peterdietz

I was chatting with my neighbor this morning, and found out that we both work in the same building (different companies). I was talking about how great biking and the 55 bus is, and they're like no, not interested, stop talking. I continued talking, and they interrupted me saying they have free parking, and I realized, that a person with free parking has probably close to zero interest in ever bothering to think about transit. If I were an employer, instead of giving each employee a reserved parking space, I'd be tempted to instead offer some type of savings account, say $100/mo, and the employee can then be free to do whatever they wanted with that money. Either use the $100 to buy a monthly garage pass at the building, spend it on a garage 5 blocks away for $50/month, monthly transit pass, or for downtown residents to walk or bike, and keep the cash. According to the internet, this is called "Parking Cash Out". And the most likely outcome is that some percentage of employees will carpool with each other, splitting the cash out. Other outcomes are increased transit, walking, biking. The thing I'm curious about is, is there anything on the books for Ohio or Cleveland that requires or encourages companies to provide a "parking cash out"? It looks like its one of those potential win-wins for employers and employees. Lower cost for employer (to provide less cash than cost of parking, thus can hire more people), more money for employee (if they carpool), and less emissions/traffic with more potential riders. I'd have to imagine that this ought to be on the minds of companies considering relocating to downtown. Your office park in the burbs has ample parking, but the first question when you relocate to downtown is parking, so you gobble up 150 spaces, and provide that to your employees. But, why not have a flexible "parking cash out" option when your planning your move.

I think the NCTC vs Red Line Greenway discussion should be tabled, go meet up for drinks to hash it out. (My two cents). I think that NCTC would move to the fore-front of our thoughts if something like the Midwest HSR was an option. http://www.midwesthsr.org/cleveland If Chicago is 2:15 away, Detroit is 1:20 away, New York City 4:00, Columbus 1:00, Cincinnati 2:00, as a result of a High Speed Rail network connecting the Midwest and the East Coast, you will have an improved NCTC on the forefront of Cleveland and TIGER's radar. With the above listed speeds you have daylight service, you have multiple round trips a day. This beats the pants off of driving, and is likely origin-to-destination faster than flying as airports are outside of the city core. So, you could either approach this using incremental improvement (Ohio to follow MDOT's approach of 110'ing Detroit to Chicago), and then you have two round-trips a day, and shaving a few hours off of routes. Or, champion the political will, and find a financing strategy. I think the "if you build it they will come" means that if you build great rail transport, then a good Cleveland station will be built, and not really vice-versa. For the time being, can probably just some new siding on Cleveland Amtrak station to make it more appealing... Is there a kickstarter to fund Midwest HSR?

Anyone know if the Mall to Science-Center pedestrian bridge is still a go? If its still under-review, then I have a more modest (in terms of flair) proposal. Build a wide bridge covered in grass from the Mall, Cleveland City Hall, Willard Park over top of Amtrak and the shoreway, and connect it to Browns, Science Center, Rock Hall. Have the bridge be covered in greenery, grass, plants, walkways, sculptures, maybe a cafe or two. Also, tie it into the convention center tunnels, and build a connector (elevator/escalator) to Amtrak/Greyhound. (sorry if I or others have proposed such a thing, and its get down-voted, but I figure with the Amtrak tiger fund getting cancelled, then project can be rethought).

