mmaass

I personally think $1400-1500 is a lot of money, particularly for Virginia (even though Clarendon has a lot going on). Alexandria or East Falls Church might have places near the metro for much cheaper if you want to stay in Virginia. Rosslyn seems to be less expensive compared to other parts of Arlington; and I also want to say that Arlington has a good bus system, so you may have luck looking in an area not so close to a metro stop that would be cheaper. Have you considered rooming with other people to save money? There are a lot of people who find places on Craigslist and live with random roommates. As far as living in DC proper goes, it depends on what you really want. It has some great restaurants, really cool nighlife spots (much better than in VA in my opinion), and really interesting (older) neighborhoods. The commute would not be that bad. Taxes are quite a bit higher than in Virginia, and the place can seem poorly-run from time to time. However, you can find some safe, inexpensive areas to live in. I'm in Mt. Pleasant (by the zoo) which is quite safe, has really cheap rent (I pay $850 a month)--and I'm close to a lot of shops, restauants, and bars. My commute to work in Ballston is about 30-40 minutes door-to-door. Capitol Hill is another neighborhood in the District where you'd probably be able to find inexpensive rent.

Coxsackie, New York

How about Pickerington? It would be an easy commute, and the schools/marching bands are pretty well respected. Houses are not too expensive either.

I've only been to Juergens once before, but it was pretty good. It's actually a restaurant with a Konditerei attached. The woman who was working the pastry shop when I went (not sure if she was the owner) was very friendly... und auch Deutsche!

It's hard to speak coherently when all your words are being fed to you by Dick Cheney through an earpiece.

It seems good to me that COTA in its current state of management and operation won't have the opportunity to screw up the design of a rail system that should be done carefully. However, I think it would be too hasty to just scrap COTA. Sure it's not very good, especially for a city of Columbus's size, but I think it is a system that could be greatly improved if some thought were put into it, and it got new management controlling things. We've talked some on here before about simple changes that COTA could make to create a more user-friendly and effecient bus system. Here are some of my major ideas (keep in mind, I'm no transport engineer): - Revamp some of the routes. The principle times I take the bus are going up and down High Street, and It is ridiculous how many stops there are. Simply taking out stops that occur 1 or 2 blocks from other ones would speed the bus up a lot. I think it would also make it easier to display the routes in a cleaner and more-easily understood fashion. That way, shelters could be put up at most stops, and they would actaully function as real transit stops and not sidewalks with signs on them. - Use an honor system with tickets (and undercover ticket agents checking randomly), or force people to buy them off of the bus and present them to the driver upon entering. If everyone in line at each stop has to buy tickets, think of how many minutes that really holds things up. -Make a decent website with a good destination guide. People shoule be able to see the routes all positioned together so they can actually easily determine transfers. Riders should also be able to type in their origin and destination and easily find the best route and what times the bus will be coming. With Google Maps and other online maps, I really don't see why this would be that difficult. -Like others have said, include communities outside Franklin county in the bus system as more commuter-type busing with several leaving in the morning and coming home at night. -Work with major employers throughout the region (but esp. downtown) to encourage employees to ride the bus. Maybe even give advantages to employees who buy bus passes. One big problem is that COTA is not really interested in receiving input from the public or seeking help from the outside. Instead, they seem content with just chugging along at status quo, hoping for more money so that they can create a larger ineffecient transit system that doesn't reach its potential. I think an infusion of new key people with creative and open minds would go a long way to improving COTA and attracting ridership.

Can't they just renovate the original bridges, or are they beyond repair? I would think it would still be just as nice (or better) to have 1920s bridges.

I went to the city hop on Saturday-- it was pretty cool to see all the projects going on. Buggyworks was one of my favorites. If I remember right, phase one is done (the left side of the "alley"), and only 3 units need to be sold as far as the residences-- I don't know about the live-work stuff on the ground floor. Phase two is the building on the other side of the alley which will have a row of shops with offices above and then two floors of lofts/condos at the top. I didn't see the rendering for the tower, but I did see a map. It showed a space for "tower/parking" somewhere closer to the arena district from the rest of the project. It didn't show how tall it would be or whether it would be on top of a garage. Pretty good project though, and the developer was really nice.

