Robuu

^^ There is also a contraflow lane on Jefferson now, connecting to the existing southbound lane on Warren and Brown. I haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but there may now be a complete connection northbound between UD and Downtown. The northbound route is straightforward, Brown>Warren>Jefferson, but the southbound route starting on St. Clair>Patterson is supposed to use Stone to cut over to Jefferson. I don't think Patterson (south of 5th) has its lane yet. Stone has what appears to be the start of a buffered bike lane, but it currently just looks like there are two car lanes separated by a solid white line on the north (westbound) side of the road. This connection should greatly increase the utility of both the Jefferson/St. Clair pair of downtown bike lanes, and the Brown Street lanes. It will be interesting to see how usage of the lanes is affected, although there have been technical problems counting bikes on Brown Street.

Too late now, but for coffee I like Iris Book Cafe on Main in OTR. They have a great patio. Maybe not the best when it's hot and muggy.

Anybody up for Chipotle? We can have Jeni's for dessert.

I think that's what ryanlammi[/member] was saying.

I was in Cleveland recently, and the lack of anything but coin operated meters was surprising.

^ Off topic, but care to share where your bike was and how it was locked up when it was stolen? I don't suppose cyclists are the target audience of these scooters, but having them on the roads will help cyclists by getting drivers to look out more for smaller vehicles.

Indy at least has daily service (not to mention the timing, while not ideal, is much better than for Cincy). St. Louis has several trains to Chicago daily, with incremental speed upgrades coming every few years. St. Louis is almost exactly the same distance from Chicago as Cincinnati, and doesn't have an Indy-sized city/metro between.

Are you really not allowed on the Purple People Bridge with an electric motor?

I've been pondering why there is suddenly a push to move back to two-year council terms, and I think I've figured it out. In an at-large election of 9 councilmembers, conservatives rely on a small pool of candidates squeaking into the bottom half of the top-9 vote-getters. They are afraid that if council doesn't go back to two-year terms, the four-year terms will become staggered. That bottom half then disappears, as only 4 or 5 candidates run each election. Thus their political influence dries up. For example, in the last election, Smitherman was the highest vote-getting conservative, coming in 5th place. Murray and Pastor came in 8th and 9th.

Transit has been on the ballot twice in the past decade (streetcar initiatives) and transit won both times. Eh. I agree that SORTA has dropped the ball on articulating their plan, but I'm not sure a lot more time would make a big difference. The biggest question is if people are going to listen to the misinfo peddlers, who would just be louder over a longer time period. People have been hearing over and over that big companies don't want to move here because the transit system is insufficient, that businesses have been choosing to locate in OTR and CBD due to the streetcar, and a near infinite amount of data showing why transit is beneficial during the decade-long streetcar fight. If they're not educated by now, they're not going to be educated until it dawns on them that there is an existing transit service that is useful to them. Which won't happen without better & expanded service.

Urban Artifact used to have a terrible interior, but they've done a great job in the past year or so of making it an inviting space. And they brew the best beer in the state! Cleveland has a lot of well-located urban breweries, including of course Great Lakes, which anchored Ohio City years before the neighborhood's renaissance.

I would like to see them tastefully build around the fountain at Clifton & Ludlow. IMO, that corner could use something more to activate it. Since it's an arts center, they could make the fountain plaza in front of their building something of a canvas for artwork. Make a story-high tunnel through the building to connect to the path into the park; make the arts center a gateway.

Cleveland may have (marginally) wider downtown streets than Cincinnati, but I disagree that the feel is worse. For example, Cleveland's "Main Street", Euclid Avenue, is probably as wide as Vine St. in Cincinnati, but the feel is worlds different. There is a dedicated bus lane in each direction and one through travel lane. Traffic moves very slowly and the sidewalks are wide, encouraging pedestrian activity. Even a "highway feeder" like East 9th St., which is wider than Vine St. by one lane feels less like a highway due to having 2 through lanes in each direction plus parking. The one way streets encourage people to drive faster and make the street feel less pedestrian friendly in my opinion. Also, Cleveland has nothing like Central Parkway downtown. The closest thing would be Superior Ave. in terms of width (although it's not nearly as wide), but again, Superior has been cut down to one through lane, a dedicated bus lane, and a median. I just took rough curb-to-curb measurements of Euclid and Vine, using Google Earth's ruler tool. Euclid measured about 70', Vine about 50'.

It's crazy how many abandoned housing units there are in the city, but people need to set up camp in the streets.

Woo boy. 19 runs, that's insane!

Well yeah, who wants that KY stuff? But anyway...the word. It's there! In Dayton! Mettwurst!

Y'know, I can't think of anywhere specific, and I might just be imagining I have seen them in Dayton stores since I've seen them at Carillon. I usually just get them from butchers in Cincy. The Germanfest Picnic website says they will have metts: http://www.daytongermanclub.org/?q=german-picnic Ok, I just spent too long searching the internet for butchers and such in Dayton that have them. This is such a weird phenomenon, because people who know what they are (mostly native Cincinnatians, I guess) think it is a typical German style of sausage, like Bratwurst, that you could find in a lot of different places, if not virtually everywhere. But even just up the road in Dayton there is hardly a trace of them. Spotted at Wayne Ave. Kroger

I hope Mt. Adams finds a niche to fill to remain a destination, or it may be at risk of developing a "gated community" vibe.

They can resist for a while. But the market cannot be resisted forever. Of course, they can try to exit or change the stage of the market (outsourcing, shipping jobs overseas), but that's getting harder than people think simply because emerging markets also aren't as cheap as they used to be. China, in particular, is nowhere near as cheap a place to do business as it used to be. In some cases, they can also try to leverage their sob stories into tax-payer subsidies.

Looks like Cleveland's lead in eds & meds (as stated above, this really means meds here) is similar to Columbus's in government. Cincy doesn't have a lead that wide in anything, with its biggest lead being leisure/hospitality. Which is pretty interesting (at least to me, it's not expected like the other two); I guess it indicates Cincy has a bigger tourism industry.

Fake news, Jake. Google Streetview spotted you taking a break right at the river crossing. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.7069359,-83.9983598,2a,39.1y,294.03h,84.5t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPMdnTvSMVVKtQz_GEPwRXw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

3Cesus, forgive troeros[/member] , for he knows not what he does.

^^ The really ingenious thing about Dutch streets, at least in city centers, is that fietspaden have an absurd amount of capacity for how little space they take up. Parking becomes an issue, which you don't get with transit, but supplying bike parking is a lot cheaper than greatly increasing transit service.

Because that's not what's done in countries that actually have decent cycling mode share. That's a deprecated bandaid non-solution. Look at places that have figured this out and have people of all ages and abilities riding. Narrow streets like you find in OTR with permanent street parking and low traffic volume (most east-west streets) can be tamed such that cycling within the roadway is comfortable enough. https://goo.gl/maps/zqJVKmyd7bs Somewhat wider version: https://goo.gl/maps/AoDNK2ykxmS2 Somewhat larger north-south streets start needing separate physical infrastructure. There's too much traffic to just say "ride in the street" but the sidewalks are also too busy and cluttered with poles and trees and such. This could easily be Walnut Street https://goo.gl/maps/uYy1CBA72F52 Race/Elm: https://goo.gl/maps/PgzNfWe1CN62 Even downtown could have something like this: https://goo.gl/maps/94KhKyVrfkF2 The "/s" was intended to denote sarcasm. BTW, I used to live in Oud-Zuid, Amsterdam near your Ferdinand Bolstraat and Tweede Jan Steenstraat examples.

Meh, just widen the sidewalks by a foot and call them multi-use paths. Done and done! /s