you have to know the right tools for The job, know your limits, trams are slow, in order to maintain adequate service frequency. the distances covered by by a street car have to be shorter. You need good frequency when you have meandering route, you add time, and in order to increase the frequency. you have to add more trains. you also want have a realistic idea of where you Want development to take place. I describe the traditional street car networks in Cleveland because all major development in the city took place along those lines. If streetcars are a Extension of Walking, you want to service areas where you have a high density of pedestrians, the denser the better, and connect those areas together. I would like to see a Tram line from public square to Market square, over the Detroit/superior bridge and Lorain/Carnegie bridge Via West 25th. I wuld take an incremental approach to expansion after that, because the cost to benefit ratio decrease as distance grows and density declines. when that happens buses become a better option. either way we have to be smart, there used to be 900,000 people living in cleveland at the peak of streetcar use, now there are only 400,000, we have to be realistic about when and where we choose to develop a tram system.

think of public transport as a tool box, there are certain tools for certain jobs, due to the speed and ROW restrictions it wold not be appropriate to use light rail to connect Cleveland to Akron. the blue line trains are limited to 40-45mph. what I proposed for an extension would be dedicated express trains that could travel in dedicated ROW and operate in Light rail ROW as well. this would enable 50+ mph travel in dedicated express ROWs. To me It unlies the importance of making smart decisions when it comes to choosing the next generation rial vehicles for Northeast Ohio. I think we would want the flexibility in the RTA fleet to allow th system to expand outside of the current system and expand to areas inside of the existing network.

the project will be completed, mark my words.

this may be for a different thread, but how would you expand the CC to the county site? the loading docks are directly east of the current building. it would be very difficult to expand the exhibit hall into the current administration site, nevermind the costs of diging down to the depth of the future exhibit halls. The new CC will be L-shaped, per my understanding, with the shorter part of the L going underneath the MM. So an expansion north from that point is not that much of a jump I would think.

this may be for a different thread, but how would you expand the CC to the county site? the loading docks are directly east of the current building. it would be very difficult to expand the exhibit hall into the current administration site, nevermind the costs of diging down to the depth of the future exhibit halls.

I just wanted to add the Area behind tower City between the Phase2 casino and the Federal court house. It could be built as building the county would lease from Forest City. Forest city would be able to build residential or office above, the County offices. Using the County to attract the financing needed to build the building and the potential towers above it.

I agree, the greatest issue is to get speeds above 95mph requires dedicated ROW, more importantly require electrification. pushing for the electrification of not just passenger line but also Fright lines greatly reduce the cost of expanding passenger Rail. Our country unlike Europe or Japan does not have places with existing electrification. so all of our lines must have new construction from the hinterland to the center of cities, which are the most expensive per mile to build. if We can make HSR part of wider effort to electrify freight rail, you could sacrifice the speed of dedicated HSR corridors, for the greater access that electrifying existing Fright rail corridors would give you. There is a lot of talk about the future electrification of freight rail in the US as a means to reduce oil dependency and speed of freight travel in the Future. the side benefit of this would be to open those routes to high speed trains at a albeit slower speeds, the benefit would be to reduce the costs of bring a HSR network online. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301 http://www.joc.com/rail-intermodal/special-report-electrifying-freight-rail http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202005/SuperiorRail.pdf the key to A Us brand of electrification is to set our Catenary wires high enough to not interfere with the diesel Fright trains of today. that means A height greater than that of a double stack trains. If you create that standard you could operate Diesel trains and electrified trains on the same rails. also eliminate the need for flyovers between different modes of trains. the way I see it there will be demand for < 80 MPH trains that can operate on non-electrified ROWs. the issue is to make the leap to 150 and higher require dedicated ROW, there is a 5-10 % premium to go from 150 to 220mph operation. bluntly if you go high speed it makes sense to go up to 250mph. http://www.midwesthsr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/MHSRA_2011_Economic_Study_Technical_Report.pdf To the appropriateness of fright on HSR line, it happens in Europe today. The axle design limits on the TGV are 17 Tonnes per axle, the limit for US Freight is 22.5 tonnes per axle, The thing higher speeds load the Rails some case are even more than Freight does. Even If you could not run Double Stack Freight on HSR lines you could definitely run Freight after hours at lower speeds (80mph) and Still be extremely competitive with existing Freight lines. especially for parcel services like UPS, USPS, etc., it increases the overall capacity of freight along the corridor. For me the opportunity is to get big rail, (BNSF, CSX, etc.) to buy into electrification, You may be able to seek federal loans of grants to electrify rail, as a national transportation national security issue, in exchange for allowing more passenger traffic and PTC on the electrified lines. GE can build Dual mode freight locomotives that can operate on diesel and high voltage Electric.