Nice to meet some people on here Had an enjoyable time-- thanks!

Well I guess it would create a 24-hour downtown :roll:

The Columbus DDC has posted a March 2006 progress report. http://www.downtowncolumbus.com/publications/ProgressReport2006-03.pdf Just a recap of info already posted, but there is a story about consolidating city departments into the old deaf school building.

This is an interesting problem to look at. In even some of the most sprawed areas, if only dedicated sidewalks AND bike paths were added, it would open up so many mobility options for people to get around without their cars. In Pickerington, if there were sidewalks and bike paths that were smartly connected to my housing pod, I could have access to the main street of stores and restaurants with a 5 minute bike ride (probably 1 or 2 minutes longer than in the car). I think another problem as far as people like these students getting struck by cars is that drivers outside of major urban areas are not use to encountering people walking (because it is so unfeasible in many areas). I think they need to beef up drivers education and laws to make it clear that you need to slow down and/or move to the left for pedistrians and bikes.

This means that downtown will have really good public transit coverage. Many case cities have shown that light rail/streetcars/other fixed route public transit attracts a different type of rider and is more successful than regular buses. Do you know if there is any evidence to show that by getting more people to use public transit with streetcars, it would eventually increase peoples' willingness to take the bus in other places?

Well you can't just expect your dear old town to stay very rural and country-like when you encourage all these businesses to come. These suburbs see businesses and big office parks/HQs as a way to get a boost in tax revenue. But do they not think that a whole lot of other people are not going to want to move there too to be near jobs and businesses? You can't live in your sparsly-populated pastoral paradise and still expect to be close to everything at the same time and have no traffic. And if it is that way, it won't last for long-- you can't have your cake and it too, and I wish more people would understand that. IMO, if everyone were made to choose between living in a rural setting and being close to shops; restaurants;and work, I think people would rather be close to things.

If you'd like a dorky friend at South Carolina, you can add me... Search for "Matt Maass"

Brewmaster-- Thanks for the info. It'll be good to see a reconnection to the East Side with a cap on Long St. Do you know what they are planning to do with the 3rd/4th street looparound area?

When I saw that church, it reminded me a lot of the house in Beetle Juice :-D I'm sure there are tons of buildings like it New England. http://minadream.com/timburton/images/Beetlejuice/Pic1.jpg

Once the downtown area picks up enough people, I could see City Center being the destination for downtown residents to do chain store/"medium" box shopping. By this I mean some non-mall typically suburban stores that could be redone into an urban setup. Because of logistics, the City Center could handle larger stores getting larger deliveries that other parts of downtown couldn't (and wouldn't) want to accommodate. If they put in the right mix of stores, I could see it not hurting the smaller shops (not sure about this). Just no Wal-Marts please!! The center wouldn't be a destination for suburbanites, but with enough local customers it wouldn't have to be. They could build apartments above the mall to add more density. With a little different situation, they built a mall with apartments and student housing into old gas holding tanks in Vienna, Austria. Just an example of the creative things you can do with old or outdated space. Here is the website (sorry, many parts are in German): http://www.wiener-gasometer.at/en/ Another idea for the mall could be offices mixed in. In fact, it could be somewhat like the plans for the Lazarus building. Instead, they could make it into a small office/small business incubator for entrepreneurs who would like to open offices downtown but couldn't afford space in some of the highrises. If some of the businesses really took off, then they would be more likely to stay downtown and expand. The space could combine this small office idea with apartments/condos for a unique live-work arrangement. Whatever they decide on, I do agree that it sould be given a face lift and/or be split into smaller sections. Right now it is very ugly! Especially that part on High Street with the grassy knoll in front of it that has the painted skyline picture.