KJP, Thanks for the 2035 plan, now lets quietly put that on the shelf, and not discuss it. ;) One of the things that I kind of really like about your proposal, is that it almost creates what looks like an "Urban Growth Boundary". Not a heavy-handed legal line in the sand, but almost a competitive advantage urban growth boundary. In that, we are considering extending the rapid transit system to reach further throughout the region, and if you are able to locate your home or business near this, you'll have efficient, easy way to get around, and for customers to get to your doors. This could provide corridors to in-fill the county population, as opposed to draining it into the sprawl. 2035 is a long time from now, almost 20 years, every resident and business will have a chance to consider relocating, and perhaps with the future transit system being planned. Since you might be relocating, you don't have to worry about whats best for your current street, but whats best for how you want the city to be. I also like the potential for the network effect. If you only have 2 major rapid corridors, as we currently do, you have a section of the region that your Rapid RTA Map can get you to, but big part of the region that you can't get to. With more lines, in different directions, and reaching further, you've encapsulated the extent to where people might be going. (Still the last mile problem, but atleast your an order-of-magnitude closer). More people will be making more connections, thus the potential for doubling your throughput, and thus the value of transit-served existing stations are more valuable. (i.e. Getting to Ohio City isn't just possible from areas served by Red/Blue/Green, but now Purple, Yellow, and Orange regions too.) Maybe bus routes will also be more effective use of people's time, as they can feed into a fast rapid backbone. One of the valuable things about multi-stop transit, is that land-use that is "on the way" is more valuable. Definitely land near existing/new transit stations will be prime locations for a spike in walkable urban places, and higher density / mixed use development. So, a vision like this could help encourage cities/NOACA in their land use planning, or vice versa, or feedback loop. (i.e. Clifton/Detroit from here to here is prime for increased density, and transit can support Detroit/Clifton area) 2035 is a long way a way, and transportation technology (AI / autonomous) will certainly add some interesting changes. But, perhaps with self-driving fleets, this could signal less private car ownership, and less need to land use devoted to car parking. Thus allowing using land use towards productive things (commerce, housing), making car-oriented suburbs able to rethink their layout / urban form, since you don't need to locate your store behind 200 feet of parking. Families can go from 2 cars to 1 car, to no privately owned car. So while, autonomous taxi fleets could be an option, where they pick you up at your origin and take you directly to your destination, this is probably a lower total-cost-of-ownership than private vehicle (autonomous/shared 50c / mile vs private 100c/mile). The potentially yet-more-efficient route would be for last-mile autonomous vehicles to feed you into the more efficient per passenger, higher density longer-haul rapid network to get you across town, and then you can hop into another last-mile autonomous vehicle to get to your destination. Say you have a 10 mile trip: private vehicle: 100c / mile = $10 autonomous/shared: 50c / mile = $5 last-mile-feed-to-rapid: 1mile@50c, 8mile@20c, 1mile@50c = .50 + 1.60 + .50 = $2.60 So, in my head (these numbers are rightfully dubious, but the premise ought to hold), there is a need for longer distance, high throughput rapid transit. Also, as transport establishes a per-use-price, people might save on that last-mile fee, and just walk/bike it in good weather, or use transit during taxi surge-pricing. (Compared to you already pay monthly car loan, already pay insurance, already have fuel in the tank, just have to put your seatbelt on and go ~ feels free for that one use vs hitting Uber/TeslaFleet/Google button for last mile). Regarding financing, I think you'll see backlash and lack of appetite for something that doesn't provide a benefit, they won't see themselves using, but natural support for something valuable. The purple line alone is worth it for me to advocate.

The other day I learned that the Ohio Turnpike doesn't get federal funding, doesn't get state funding, and doesn't get gas-tax funding. Instead all revenue comes from tolls / service plazas / advertisements. Further, Ohio took out $1B of bonds based on turnpike future revenue, and used that money towards non-turnpike construction projects, and the turnpike in change has to raise tolls, to pay back those bonds. I'm actually pretty happy with the turnpike, we use it to go to Baltimore+beyond regularly. With the EZ-Pass, in other states, say PA, there is high-speed-tolling, so you don't even have to slow down to pay the toll. Ohio makes you slow down to run the EZ-Pass. Meanwhile, the Highway Trust Fund has gone broke every year in recent memory, and has to get bailed out by billions of dollars of general revenue funds, or other fuzzy funding. Isn't the US supposed to sell future strategic oil reserves for double the current market rate??? Anyways, there has been a long-held stance from the federal level, that you are not allowed to add tolls to an interstate. Well, the federal level has signaled that they don't want to have a federal ban on such a thing, and to instead move this decision to be up to the states. http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/237455-obama-highway-bill-reignites-tolling-debate I'm not sure if the linked-to bill would have to be approved by congress, but, perhaps Ohio could look into reducing the state's financial burden of financing interstate maintenance through tolls on the interstates. Nobody is upset that ODOT/Ohio spends money on highways and bridges, its mostly just the subsidy complaint. Your using a mixture of funds, such as general revenue, as opposed to solely user-fee's as gas tax has fallen to 50% due to inflation. Anyways. I would propose that Ohio tolled all of the interstates (you don't have to charge that much, just enough to cover expenses of maintenance, we're a non-profit). And then, whatever annual dollar amounts that the Fed and Ohio had previously been spending from general revenue could go into a Cool-Stuff-Trust-Fund. Cool-Stuff-Trust-Fund could go towards things that according so some formula, would have the most impact, but would be considered potentially a moonshot. So, if everyone would be happy with true HSR, then the Cool-Stuff-Trust-Fund could accrue money for a few years, then you suddenly have $20B for HSR between Chicago <- 3C's -> East Coast. Each state could band together to accomplish cool-stuff together. Cool-Stuff could fund big transit projects in the 3C's+. Or, if you don't need to spend the money from the state's general revenue, then you reduce the amount the state collects in taxes, either making the place better for business, or with a lower tax burden, each region (Cleveland, Columbus, Cinci) could then add a regional income tax to their multi-county regions to ear-mark towards things like transit. I/others predict that future autonomous driving might reduce the need for last-mile bus service, but you'll still want to have core, high density, high throughput people moving systems. i.e. BRT/rail. So instead of having lots of busses that runs within 1/2 mile of 95% of the county, you'll have BRT/rail that is within 2 miles of 95% of county, and the autonomous little cars will feed people into and out of the dense network. Lastly, the other rethinking-transport is that Elon Musk laid out part-2 of his masterplan. Part 1 (10 years ago, almost complete): - Build expensive sports car - Build medium family car - Build mass-market car - Shift energy from mine and burn to electric Part 2: - Mass market home solar generation and storage - Build electric trucks / mass transit smart busses - Self driving autonomous cars - Build a fleet of self driving Tesla-Taxis So, there definitely is a drum-beat for more electric, and more self driving vehicles on the road. I don't know if that affects peoples decisions on buying or not buying your next car. (These things are still a few years away). But, it would be nice if this helps people go from 2 car family, to 1 car family, to car-sharing. Then the cities and suburbs of the future will probably have to adjust their urban form, as people will likely accomplish more trips by foot ($2.25 to ride the tesla-taxi to the end of the street, I'll walk), and there won't be a need for urban parking, allowing for more buildings. As scary as that sounds, I think it definitely benefits the consumer, as they won't have to pay for personal car ownership (~$4k / year).

Why are there tracks 6, 7, 8, 10W, 10E, 13, but no tracks 1-5, 9, 11, 12... Removed after the end of CUT? Also, I'd be in favor that after this project is done you have your primary east-bound, and primary west-bound tracks, but also have a good-condition alternate track available so that Tower City doesn't get brought down to its knees when one thing malfunctions, causing everything to stop for hours of delays. And perhaps, find a way to make a more convenient walkway between the main platforms and the alternate. i.e. knock open a wall, so you can walk to the alternate, as opposed up, over, down, around. Off-topic. Where does/did the Detroit/Superior bridge's lower level streetcar connect with the rest of the system? Would the streetcar have merged from lower-level to Superior Ave surface, or was there a tunnel and it was a subway to CUT?

You can leave feedback for the Midway, proposed center-lane cycling network. https://midway.metroquest.com/ http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/tlci/tlciCurrent.php#midway Yesterday I rode on Madison to W117 rapid station, and noticed that pretty much all of Madison in Lakewood has markings for bike lanes!!! Markings meaning spray paint dashes about 3 feet apart in between parking and a travel lane. I assume this means the actual bike lane markings will be coming soon. The bike lane appeared to end at Quail ~W123ish / Griffen Cider works, and then you share the road getting to W117. I hate hate hate Madison going any further east. The W112 rail underpass is potentially deadly, the road is rubble and scary going under that. I've eaten asphalt there on bike, unless Cleveland can fix that, sane people should get off Madison at W117th and take Detroit, or jump onto the rapid. Riding the bike lane felt great, I rode much faster than normal, and did have a small area where I actually passed a bunch of cars. Also, I felt like I properly belonged on the road, and not confused by the should I take the lane, should I hug the edge, how do I tell the car behind me I don't want them to pass me. I would appreciate it if people would actually park their cars fully into the parking lane, and not stick out by a few feet. And double-parked freight trucks are the worst. Surely you could have just pulled into the parking lot? Maybe vigilante's and police can have a spool of stickers that say "I parked in a bike lane". Also, while I was stopped at a red light, a pedestrian talked to me, and say wow, this bike lane looks really nice, I agreed, and then he walked to his beemer. So, my guess is that bike lanes have cultural acceptance. Also, these currently psuedo markings didn't change everyones behavior. I still saw other bikes doing the parking spot weave (weaving in between the lane and the parking lane based on absence of parked car). Also there were still some sidewalk cyclists, mostly kids.

I'm trying to piece together information about Weber's Frozen Custard and Ice Cream in Rocky River. Nibbles of info I've found online: "In 1929 Nathan Weber accepted an internship working for Soeder’s Dairy at their Euclid Beach Fresh Ice Cream (later called Dairy Whip) concession. He liked it. His family got permission, from Soeder’s, to open a “stand” as long as certain criteria were met. In 1931, Weber’s opened on Hilliard Rd. in Rocky River adding 5 new flavors to the original Vanilla. Two of those criteria were that, “…the product never be cheapened and be made on the same machines.” The Vanilla that was served at Euclid Beach is EXACTLY the same as that served by Weber’s today, and it is manufactured in those same machines built in 1931 on special order for the Weber family." "When Nathan Weber opened his first custard shop in Rocky River in 1931, chocolate malt was a hit flavor. Legend has it that someone at Higbee's department store stole the recipe but couldn't replicate the custard's firmness." "The store eventually gave way to Interstate 90. In the final days, the owners put up a sign saying "Custard's Last Stand." Then the Pattons reopened on Lorain Rd." I'm looking at a historical map: http://peoplemaps.esri.com/cleveland/ The 1920-1922 layer has a Hilliard Ave in Lakewood, but there is no bridge crossing the rocky river, and no Hilliard Ave road exists in Rocky River. The 1927-1937 layer does have a Hilliard Rd Bridge and there is now a Hilliard Road in Rocky River The 1951 layer shows some plots on Hilliard The 1979 layer shows that most of Hilliard Ave from the past is the same, but there is now I-90 and enter/exit ramps from Hilliard to I-90. Several plots on the North side of Hilliard are now gone, and the freeway is there. I'm guessing that Weber's Ice Cream would have been located on the north side of Hilliard between Wooster Rd and the bridge. The only thing on the north side of Hilliard between Wooster and the river are noise barriers. It would be interesting if someone had some further info on this ice cream shop, or area in Rocky River, perhaps info about the era. It would be interesting to see if a public mural could get drawn on the highway noise barrier that gave the appearance of the storefront, and add one of those bronze Ohio history markers. Tangent. Could a highway be reconstructed such that instead of having a sloping valley of grass/trees/land, you instead had a vertical concrete wall at the end of the shoulder, and then reclaim that land for redevelopment on the north side of Hilliard? This would be a tax generating use of the land as opposed to non-generating property / tax-suck of interstate. (Have to mow grass, and deer roam there).

Anyone know anything about this Cleveland Waterfront District Plan poster: http://planning.city.cleveland.oh.us/lakefront/iactive/poster/waterfront_poster.pdf I'm guessing its an "idealized Cleveland waterfront", from some point in time in the past. But, does anyone know if that is used sort of as a guiding blueprint, such as how does this next decision work to accomplish this vision? As far as that waterfront poster goes, that's a pretty awesome vision for the lakefront. I do like the "future transit station" markings. Lastly, I'd say that Edgewater is my favorite Cleveland-area beach by far. Its great for weekend family day at the beach, and Edgewater Live is good when you can bring a crowd and hangout on a blanket. Whenever we've had a friend in town, on a Thursday, its usually our first recommendation for what to do. One recent memory from Edgewater Live is that cavs game 6 was on a Thursday, and they promptly closed down Edgewater Live at 8:30, to let people scatter home to watch the game. Maybe there can be future public screenings of big games / distributed public watch parties. (As opposed to just the gateway plaza). Also, sometimes I wonder if there's potential for a resort-hotel near Edgewater, for people that want to have a stay-cation, or tourism. Maybe instead of that, building a first-class indoor/outdoor pool + sprayground.