exactly!!!! Some how they need to figure out how to residential to the Complex. If you remember the convention center proposal forest City floated7-9 years ago, which included the Redevelopment of the Scranton peninsula with a residential neighborhood. and an included pedestrian bridge from Tower city across the River to the Scranton development. the problem with the optimal solution of residential towers on West Huron is there are too many Class B and C office towers left to be converted to residential first, and the market would not support the costs of new construction. It would take a public private partner ship to to pull it off. imagine this: next to the phase II Casino Forest CIty and the County could collaborate and seek financing to construct a new county administration building, as a part of Tower City phase III. This could include 6-10 floors of county offices connected to the retail center, with residential towers on top.

how to leverage an American high-speed rail network. I wanted to toss out some Ideas on how to increase the profitability of high Speed rail in the US. The differences between US Rail and Rail in the rest of the world are immense the cost. America is far more dependent on Rail for Freight than Europe. America has an almost entirely non electrified Rail network, depending on Diesel for fueling Rail. America rail system covers distances not covered by any other country. New thinking about deploying HSR in the US. the cost of deployment are extremely high and unlikely to be fully funded purely by government grants, if possible to use government backed low to zero interest bonds to develop how to pay those loans back ASAP. I propose 3 things 1. Creation of a HSR standard For north America that better meets the needs of our very-very new network. 2. HSR standard the Uses all modern technology (positive Train Control) to allow mixed Use of Electrified Freight and HSR Passenger Train in the same corridors. 3. Leveraging New right-of ways to increase system revenue. 1. The creation of a US HSR standard would aid in the deployment of HSR rail in the US. Standardizing design, operation, and deployment, much like the FAA does for Airlines would do wonders to reduce risks of HSR in the US. Also increases the economies of scale for contractors, train operators, designers, etc. most importantly it would prevent the fragmentation of standards that are bound to happen when HSR systems are developed on a regional level. 2. Allow Freight use on HSR lines. Because of the expense of deploying a HSR it makes sense to look at ways to increase utilization of the network, due to the distances between US cities the frequency of Use will be much lower than that of EU trunk lines. According to MHSRA study, you would be looking at a max of 46 or 23 trains in each direction per day 18 hours per day. It should be possible on most lines to fit in electrified Freight on the corridors, much like Amtrak today, with the difference being passenger trains would always have priority over freight. The advantages over the current right of ways, freight currently uses are: Speed- HSR lines are designed for much greater speed, they will not cruise at 250 mph. but higher than the diesel trains could travel today. Lower cost- Electrified rail is a more efficient way to move freight, the costs of electricity would be more stable than that of diesel. the operating cost of electric is less than diesel, most of the maintenance cost is in the shared ROW not the locomotives. Less congestion - all new ROW means less congestion on the lines than existing conventional rail lines. They would bypass major cities of the most part The preferred freight type would be inter-modal, container traffic, with connections either to existing inter modal facilities which are usually outside of major cities or with connections to non-electrified Freight Rail. Due to the economic benefits of Double stack containerized freight trains, I would look to move the catenary higher like they are doing in India, to allow for electrified double stack freight trains. The technology exists today to use HSR passenger rail on 7.45 meter height catenary, vs the conventional 5.5 meters above the rail catenary. By moving the wire you allow for future double deck passenger trains, because all next-generation HSR train designs use self-propelled cars, raising the Wires allows for double deck trains to be used. http://www.rdso.indianrailways.gov.in/works/uploads/File/Railway%20_Gazette_Double_Stack%20Container%281%29.pdf Leveraging new ROW for new Revenue: The Areas these new ROW will be constructed open an opportunity for HSR to share these ROWs with Telecoms and new high tension lines to strengthen the nation's electrical grid. There may also be opportunities for gas pipelines and other below ground utilities that could be sold at a profit. It important to not simply see the network as only a way to move people faster but as a opportunity to our national infrastructure in general. Look for as many ways to make money from this investment not just passenger fares. the unknowns would be how much load would be too much for HSR corridors, and add too much to the maintenance costs of the system. what are the restrictions for mixed use, Freight, and passenger traffic, It ought to be possible because It is common in the EU to operate medium and low speed passenger traffic on High-speed corridors. Near term, for regional networks like the North East corridor, and Chicago hub you may not need to aggressively seek other uses for the Corridors, but for longer inter-regional routes like Chicago to NYC, or Chicago to the West coast. It become more important to make sure fleet compatibility and maximize Revenue beyond passenger rail. Either way the current position of US passenger Rail means we can afford to look outside the Box, and do things differently than the rest of the world.

:lol: