jonoh81

This is wishful thinking for what is now a turd of a project. How often does something like that actually happen? Parking lots are going to be there for decades minimum just like they always are.

Weren't there originally supposed to be 2 "cap-capable" bridges to the South Side? If so, this is a downgrade.

Who determines that 4 stories is unnecessary, anyway? In a housing shortage, if anything, 4 stories is unnecessarily short.

I'd do something like this: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1mEaaXVKRqUGpaFjPP46PeFwGKc7Pedo&usp=sharing I wouldn't make more changes Downtown, but there would be 6 stations in Franklinton instead of 3, 7 in Hilltop instead of 4, 4 in the Westland/Casino area instead of 2, and 5 in the far west instead of 4. So 25 stations instead of 17. Not all of them would be spaced within the best standards- we would need even more for that- but it's a lot better than what's being proposed.

I've never seen this before, so thanks for sharing. But oh boy... I think most of these stations are way too far apart. Urban area best-practices for BRT are for stations to be placed 450 meters, or 0.28 miles apart, with more suburban and low-density areas being 600-750 meters, or 0.37-0.47 miles apart. The space between Belle and Souder is almost 3/4th mile. This is in a high density neighborhood that will only get much more dense over time. Even light rail best practices is around 2-4 blocks, or up to a 1/2 mile. If the goal is to get as many people to use these lines as possible, you don't want to make people walk further to get to a station, especially during bad weather. Working from left to right, here would be the station distances in miles. 1. Rockbridge Crossing to Westwoods Blvd: 0.56 2. Westwoods Blvd to Sturbridge Rd: 0.58 3. Sturbridge Rd to Old Village Rd: 0.62 4. Old Village Rd to Georgesville Rd: 0.71 5. Georgesville Rd to Wilson Rd: 0.83 6. Wilson Rd to Westgate Ave: 0.62 7. Westgate Ave to Hague Ave: 0.49 8. Hague Ave to Eureka Ave: 0.45 9. Eureka Ave to Whitethorne Ave: 0.47 10. Whitethorne Ave to Central Ave: 0.99 11. Central Ave to Souder Ave: 0.85 12. Souder Ave to Belle St: 0.73 13. Belle St to High St: 0.44 14. High St to 4th St: 0.23 15. 4th St to Grant St: 0.28 16. Grant St to Long St: 0.40 So only 2 legs of the line would be within best practices in an urban area, and both are literally Downtown. The only other really acceptable one, IMO, is the Whitethorne to Central leg since there's not much between them anyway. But I don't think anyone can justify any of the longer legs in Hilltop and Franklinton than those all the way out by Westland High School. It makes zero sense. It's almost like those behind the project are intentionally underserving the areas that would be most likely to use the service. Also, there is no reason for the dedicated lanes to end at Wilson Road. They should be dedicated the entire way, especially when Broad is a stroad past this point. It would almost certainly slow down service in this section, thereby slowing down the entire line. It also impacts any prospects of TOD where it is most needed.

You could do a station at Belle Street and another one at Mill, which is just west of Gravtiy. Those locations are a bit more than 1/3rd of a mile apart. That would actually be within the recommended standard spacing for BRT stations.

For the record, Frank LaRose recently mentioned marijuana legalization as one of the motivators in the August special election amendment process change. Just another reason to vote no.

100% on both, but I make so many maps for the state at this point that I would be embarrassed if I didn't get that score.

I think this is overblown. Mexico wants tourists and foreigners because they want their dollars. The last time I went through immigration in Mexico City, they had actually installed a new automated process where Americans and Canadians could basically just scan their passports and automatically get the 180-day tourist visa. They didn't even have to actually talk to an immigration agent. The local neighborhood conflicts are entirely separate from the visa requirements, anyway. Mexican landlords in those neighborhoods are making a killing on rents, and the city is getting direct financial benefit from the influx. They're not going to go after that cash cow very hard, either locally or nationally. I know people who have been doing the 6-month visa thing for years. It's not illegal to stay for 6 months, leave and then come back for another 6 months. In fact, there's no limit on how many times someone can do that, so no one's breaking any immigration rules. It's "frowned upon", but only very lightly. That said, immigration officials do have discretion and could tell a person doing this that they can't return for at least a few months, but I haven't heard that this happens very often, especially to foreigners from richer nations.

I'm fine with a large footprint so long as it's architecturally interesting, which that example is definitely not. There's a way to do big.

So he's a fan of the Cure, I take it?

Just saw this. Finally a project that is maximizing its site potential by using a garage instead of surface lots. Probably could've gone another floor or 2, but a minor quibble when they have the building fronting Sunbury and are filling the whole lot.

Since I don't see an airport area thread... Does anyone know what this is?

All that said, here are some of my pics taken around the city over the years. 1. An alebrije. 2. The Popocatepetl volcano, though when it wasn't erupting. 3. Cuemanco canals. 4. Rooftop view. 5. Centro rooftop view. 6. Mercado Jamaica, one of my favorite markets. 7. Insurgentes Sur. 8. Avenida Reforma on a Sunday, when they close like 50KM of streets for bikes, running, etc. 9. Ajusco.

I think everyone loves like half a dozen specific neighborhoods that all the tourists visit. Roma, Condesa, Polanco, Centro and Coyoacan are at the top, with a scattered mix of Juarez, San Angel, Napoles, Del Valle, Escandon and Navarte. What's interesting right now is that, at least with the first 3, there is conflict brewing between tourists/"digital nomads" and local residents. The tourists and "expats" are renting out places on AirBnB for months at a time for relatively high rents for Mexico City, and it's creating tension with locals that are getting priced out. There are no rent controls in the city, and virtually no regulation of AirBnB, so landlords are charging thousands of dollars a month for rentals. Roma and Condesa, especially, are just full of American, Canadian, Australian, British and other European temporary residents. Correspondingly, there's been an explosion of "OMG, Mexico is so cheap!" and "OMG, this is Mexico?!" vlogs from foreigners on YouTube, and they're almost all filmed pretty much exclusively in the trifecta of Roma/Condesa/Polanco. The 2017 earthquake and the pandemic made things worse, since Roma and Condesa were some of the hardest hit by the earthquake, causing some locals to move out, emptying out more places that would later be turned into AirBnBs. And during the pandemic, Mexico was one of the only countries that had virtually no travel restrictions in place, and tourists flooded into the country and city to take advantage. Can't say I blame them, though. Perfect weather, amazing food, culture and history, nice people, cheaper prices than where they're coming from, I get it. Though I do recommend that anyone visiting NOT use AirBnB, or instead, rent places in other neighborhoods than the top ones mentioned. There are plenty of great areas that are not necessarily high on tourism lists, and you will likely save a lot of money staying elsewhere. The really cheap public transit makes traveling around pretty easy, anyway.

I feel like you drastically overestimate the profound insights of your posts. You were arguing masses of people were moving to ND for jobs despite its conservative politics. Factually, the growth was not impressive, either from a state or local level. Also, and maybe I'm wrong, but I would imagine that the political makeup of of people working in oil and gas are not particularly progressive. You'd get more than you get now, and that's the point. In a state that is now in decline, any policies that drive or keep people away are a problem. Disney specifically mentioned politics as a reason why they decided not to move forward, though. It could've been more than that, but politics absolutely played a role. And do we really need to go into the stupidity of a governor attacking one of its largest economic powerhouse corporations because they hate the LGBTQ community so much? Conservatism is the death of common sense.

I think my feelings on conservatives and their policies are well-established at this point. But regardless of who's in charge, the state legislature is responsible for passing an agenda that will actually solve problems, or in some way make Ohio tangibly better for its citizens. The GOP is spectacularly failing in this regard. Banning trans people from sports and bathrooms doesn't fix anything and doesn't make the state more attractive to anyone outside of trashy bigots. And there are states doing the trashy bigotry much "better", so Ohio won't even win on that front. So what is the GOP leadership in the state actually doing to improve Ohio? Whatever I think might be better under a more progressive legislature and party, the reality is that conservatives are firmly in control. So what are they doing? Punishing rape victims and attacking democracy aren't going to win over converts to the cause, and it's not going to improve the economic realities of the state. North Dakota gained about as many people in the past 30 years as Columbus gained just in the last decade. Its percentage growth rate was high only because the population was already one of the lowest in the country. It's not nearly as impressive as you seem to think it is. And with the gradual move away from fossil fuels, those jobs aren't going to last forever, and when they're gone, what is North Dakota going to be left with except oppressive conservatism and severe winters? Economic opportunities and tax rates only go so far when those conditions exist in many other places. When Disney announced they were going to build a billion-dollar HQ building in Orlando and move employees from California, many people just decided to quit because they didn't want to move to a more conservative state. And these were 6-figure jobs in what would have been a lower cost-of-living state. Luckily for those people, DeSantis' fascism helped kill that project, so no one has to move. The point is people have options, a lot of them. Given the choice, a lot of people don't want to live in a repressive, regressive environment, even if that sometimes means they have to pay a bit more. Ohio isn't offering anything that other states aren't, and the state legislature is doing absolutely nothing to help. You won't get LGBTQ people moving from Florida to Ohio, true, because both places are showing the same overt hostility to that demographic. But you will see LGBTQ people moving from Florida to places that aren't trying to legislate them out of existence. Unemployment rates are low, there are labor shortages everywhere. Finding a job is not that hard. If Ohio and Florida don't want these people, plenty of other places would be happy to have them.

Worthless both-sideism that is not based in any tangible reality or facts, meant to obfuscate and gaslight about actual harmful policies being passed by Republicans. Republicans, by the way, who have almost exclusively controlled the fortunes and direction of the state for the majority of those 50 years, especially in the last half. When should we expect Republican leadership to have any positive outcomes for Ohio? What things have actually gotten better in the state? What problems have been solved by the GOP? What accomplishments do they have aside from making murdering schoolchildren and wrecking the environment easier?

And yet Ohio's growth is now negative. How do these policies make the state more attractive? If the state legislature gave any thought whatsoever to attracting people, they would be trying to attract as many people as possible, not creating a hostile environment for women, minorities, and to anyone who values a functional democracy.

I mean I'm sure this is something conservatives want to believe, that their social crusades and growing anti-democratic fascism doesn't move the needle at all for anyone making regional or national moves, but the reality is not so simple. People do tend to move for practical reasons like the economy, schooling or family, but the base policies of a state can indeed affect the choices of people moving when there are 49 other states to choose from. Ohio doesn't have the weather, reputation, economics or amenities to be a regressive conservative hellscape without consequences.

Rhodes had nothing to do with the annexation policy. It was started under Sensenbrenner. Subsequent mayors just continued it for a while. The water for annexation was not just to add land due to the suburbanization trend, but also just a very practical reason. Columbus was having water shortages by the 1950s, so if suburban areas wanted water, they had to be annexed so that their population would pay city taxes and contribute to improving and expanding water infrastructure.

Industrial would be the worst outcome IMO.

It's not like OSU doesn't have like 700 parking lots on the East Side it can build on. It was a stupid move from the start.

I think extremism tends to be less about the base position, and more about implementation. For example, I don't on principle have any objection to fiscal responsibility, which used to be a fairly popular conservative position. However, extremism can enter the picture based on how fiscal responsibility is pushed, such as threatening the entire US and global economy based on not wanting to extend the debt ceiling. Another example would be how I'm not outright opposed to less big government, but again, the details matter. If that means deregulation to the point where corporations can dump as much pollution as they want into our air and water, I would call that extreme. Context and methods matter, and I find that the Right tends to automatically push the furthest they possibly can automatically on all issues regardless of the consequences.

Republicans are currently trying to legislate whether women can travel to other states for an abortion, so do they really believe that? Also, wasn't there just a debate about whether political policy affected state migration? Many Republicans were saying it does not.