ODOT district 12 headquarters is out in Garfield Heights, 0.5 miles from this bridge. I'm guessing this $281 Million Dollar project is a project for themselves, out there in the sprawl. I'd call for ODOT to either officially rename themselves Ohio Department of Highways, or relocate to downtown Cleveland and live on a daily basis that there is life outside of the sprawl, and they should focus on effective solutions of all-of-the-above, and not just endless highway projects serving the sprawl. If you can't resurface the bridge because of too much traffic, what-if, you added open-road-tolling to the Valley View Bridge (to pay for the $281M project), and charge $0.50 each time you crossed, I'd imagine your 160k daily traffic would magically decrease, and you won't need to build a temp-bridge. If not, then at the tolls would pay for the bridge in 9.6 years.

Random thought. What if during the tear up of Public Square, they installed an RTA entrance (with big visible signage), that was stairs and escalator down to the bowels of TC for the rapid? Re: Detroit/West Blvd. I feel like that area could be something that you can just say "give it time". Detroit is continuously improving, and has hot spots, I call that a string of pearls. (Detroit=String, Pearls=Ohio City@W25, Harp@W45ish, Gordon Square@W60ish, lots of Edgewater cut throughs, battery park, and then Lakewood begins at W117). I can see downtown to Gordon square gentrifying soonish. And W120 to W110 could continue to improve. You have weird land use from 110 to West Blvd. Like almost absolutely nothing on the north side of Detroit, and then very far set back institutions on the south side. Detroit having to underpass the track always raises my blood pressure, as a biker. Berea road is not residents and retail. And there are a lot of boarded up buildings at Berea/Detroit. So if you could pick one location to magically inject TOD magic, I'd pick West Blvd / Detroit. Also I assume that West Blvd is 100 blocks west of public square and East Blvd (University Circle) is 100 blocks east of public square. A developer should find all that worth considering. It's also an easy bike ride from there to downtown, flat, mostly bike lanes. Lastly, my parade two cents. Just like there is some auxiliary police, where for the RNC, outside police agencies will be on loan to CLE. For last minute parade, what if Chicago CTA/NYC MTA drove a bunch of trains and buses to Cleveland, for us to handle the walloping of 1.3M? Other than that, if be curious to get a post-mortem from RTA on what they had to do to prep, what they got done, how many more operators, vehicles, miles were driven, strategies, etc. My view is they were limited by fluid dynamics, only so much can floor with so much capacity... my only tweak would be that instead of running the train all the way to airport, or the bus to westgate transit center, to turn around halfway (w117, or bunts), and then pick up people in the core. Otherwise your just serving the fringe, and covering a lot more miles. You want the most passengers per mile, not the most passenger miles. Then with the vehicle covering half the distance, you can double the frequency, thus double the throughput?

I would do handstands if a "midway" cycle track could be added to Lorain, and then the Red Line / greenway / Highline could then take you all the way downtown. Here's how I see it. The Metroparks Rocky River Reservation is our existing biggest recreation bike way, and it pops up to Lorain at Story. Put a center-lane cycle track down Lorain from there to say W-65, where it can tie into the Red Line / greenway / High-line, which uses a dis-used spare RTA right-of-way to get you to W25, and to downtown. Or, perhaps more meaningful, have the Lorain Midway continue all the way from Rocky River to Lorain-Carnegie bridge, and get a blessing from the guardians of transport. Then for getting between downtown and University Circle, I think the Chester Ave route would be best. It should be connected all the way to MLK Jr too. I don't hear people frustrated with bikes in general, just frustrations with how share-the-road works. I think a midway on select corridors is good for safety, and encouraging more people to bike. For the next championship parade, we need a bit of "all of the above" to handle the swarm of people getting downtown. Lastly, for general bike-commuting, signal timing is something important to be looked into. I'd have to check my strava data, but a good deal of time and energy is spent stoping for signals, and then starting back up again. Why did I work so hard to hit and hold ~20mph, when I'm going to sit here for 60 seconds... But a Copenhagen "green wave", in which lights are synched so that people that follow a specific speed, say 15mph could travel the entire length without getting stopped at a light. Math can determine if 25mph stop and go is faster than 15mph continuous, but continuous is much easier.

