gildone

Very frustrating. As others here have said here, this is what happens when buses get stuck in the same traffic as cars. It's easy to blame RTA for that unreliability (and I'm not saying that you are), but it's a reflection of how poorly we do transportation in the U.S.. Cars get the priority in funding, planning, and design. Planning is not done holistically. We just build for cars and if anything at all is done for pedestrians, cycling, and public transit, it's done as a band-aid. When a patient needs re-constructive surgery, you don't fix it with a band-aid.

Berlin referendum to ban cars (with exceptions) in a large segment of the city: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/06/berlins-car-ban-campaign-its-about-how-we-want-to-live-breathe-and-play "It’s as much about our immediate environment as it is about the environment at large. It’s about how we all want to live, breathe and play together. We want people to be able to sleep with their windows open, and children to be able to play in the street again. And grandparents should be able to ride their bicycles safely and have plenty of benches to take a breather on...” "A 2014 report commissioned by Berlin’s regional parliament found that 58% of traffic space was devoted to cars, even though only a third of journeys on Berlin streets..." “The federal environmental ministry did a study recently and 91% of people said they would be happier without a car. Moreover, only a third of individual Berliners actually have a car,” said Kaestner..."

@Foraker: Yes. Roadway design is the primary problem. In 1970, the Netherlands had a higher rate of traffic deaths than the U.S. 40 years later, they reduced road accidents by 81% through an ongoing program of re-engineering their roads. Today, very little traffic enforcement is done in the Netherlands. They control speed by adding complexity to street and road design which intuitively signals drivers to slow down. Want to reduce speeding? Don't do by law what you can do by engineering.

Apparently there is a time limit on editing posts... UPDATE: Just figured out today: Entering the code HALF gets you 50% off when you order directly from Island Press.

Pandemic aside... When you are a company like Greyhound that operates a service that, in many ways, just plain sucks, it's not a recipe for success. It's not difficult to make seats comfortable, for instance. Or give your employees customer service training so they aren't rude when interacting with customers. Or offer robust wifi. On a related note, I've often wondered if there is a market for a more upscale bus service-- seating with more legroom, free coffee and snacks, etc.

EROI is a very real problem that most people don't seem to grasp; however, as much as I respect Nafeez Ahmed, no one can predict with precision when the terminal decline phase will hit. The bigger issue (which Ahmed also discusses) is how much rising fossil fuel prices will be weaponized politically to falsely blame renewables for the price increases. Given the level of political dysfunction in the U.S., I can certainly see that happening here.

I'm currently reading this book. I highly recommend it. It's written by a Canadian couple that left Vancouver for the Netherlands so they could raise their kids in a quiet, car-light city: When I bought it a week ago at the publisher's site (https://islandpress.org/books/curbing-traffic), the print version was half off (and thus cheaper than Amazon, even with shipping). I'm not sure if the discount will be there for others who access the site. Entering the discount code: BRUNTLETT gets you 25% off, however. The e-version is, of course, much cheaper. When I last checked, no libraries in Ohio had it.

East Liverpool Sees Uptick in Business October 2021 https://businessjournaldaily.com/article/liverpool-sees-uptick-in-business/ In July, a ribbon-cutting was held for 11 new businesses, including Renovatio’s Tap Room and Restaurant, which entailed renovating a 1924 bank building at a cost of more than $1.1 million....

I missed this a few months ago when I went on a tear researching the status protected bike lane projects in the U.S. So Dayton is getting protected bike lanes too... another city that is ahead of Cleveland. Cleveland should be ashamed.

Urban noise may be something we don't think about much, but it's more collateral damage that's tied to car dependency. Cities Aren't Loud. Cars Are Loud.

I came across this interesting article from Public Herald, a non-profit investigative journalism organization. They are in the middle of a 3-part series about the disposal of radioactive fracking waste in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It appears there are lawsuits brewing against Pennsylvania DEP (and maybe the state of Ohio--I haven't read the full series of articles yet). Another in a long line of reasons why we need to be using a lot less oil and changing our transportation system. We are fracking because all the cheap, easy oil has been found: https://publicherald.org/investigation-uncovers-ohio-is-illegally-building-radioactive-mountains-affecting-26-waterways/

Construction in downtown Sandusky. Don't know what the project is

More on the Lakeshore Rail Alliance: https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/intercity/advocates-push-for-increased-lakeshore-route-service/?RAchannel=news

There may be a better way to do this without creating the ruckus with state DOTs. It could also do an end-run around highway interests. Because car-centric development patterns are incapable of generating enough tax revenue to cover the maintenance of the infrastructure that serves them, the way to do this may be to change federal regulations governing municipal accounting to require that city-owned infrastructure be listed as liabilities rather than assets. Streets, for example, carry significant and perpetual maintenance obligations, making them liabilities. Did anyone step up to buy Detroit's streets, sidewalks, sewer system, etc. when the city filed bankruptcy? No, because again, these are liabilities. It may be best to do this and give maximum flexibility to cities for spending federal transportation dollars rather than by top-down regulation of transportation dollars. This approach has been suggested by Strong Towns.

