dastler

I like the new design better, but this one did have a certain allure to me... Real super villain vibes that could fit in on https://old.reddit.com/r/evilbuildings/ I would've been perfectly happy if this version had been built.

Still grinds my gears that Cleveland could've been a leader in the US in this space. I wonder what kind of legs the project would've had if it started its proposal with Bibb at the helm. Seems like there was too much negative momentum by the time he got into office.

Following up on this, I personally don't think that we should be mandating reduced density anywhere. If market forces want to build higher density then let them. The other side of the coin is that public investment in infrastructure to support low density uses is ridiculously lop-sided. Strong towns has a bunch of articles about it, this is a very old one that highlights the problem: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/3/29/the-density-question I'm very nervous about the cost of maintaining this nation's infrastructure in my lifetime. I really think we need to get back towards higher densities pretty much everywhere, and then have those in low density locations get back providing their own off-grid utilities.

There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. I think the key here is that collecting this data takes time ($$$). The only current way around the money part would be to get volunteers to gather the information. The best option is really to install parking meters that charge 24/7 and then we could just pull the data. Even better, if meters are installed we could do something like San Francisco and use the data to dynamically adjust parking costs based on demand https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/drive-park/demand-responsive-pricing/learn-more-about-demand-responsive-parking In the end, I'd argue that even with perfect data it doesn't really matter. If you're a business owner, does it really matter how many spaces are empty/used? What you really care about is if your bottom line will be affected by a reduction in parking spaces. As I've posted elsewhere, I'm not aware of a single study ever conducted showing adding bike lanes reduces business revenue. Residents nearby are typically most worried about losing "their" parking spaces in front of their houses. But again, the current empty/used spaces doesn't tell you what will happen with a reduction. Pretty much the only people that should "care" about the current number of empty/used spaces are those driving and parking there. In my opinion, they shouldn't have a say in the matter anyway because they're not the ones living or operating a business nearby.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:va6c2:f5b04cd9-a535-4d5b-8b98-0ef142b5e5e3

In order to not take this off topic I replied here. Short story is that bike lanes have been shown all over the world to either be net neutral or positive for businesses nearby. https://urbanohio.com/topic/2463-cleveland-akron-bicycling-developments-and-news/?do=findComment&comment=1138857

Below are copies of what I sent my block club regardig bike lanes: For those wanting economic benefits and concerned about business, here's an article from Bloomberg detailing 12 case studies in cities around the world showing that bike infrastructure has minimal to improved economic benefits to businesses located nearby. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-study-ever-conducted-on-the-impact-converting-street-parking-into-bike-lanes-has-on-businesses There's another angle that most people don't consider, the cost of maintaining bike infrastructure is significantly lower than maintaining roads for cars. Roads are shockingly, disgustingly expensive. The 2023 report by the DOT to Congress detailing the status of the nations's highways, bridges and transit includes a cost breakdown for resurfacing, re-building, and adding capacity to roadways by type of road and relative density of the area (rural vs. urban). You can see the cost breakdown on page A-8 of the report here: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/24cpr/pdf/AppendixA.pdf. Cleveland metro is considered a major urbanized area since we have a population >1M. The costs are in 2016 dollars for some reason, so you have to inflate them by 1.29 to get to 2023 dollars. Lorain Road is a principal arterial road, so we can expect repaving to cost about $960,000 per lane mile! That cost can be expected anywhere from every 5-15 years depending on location. The proposed project from w65th to w20th is ~1.75 miles long, and it would reduce the number of car lanes from 4 to 3. That means the city can expect to save ~1.5 Million dollars in resurfacing costs every 10 years or so from just this small pilot project (subtracting out a bit b/c bike lanes also need upkeep, albeit significantly less because lightweight bikes don't damage surfaces like heavy cars/trucks). You can look at Cleveland's 2023 budget book here: https://www.clevelandohio.gov/sites/clevelandohio/files/finance-docs/2023BudgetBook.pdf. From 2022-2025 we're expected to spend $106 million in capital expenditures for our roads and bridges. I can't find a good estimate for the miles of roads there are in Cleveland, but it looks to be somewhere between 842-3,780 miles. If we estimate it at 2,300 miles, assume two lanes per road, and use the cheapest resurfacing cost of local roads at $612,000 per lane mile, we can estimate that keeping our roads maintained on their 10 year service life will cost ~$281 Million per year! We're obviously falling very short of that. We should be reducing the number of lanes and adding bicycle infrastructure anywhere we can just from a maintenance cost perspective! Ignoring the anecdotal persuasive arguments, the data is clear that bike infrastructure is at worst net neutral for businesses and also cheaper to the taxpayers from a maintenance perspective. That's before you take into account the numerous studies showing that bicycles are better from a public health, economic mobility, and traffic congestion standpoint. And here's a response to "Cleveland doesn't have the population density to support biking" argument that many have: If you're concerned the size of the city has any bearing on the results here's tons more: https://nitc.trec.pdx.edu/research/project/1161 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2021.1912849 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8tOk7_upXv5djhCajg1Z0I3bmhTVTIxWldwRzA0YjJWNW9R/view?usp=sharing https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23334767/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9211442/#:~:text=Considering all infrastructure as one,narrower of two definitions Indianapolis: 2,454/sq mi Memphis:2,131/sq mi Minneapolis: 7962/sq mi Seattle: 8,775/sq mi Toronto: 11,468/sq mi Calgary: 4,124/sq mi Oakland: 7,787/sq mi Austin: 3,006/sq mi Chicago: 12,000/sq mi DC: 11,535/sq mi Davis: 6,703/sq mi Denver: 4,674/sq mi Vancouver: 13,590/sq mi Victoria: 11,410/sq mi Salt Lake City: 1,797/sq mi New Orleans: 2,267/sq mi Atlanta: 3,685/sq mi I'm sure that there are plenty of others out there. Akron and Columbus have made plenty of investments in bike infrastructure recently. Detroit is very similar in density to Cleveland and has also seen tons of success with their bike lanes (I couldn't find a good primary source for hard data). Ferndale and Ann arbor are also similar in density to cleveland and noted as other good examples of bike infrastructure. And, if we want to argue semantics... Ohio city has a population density of 7,890/sq mi per Ohio city inc: https://www.ohiocity.org/sites/default/files/Ohio City Neighborhood Profile_0.pdf

https://www.cleveland.com/community/2024/01/tired-of-house-on-top-of-house-developments-olmsted-falls-city-council-examining-housing-density.html?outputType=amp Lol , you've gotta be kidding me. Olmsted Falls city council is concerned the city is becoming overdeveloped and too dense. They're proposing reducing the maximum units per acre from 7 down to 5 🙄

Yep, this is basically the exact same setup. Tbh, I wonder if a better approach to gathering public comments would be to mail everyone in the nearby block clubs a simple pre-paid postcard with an "approve" and "disapprove" checkbox with some lines for comments. I feel like you would get a much more representative sample than hosting public meetings since you're only getting the most vocal people to attend those. It can't be that expensive either... There's only ~5,000 households in Ohio city. Even at $1/household (which I think is likely too much) that's only $5k for a project that's estimated to cost ~$30M.

I attended in person and it was a very strange event. There was a sign-in sheet, comment cards, and then a bunch of easels set up with small subsections of the overall plan blown up. A couple easels had project designers there to answer questions, but only maybe 10% of the easels had anyone there that could answer questions/field comments. I don't think any project representatives were identified with a nametag or anything, they were kinda just "there". Attendees were asked to write comments on sticky notes and then stick them directly on the plans. In another room there was a mockup on the floor taped out to show lane widths, but it wasn't really super well marked or clear what was going on. My unscientific read of the sticky notes was a pretty even 50/50 split between business owner/parking complaints, and pro-project comments. In general, I really despise that the public has so much say in the overall process (not specific to this project). It gives too much power to people who don't understand the city planning and research that is out there. I don't really have a solution though, since gathering public commentary is tied to acquiring funding. It's also important to have some public oversight into projects so that there isn't abuse of power, but I feel like significantly more often than not we end up with diluted products because of it. The only "good" solution is really for pro-development and well-informed people to get out in force and make themselves heard. It just requires a lot more effort to take an interest and learn than to show up and shout un-informed opinions.

Correct. This one is actually being proposed as elimination of one traffic lane (4->3) with the addition of a separated bike lane on the sidewalk. The NIMBY complaints were appeals to emotion claiming that bikers are going to run over your grandma walking to Juneberry, cars will be so backed up fire trucks won't be able to get out of the fire station, and that the loss of parking is going to kill any business on Lorain (and spill over cars to the side streets taking everyone's street parking). Luckily, a few people in our block group provided literally dozens of studies showing the economic (to businesses), health, economic mobility, traffic reducing, and road maintenance cost reduction improvements that bike lanes provide. Hopefully we got through to people outside of the vocal nimby who claims that none of the studies are relevant because none of them cover the exact population density Cleveland has (studies from cities too dense) or that the ones from smaller cities aren't applicable for silly xyz reason and that Cleveland shouldn't aspire to be like cities "beneath" us. Gah, makes my blood boil just typing that out.🤬

If this isn't on-topic enough for random developments feel free to delete mods. Cross-posting here for awareness:

There's an open house for the Lorain Ave midway project tomorrow 1/24/24 from 6-8pm at Urban Community School: https://www.clevelandmidway.com/events I wasn't originally planning to attend, but some very vocal negative comments from a certain NIMBY in my block club has pissed me off enough to go and voice my approval of the project. It would be great to get more supporting people there in person to drown out the negative nancys.

Pretty sure that stalled because of Scott Wolstein's passing.

Fitting, since Michael's Genuine was intended to only serve pizza to begin with.