So, we had a family BBQ yesterday at my sister's house in Brunswick, I was downtown, and was wondering, do I take the bus back home, join my wife, and then we drive to Brunswick, or checking Google Maps, hey, park&ride goes to Brunswick near her house. I had ZERO CASH on me yesterday, but credit card. So, I head down to the Tower City RTA customer service desk, and ask for a single-trip Park & Ride pass. They don't have such things, she said to use my existing RTA pass, and then insert a quarter to make up the difference. I have zero cash. I bought a 5-trip Park & Ride pass. I had been reading the website about fares, and county line, and $1 surcharge, but I wasn't sure what that meant. My understanding was that if I want to transfer from RTA park&ride to a Brunswick-Transit bus, then I pay that dollar to RTA to get an inter-agency-transfer-pass? Nope. To exit the bus, outside of Cuyahoga county, you pay a cash dollar to the fare box, to exit the bus. I have zero cash. I offerred to burn another trip on my 5-trip, but, fortunately, the driver let me off with a warning. Some thoughts from this. I can understand that it would be valuable for GCRTA and areas outside of Cuyahoga to buy-in to RTA. Brunswick for example, has a Tri-C campus, and is a continuation of sprawl along Pearl. However, the land use, I don't often go out to that next of the woods, but, as you radiate further out, those towns are trying to one-up each other with putting things further-and-further away from the curb. A Giant Eagle Market District was insanely far from the curb, with a christmas-black-friday-thanksgiving-easter-hurricane-sandy proof amount of parking in front of the building. However, near 82/Pearl, Strongsville is building a few buildings near the curb... Also, those towns don't have grid streets, but cul-de-sacs and windy developments for residential. So, outside of rush-hour, I'm not sure ridership you could attract. Its unwalkable, things are very far, non-dense, building set-backs, things aren't entirely on-the-way... Also, park&ride was incredibly fast... Tower City, I-71S to Strongsville Park&Ride at the turnpike, was 15-20ish minutes. The rider that sat next to me said that the bus has a very special trick for going downtown in the mornings to avoid the worst of traffic, and they do some non-intuitive looping to attack downtown from a different angle than the majority of traffic, isolating it from morning gridlock. The bus travelled many miles, but had many riders. But for the most part, many miles between people getting off. So: - Allow/encourage towns outside of Cuyahoga county to buy-in to RTA. Might want to have an RTA planner made available to towns, to advocate for "smart growth", as a consultant. If you make this change to your design, you'll have a non-fugly looking town AND, it will be walkable, and compatible to transit. - Come up with a non-paper auto-reloadable fare-card. So that I can set it to auto-refill, and never have to worry about these travel woes. Plastic, keep in wallet, tap-n-pay. - I should carry cash and a roll of quarters in my backpack At the office, we just got a new co-worker from France, and he looked at the RTA website, and the fares section says that a "smart card" is coming soon. I said, if I had a guess, that a section like that has been on the website since Y2K.

Cleveland Scene's Summer Fest (Taste of Summer) is this weekend in Flats East Bank. http://summer.clevescene.com/ I might stop by after work today, and then bring the whole family there on Saturday.

(Sorry to keep chiming in). Its easy to argue with fear, of services getting cut, fares going up, loss of jobs, failure to invest in the future. But, if some successful transit horizontally integrated expert were to throw up some figures, and perhaps even some ads of their own, then you'd get some mind share, and maybe a seat at the table. Such as, we're XYZ Corp, we run metros in these X cities, on average we've seen Y% cost reduction, and fleet MTBF decrease Z% with modern vehicles, and preventative maintenance. We have super track replacement gizmo's that replace X ballasts per hour. Additionally we can optimize routes to increase frequency and coverage, increasing fairbox recovery rate. We then propose the following capital expenses to add routes A, B, C, and then extend lines D, E, F, which would forecast us to run at annual surpluses, allowing for more service expansion. Show something like that, or something like it, and you'll be hard pressed to argue against. Otherwise, your suggestion almost sounds analogous to leasing the turnpike. Yeah, it sounds good on paper in some dimensions (using 75 year concrete for a 75 year lease), but would the operator actually have your best interest in mind? Maybe another thing to mention, is that for some projects, you find yourself interacting with the consultants too much. If you just gave the project to the consultants, it would be their responsibility to do the whole thing more efficiently. I'm also half-tempted to say whichever group can produce plastic auto-reloadable tap&pay farecards should just win the bid, without further questions. I recall the DC Metro has lots of ads near government buildings from defense/aircraft multi-nationals. If you see the word Lockheed Martin enough times, you'll atleast consider our proposal.