Analysis: City of Cleveland is quietly blocking citizen planning efforts for safer, bike-friendly streets https://www.thelandcle.org/stories/analysis-city-of-cleveland-is-quietly-blocking-citizen-planning-efforts-for-safer-greener-streets "At the heart of the issue, advocates have said, is the fact that the city of Cleveland has time and time again failed to follow through on its plans for comprehensively improving cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. “I give the city credit for doing what it’s done so far,” Jacob VanSickle, executive director of Bike Cleveland, told The Land in a recent interview. “But as we look down the barrel of climate change, and we look at issues of health and equity especially in east side neighborhoods, we certainly can do better when it comes to making it safer for people to bike and walk.” And it’s not just an issue of money, either. The city missed opportunities to apply for federal funding for the Lorain Avenue cycle track in 2018, 2019, and 2020, according to Bike Cleveland. It remains to be seen if they will hit the July 12 deadline for federal RAISE funds this year." I really like the reporting in The Land. They do quality local journalism. This article prompted me to make another donation to them.

Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes gave a plug for this book in his latest video on noise in cities. The authors live in Delft, Netherlands, which may be the quietest city in Europe. To keep this post in line with the topic of this thread... one of the things Delft has done to accomplish this is to keep most cars out of the city center, reduce traffic speeds in the city, and use porous pavement on streets with higher speeds, which reduces road noise:

Never, even though Ohio probably doesn't need climate as a reason. Our our roads and highways are overbuilt as it is and the cost of future maintenance obligations are mounting. Just local roads alone are overwhelming city budgets. @surfohio They should have added Albany, NY. They have an elevated highway cutting off views and access to the city's riverfront. The city wants to remove it. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Mr-Biden-tear-down-this-highway-15879751.php

@Dblcut3wrote: "The new protected bike lanes and road diet along Mahoning Avenue linking Downtown and Mill Creek Park are nearly finished as well!" So even Youngstown is lapping Cleveland on protected bike lanes! So far in the region, we have: Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Sandusky, and now Youngstown. Have I missed any? Cleveland should be embarrassed. Edit: I looked at the link dblcut3 provided and found that Akron is planning a Rubber City Heritage Trail network of protected bikeways similar in concept, I assume, to what Indianapolis did: https://gpdgroup.com/case-study/rubber-city-heritage-trail/ "Honestly, I think they should've just went all out and made the whole thing an extended pedestrian plaza." Are there a lot of downtown residents in the vicinity? Generally speaking, pedestrianized areas tend to work best when there are people living there and when there is good public transit in the city at-large. If the expectation is for people to drive to a pedestrian mall, it's likely to fail. See what happened to Front St. In Cuyahoga Falls for example.

More Sleeper Trains Coming To Europe: https://nypost.com/2021/06/23/hotels-on-rails-sleeper-trains-are-coming-to-europe/ "Midnight Trains will be a “hotel on rails” with a launch set for 2024, The Guardian reported. The French start-up announced its plan to create a rail network that would connect its Paris hub to 12 other cities across seven countries, including the UK. "The “hotel-style” sleeper train with private rooms and dining options aims to be an affordable, eco-conscious alternative to air travel, which accounts for approximately 2.5% of global greenhouse emissions."

Buying A Car Improved My Life. It Shouldn't Have: https://gizmodo.com/buying-a-car-improved-my-life-it-shouldnt-have-1847106068

Electric Vehicles Won't Save Us: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/06/18/electric-vehicles-wont-save-us/ "The challenge we’re faced with is clear: We not only have to transition to cleaner vehicles, but we have to transition toward cleaner built environments, generally. Simply transitioning to electric vehicles does nothing to address the underlying cause for our unsustainable living patterns in which private vehicles are the default mode of moving from place to place. Enough false dichotomies, let’s get to the real challenge."

Federal transportation bill would fund public-private partnerships for passenger rail: https://www.hsrail.org/blog/federal-dollars-public-private-hsr-projects-could-be-game-changing

@northshore647 just read that Cleveland.com article about the Lake Ave bikeway. My god people say the dumbest things.

@KJPGood that they are going to re-issue the RFP. I wonder if anything about this explanation is a way of saving face from AAOs complaint?

Well, Sandusky has lapped Cleveland with a downtown protected bikeway (on Shoreline Drive). I just posted this in the Sandusky Projects and Construction Thread: