GCrites

The PRT is soooooooo totally rad to the max. Also jealous of Morgantown's ridiculously cheap water bills. When I lived in Huntington, the local water works sent out a letter comparing the average water bill in various WV cities as a part of their disclosure that they were raising rates. Morgantown's average was $7.35 (2005). When I was living in Bexley and paying $80/mo for water I was raging with envy.

I say Cleveland itself is doing fine in relation to other cities in the region and the economy overall. People from other parts of the state seem to associate problems in say, Salem (who had American Standard and Elijer shut down) with Cleveland, while not confusing Chillicothe's problems with Columbus'. I have no idea why; perhaps NEO is a blur to them since there's so many smaller cities very close together up there.

^I figure that's the consensus around here. Hopefully my rant will at least leave you with something to say to people who think all urbanites want to cram everyone in like sardines.

Not necessarily true. If people really want to live in a condo tower, that's fine. But building a ton of them and telling people to live there doesn't work. First of all, they're not very successful living arrangements as far as quality of life for most. In a place like NYC they work because of high property values, topographic restrictions and the biggest factor: the fact that NYC is a very exciting place with lots to do every day of the week. There's only one New York; if there were New Yorks all over the country, none would be special. Overall, though, condos towers for everyone is way too Soviet. We found that out very quickly in this country. Towers for the poor went up in the '60s and were obliterated by the '80s simply because they are unpleasant for most. It took Europe a little longer to figure this out (perhaps because groups besides just the impoverished populated them) , but now they too are rapidly demolishing those. The most pleasant development patterns are the ones that were devised before someone had the bright idea to change everything in the 1900s. Good development is the kind that we have been mastering for thousands of years, not some wacky Marxist tower farm, suburban production homebuilder's wet dream or some opportunist looking to make $10 billion off of two acres of land.

Part of that is the fact that cities were so dirty and poorly maintained at that time. Those filthy tenements on The Honeymooners were representative of what a lot of the nation's middle class housing consisted. Other factors include racism and even homophobia ("I'm standing close to another guy. People might think I'm gay.")

^ I've noticed that discussions of Sears as a retail store generally tend to head in this direction. People have strong opinions about them; it's certainly a love/hate kind of place.

They would have to have been pretty ham-fisted to mess up a routine repair badly enough to blow up a Subaru boxer engine. Those little guys are tough. Having alternator or A/C compressor bearings go away and lock up can freak people out since they make the engine work really hard and cause all that belt smoke and stink.

^ Bet that thing's won a demo derby or two by now.

Bbbbbut I saw an episode of Coach one time where the team got stuck in a snowdrift on a train because Luther wanted to save money on travel costs. They had to come get the team with helicopters so that they wouldn't miss the game. </anti-railhitman>

^I think they repeat that to themselves when they wake up in the morning and before bed.

Just a clarification about farming -- most farmers get heating oil delivered to big tanks at their farms which is just diesel without highway taxes and a different color of dye. They can even use it in their semis and pickups if they have farm tags. You have to watch out though, guys in semis will pull up in the middle of the night and try to steal it.

You don't really have to censor the word "punk", MTS.

Want to live in suburbs, or just defaulted to them? I used to believe the latter as well, but most of my coworkers (both at my current job and my previous one) really do want that lifestyle, notwithstanding my proselytizing for urban living. To them, downtown is someplace they go (or stay after work for a little while), not someplace they live and breathe. And I choose not to take such discussions or thoughts in any direction that would imply that their decisions were essentially made for them or that they're just blind followers or anything else that seeks to explain away their preferences as anything other than as genuine as my own preference for the urban lifestyle. Never a fun conversation to have, indeed.

Apparently, there is some bill floating around that would make it illegal to lie on the internet also with much broader implications than lying about the streetcar on Tweeter.

Brain starting to hurt like grad school. Powerful numbers, though.

^ It was a KFC dammit! :-D

Want to live in suburbs, or just defaulted to them?

Was the garage under the Statehouse full? The old City Center Mall parking garage is really handy as well, though it's a couple blocks from there.

My, it's like Marble Cliff, Bexley, Grandview, the Near East Side and Rush Creek all in one.

Bonus info: Marble Cliff used to be called Arlington, hence the name Upper Arlington for development north of it.

When I was an investment adviser, one of my co-workers was a girl from Tennessee (this was in Columbus). She basically couldn't go home and drum up business down there because they wouldn't talk about money with someone they "sort of" knew for the reasons that you mentioned. I guess she turned into a Yankee when she decided to attend OSU.

That's assuming that you even SEE the boxer. In Houston, the drivers that were hit probably didn't see the light rail train, or at least didn't expect it to cross their path. In Cincinnati, there was an accident a few years ago where a train crashed into an ambulance. The ambulance driver apparently thought that he had the right-of-way, and that the train was going to stop. Wrong answer! Clearly, there was a problem in Houston that the operators didn't design for, or didn't account for. It doesn't matter. Most of the people in the video ignored lane markings. They were in clearly marked ONLY lanes and either ignored that fact or weren't paying attention. If you do that on regular streets that don't have rail, it won't be too long until you get hit by a another car anyway.

Naw, they don't know that stuff. Most environmentalists don't really know much about energy, transportation or the quality of life issues associated with poor urban design.

Guys found out that buying an F-250 instead of an F-150 didn't help at all when colliding with a train, so they started actually paying attention to their driving.

Somehow, I never learned about the SMU death penalty or the University of Miami's '80-'90s general shenanigans until a couple of years ago. It seems they try to make the old stuff disappear after a while.