Everything posted by acd
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Cleveland: Downtown: Huntington Bank Field
Not completely Browns’ stadium related, but this was posted by Berea’s mayor on Facebook. Seems to confirm @KJP’s earlier reporting about a Browns mixed-use development in Berea.
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Electric Cars
Energy density is also overrated. Renewables and batteries are easy to locate in a distributed way, which is also better for the grid than fewer large power plants. The problem with fossil fuels is that they burn up, pollute the atmosphere, and warm the planet when they're used. Then you have to continue extracting more. Lithium can be used over and over again, then recycled almost completely. In an ideal state, we'll extract almost all the critical materials we need, then have a circular economy of reusing recycled materials instead of constantly extracting more. Continuing to use fossil fuels is a non-starter; we can't keep using fossil fuels in an easy-to-decarbonize segment that can't easily incorporate carbon capture. As @Foraker and @Boomerang_Brian mentioned, there are plenty of efforts in progress to eliminate the most environmentally harmful materials from batteries (LiFePO4 eliminates Cobalt, Na ion eliminates Lithium, Iron-air eliminates both), particularly from applications where energy density is not as important. And I don't want to sound like converting to EV's is a grand solution. We certainly can't act like the problem's solved and justify driving longer distances with bigger and faster cars. The ultimate goal needs to be vehicles as more of a last-mile or occasional solution with electrified rail, buses, biking, and walking as primary modes. I just don't think there's time to get those modes to the level they need to be by the time fossil fuels need to be mostly phased out.
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Electric Cars
Resource through-put is not the same as embodied energy. The embodied energy would be the amount of energy used to get through the 40,000 lbs to get the necessary materials to make the laptop. I'd imagine machinery can move 40,000 lbs pretty efficiently, and I'd assume the number 40,000 pounds gets thrown out there because it sounds big. I'm unconvinced that net energy matters. Solar panels return 14-27 times the energy invested in making, mounting, and recycling them (https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2019/04/09/good-news-rooftot-home-batteries/) and I'm supposed to believe that is worse than getting 100 times the energy from oil that is put into extracting it (where did this number come from by the way?)? As the grid gets cleaner and extraction technologies are electrified, we'll be increasingly using carbon-free energy to produce more carbon-free energy with a downward-trending price per unit energy (because wind and solar are both on long-term learning curves). I think the essentially unlimited quantity of the energy resource (compared the fossil fuels) and the constantly improving economics of manufacturing more solar and wind kind of decouple renewable energy from the conventional thinking on energy extraction.
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Electric Cars
I'm not sure I follow the importance of net energy when talking about renewable energy. There is plenty of energy resource available with the sun, wind, geothermal, etc. and it's far more important to avoid burning fossil fuels than to maximize energy returned per energy used. Energy consumption per household has dropped from over 100 million BTU per household per year to under 80 million BTU per household per year in the last 30 years (It took some digging through here to find that info: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/index.php?view=consumption). I don't believe any of that data includes vehicle energy, which I believe is relatively constant, with increases in VMT and vehicle size cancelled out by an increase in fuel efficiency. But it does include all household energy, which is lost in looking at just electrical usage. Electrification will further bring down usage per household because electrical technologies are inherently more efficient. heat pump heating/cooling, water heating, and clothes washing are all much more efficient than their gas and electrical resistance counterparts, just like electric vehicles are much more energy efficient than gasoline vehicles. So transitions to those technologies will have massive benefits before even taking into account a transition to cleaner electricity. I totally agree with your opposition to the American car culture at the expense of mass transportation, and we definitely need to start producing smaller, lighter cars and driving less overall, but I just don't agree with what you're saying about energy on the whole.
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Cleveland: Flats Developments (Non-Stonebridge or FEB)
I agree with you actually, I basically always prefer more parkspace. Though in this case, even just having the waterfront trail would be fine with me. Thanks for finding that article, I knew I remembered them requesting proposals for part of one of their purchases. That's why I was thinking they'd offload some of this property as well.
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Cleveland: Flats Developments (Non-Stonebridge or FEB)
I'm guessing this is entirely about the boardwalk, and that the Metroparks will sell any leftover land once it's completed. None of the long-term planning (like Vision for the Valley, which Metroparks was part of) calls for basically the entire peninsula to be a park. If that's what the Metroparks is doing, I think it's great because they won't have to depend on other property owners granting them access to build the boardwalk, and once the boardwalk is in place, the area should be so much more desirable that it'll attract some decent development.
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Cleveland: General Business & Economic News
SpaceX does do a lot of work with NASA, including at NASA Glenn. Not sure why Elon would need to personally be a part of any of that though, especially for multiple days.
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Greater Cleveland RTA News & Discussion
This seems like a good spot to try something like this. Brookpark Station is relatively close to a lot of employment, but really not walkable (and probably not bikeable) to any of it, except maybe the Ford plant. Then again, a typical bus that stops at the large employers might be able to accomplish the same thing more efficiently.
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Cleveland SC Soccer Stadium
If there are going to be two new stadiums, I think it would be cool to co-locate them at least. Then you wouldn't have to duplicate parking, and any new transit infrastructure would get more consistent use. It could also be useful for the Browns to have a close-by smaller venue for ancillary events if they were to ever host a super bowl, draft, combine, final four, etc. I'd imagine this ship has already sailed though if they're planning to have a downtown stadium ready by 2026 for the NWSL. There wouldn't be much time left to coordinate with the Haslams.
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Electric Cars
My thoughts exactly on I-71 and West Virginia. I was thinking of traveling from Cleveland to Cincinnati in a few weeks and was surprised how little charging was available between Cincinnati and Columbus on I-71. West Virginia likewise ruins traveling anywhere South in my EV. Maybe the new charger south of Cambridge on I-77 will help a bit, but I think getting NACS compatibility in my Mach-E next year will be the quickest solution to traveling through or to WV.
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Electric Cars
Switching to lithium from fossil fuels does reduce the total amount of energy being used because EV's are so much more efficient than ICE cars. Even if the grid is entirely coal-powered, there's a ~30% energy savings. There's also a huge mining savings because the mining to produce fossil fuels is endless, as the product is constantly being burned up, while lithium can be recycled and its batteries recharged (ie you're not injecting new lithium every refuel like you are with gasoline). There's also more than just research into alternatives. BYD (Chinese EV maker) is coming out with the Seagull model this year, which is available with Sodium Ion batteries. There are excellent alternatives to Cobalt already. LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) is very popular now, uses no Cobalt, and has no risk of thermal runaway. Form Energy is building a plant to manufacture Iron-air batteries for grid storage, which would greatly reduce demand for lithium in these applications.
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Companies Expanding Operations to NE Ohio
Ohio State has 10 times as many students as Case and a similar or better reputation, especially in engineering (which I assume Amazon, Intel, and Google would draw from the most). I think the quantity of students available nearby is undoubtedly a factor in locating in Columbus vs. Cleveland and larger scale examples like California vs. Ohio.
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Suburban Cleveland: Development and News
Quoting this 3 year old post for context on the development across from NASA in Fairview Park... I believe both the hotel and apartments are finally complete and open: The Orbit Hotel by Wyndham The Centaur Apartments
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Cleveland: Scranton Peninsula: Development and News
With how difficult it will be to resurrect a bridge here, it seems like the perfect opportunity to design the Scranton Peninsula as a car-light neighborhood. Assuming the Flats Industrial Railroad becomes a bike/pedestrian trail, the peninsula would have great car-free access all around the perimeter and right down the middle. It's pretty much guaranteed to be traffic constrained anyway by the capacity of Carter and Scranton. I'm not sure what best practices would be to make that happen, but I think it would be cool and unique to have such a large area actually tailored to people instead of cars.
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Rethinking Transport in the USA
You are incentivized to do that, but I'd assume it would be done so infrequently it's not worth worrying about. Is it even possible to register in a state you don't live in? As an EV owner, I'm already incentivized to register in a state with no $200 registration fee and it's never even crossed my mind. Also, I'd imagine that Ohio would not be the pioneering state on a per-mile fee, and there wouldn't be a ton of safe-haven states to register in by the time Ohio does it. A per-mile fee with adjustment based on GVWR seems like the fairest route and I agree it should be possible to do it simply and broken into monthly payments. I'd imagine the GVWR part will be a steep climb in Ohio and elsewhere if it's seen as punishing those with large trucks.
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Rethinking Transport in the USA
The current method is a flat increased registration fee of $200/year. Obviously a charge per mile is way better than that. If vehicle weight were taken into account, that would be even better.
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Ohio Solar Power Thread
I got solar in August last year. I highly recommend Solar United Neighbors if it's available in your county. They bid a large group of projects in a single county to interested installers to get better pricing for everyone. The solar installers just boil it down to a single price per Watt that anyone in the program pays, regardless of the size of the install. They can offer better pricing because the customer acquisition cost is so low. I have an EV and heat pump/electric resistance heating, plus my roof was space-limited to 7.6 kW, so my demand is highest in the winter, and even in the best months I don't generate a huge excess. May was actually my first month with excess production, so I'm not sure yet how FirstEnergy will handle net metering. I paid cash, and expect about an 11 year payback period. However, that number will go down if electric rates continue to increase as quickly as they have been. I also anticipate breakthroughs in bi-directional EV charging during the lifetime of my panels that would give me backup power (as long as I wouldn't have to drive my EV) and/or the ability to take advantage of time-of-use rates (which I also expect to come about during the lifetime of my panels), which are both value-added propositions that solar provides.
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Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
A little more info... From the Metroparks Board Meeting 11/18/21: It sounds like there needs to be some soil remediation done, from the 3/15/23 Metroparks Board Meeting:
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Cleveland: Campus District
I'm not very familiar with the JCC, so I can't comment on its loss, but I do like the reorientation of the roads that accompanies capping the overpass. The Cedar Ave overpass and Carnegie off-ramp are both removed. This makes the on-ramp intersection for Carnegie much less complicated and opens up a larger parcel with development potential across from the Wolstein Center. Removing the off-ramp to Carnegie opens up an even larger parcel between Carnegie and Cedar. Traffic at the South end of the overpass might become an issue with Cedar and Central so close to one another and a seemingly short ramp from 90, but overall I think it's an improvement.
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Cleveland: Lakefront Development and News
I agree with everything you said here. It could be more than a decade before the mouth of the harbor is a reasonable bridge location based on actual developments. I do think the Rock Hall is at least trying to draw people towards the water, and they'd probably say there's not a ton they can do about the walkway itself since they don't own it. If they're successful at making the space between the Rock Hall and Science Center more attractive with a more pleasant walk to the waterfront, I hope pedestrian traffic will follow. Definitely coordination and places to stop along the walk for food or drinks or whatever would be even better.
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Cleveland: Downtown: Huntington Bank Field
If the Browns are going to stay where they are and not add a roof (which sounds like it would be borderline impossible anyway), I hope they would consider some radical changes in their renovation to make the stadium more useful on non-game days. This article proposing a more community-integrated baseball stadium has stuck with me for a couple of years. Why couldn’t the Browns do something similar and open up the sides of the stadium and make the space available to the community in the warm-weather months? They’re already set up for food service and retail. Why not offer those things to this planned lakefront neighborhood year round?
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Cleveland: Lakefront Development and News
I actually like the idea of putting a ton of parking under the land bridge. I mean ideally there wouldn't be much of a parking component to this, but the reality is that there is going to be. The underside of the land bridge seems like one of the more unobtrusive options for this parking. Obviously, I don't want it to look terrible, but I do want to open up the surface lots for development and avoid construction of more visible garages.
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Walkable Communities
I love this idea. I tried playing around with it a bit, and it only works with very specific locations. I wanted to compare the walkshed of the current Amtrak Station with a hypothetical land bridge adjacent station (meaning you could walk directly onto Mall C instead of having to walk to E 9th or W 3rd). The closest location to Mall C I could find with a 15-minute walk radius was the Law Offices of Clayton E. Brelo, so I used that. As expected, it makes walking to Public Square, Tower City, RMFH etc. way easier. Plus, I think the map undersells how short this walking time would be since Google Maps isn't great at understanding the ability to walk across Public Square and through Tower City.
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Senator Sherrod Brown
I like Sherrod Brown and think he's right about what's going on here with China bypassing the tariffs, but Biden's right that removing the tariff suspension would decimate solar installations until the US can increase their production. I was in line to get solar installed last summer and the company doing it was basically in a holding pattern as the Auxin Solar complaint was handled, and they scrambled to source different panels. After Biden put the tariff pause in place, everything settled out and they were able to finally get the job done, but it was an industry-wide problem in the US. I'd just let the tariff pause ride out so installers have some time to line up new sourcing and domestic manufacturers ramp up production. I'd imagine Sherrod knows that's what's going to happen either way with the Biden veto and he's making sure to stick up for Ohio solar manufacturing.
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Cleveland-Akron: Bicycling Developments and News
@Ethan Here's basically an updated version of this map in the latest Metroparks board meeting agenda in light of the planning of the Garfield connector.