This has been a great year for a lot of new stuff in Columbus-- I've never been more excited to move back! I think it would really do a lot to add more than just the 10,000 residents they want to have by 2012 with all the new housing this would spawn. While this would probably make the project more expensive than would be feasible, it would be neat to see our streetcar system be different than other cities'. We could run the system on arches like it used to and really live up to our arch-city nickname. I think it would be cool to see double-decker streetcars like some of the ones we used to have: http://www.porterwright.com/history/images/p11.streetcar.gif This would probably be more expensive (if any company currently make these). It might be better for traffic flow though because of shorter trains which wouldnt clog up intersections when turning as much. This might actaully be good for COTA too. They will be able to expand their service to underutilized areas, and it should free up more buses that won't have to be going down high street. We'll see though.

Wow. Maybe threats of taking the agency to court will make ODOT realize that they are actually accountable to the communities which they work for! After looking on the website about the proposals though, I can kind of see where ODOT is coming from. A really wide boulevard sounds nice, but not for pedestrians. It would be okay if they would place shops along the points of the boulevard where high, 3rd, and 4th streets cross (maybe with little vendor stands in the median?). Then it wouldn't seem like a huge barrier to cross going from German village to downtown, vice versa. But if the boulevard is rejected, it does sound like ODOT is really considering caps along those points anyway. The project doesn't seem so bad in that case. As far as worrying about all the people flooding the local streets during construction, I don't see their point (though I am not a transportation expert :-)). Why can't they detour poeple to Columbus's moat (I-270) and possibly onto I-670. Otherwise, drivers would be going downtown or nearby and would need to be on those streets or nearby ones anyway.

Well of course, our method of funding schools was ALREADY found to be unconstitutional and illegal, but I haven't ever really seen the legislature or the school board take initiative on that one. Maybe they should put more effort into worrying about that!!!! :x

If COTA just implemented a few simple and (seemingly) inexpensive measures, I think they could easily improve their ridership, and as a result, greater support for light rail. First of all their website is terrible. It does show maps of the different routes, but just individually. It's hard to really see how the routes all fit together into the street grid and with one another unless you know the area really well. You would think that the trip planner would help out, but it is not very good either. Maybe it could be enhanced with a visual map where you could click on departure and destination points. Otherwise it might just spit out that there are no connections possible at the time you requested, and you really don't know how to modify your search to make it work. I think if they polished up the website, made it easier to use, and encouraged people to check it out in order to plan their commutes and errands, more people would at least try to use the bus. As far as the buses are considered, why don't they have a recording announcing the stop coming up next along with a screen showing the name? I'll admit, I don't ride the bus very often at all, but only once has the driver yelled out the stop names coming up. Every other time, I just had to look out the window and figure out where to get off by recognizing the things around me. I understand the routes are pretty familiar to regular bus users, but how does COTA plan to attract new riders with a system like this. It is too user-unfriendly for new riders or riders simply going to another part of town they haven't been to before. I really do think that there is a definite "learning curve" in trying to figure out the transportation system of a city. That's why I think it should be one of COTAs goals in trying to make the system as easy to figure out and utilize as they possibly can. Otherwise, most people (who have cars) will figure it's not worth the time to try and learn how they could get around with COTA.

Great to see this-- That's a lot of parking! I wonder when more companies are going to start waking up to the trends. If they don't have offices in or near vibrant, liveable downtown/mixed use areas, then they will have a very hard time attracting young and talented workers. This is the especially the case when the baby boomers retire en masse and the rest of us have a lot of bargaining power with employers. I think several of the other biggies in Columbus help out by participating on development councils and sponsoring events and attractions around the city, but are there any other companies actively doing things like Nationwide is? I'm sure being in the insurance industry gives them more of the ability to do things like this(lots of free funds availiable to invest in different areas), but I don't see why other companies couldn't get involved.

This is a good site-- the places are listed by district and you can get a feel where the places all are in relation to downtown and the rest of the city. It's a bit more biased towards newer places and condos, but I think there are some apartments on there too. Good luck, and have fun searching! www.columbusretrometro.com

It'll be great to see what this all looks like when it's finished! Hopefully more development will be encouraged by the success of this project. As far as the Ohio Hub plan goes, where are they proposing for the trains to stop in Columbus?