Old AmrapinVA

Isn't the unwritten rule of city council that if McCormack is down with this deal that all the other councilfolks are supposed to "get in line". Isn't that how TJ Dow tries to shake down every project in his Ward? If so, I can't believe this deal having to big a problem unless someone wants to grandstand.

Everybody is high-fiving while this thing still has at least 20 yards to go. I haven't followed the CMSD board in two decades. Are they going to accept this deal? Will the public? Will there a be a vocal backlash from someone within the city to slow this proposal down?

Cleburger, I agree with your point here. I've always though that aircraft and trains shouldn't be competing forms of transportation but complimentary. More HSR to crowded corridors to get aircraft out of the sky over California and especially the NE, I'm totally down with that. Japan does a great job with this idea. That being said when you look at the project winners, the routes are designed in a way that make it look like they're building a national network to replace airlines. Houston-Cheyenne? In fact they're not even proposing Boston-DC! WTF? Good luck with trying to kill air travel, much easier said than done. Remember as most pilots will tell you, it's not crowded in the sky. Plenty of room for everyone. It's landing and taking off that becomes an issue! :) Maybe the future will see a combination of high capacity tubes and advanced aircraft with STOVL capabilities (eliminating the need for long runways). At this point it's all still futuristic speculation. Houston to Cheyenne makes zero sense, but Houston to Dallas is needed tomorrow. The routing is Houston-Dallas-Denver-Cheyenne. With two extra stops compared to flying and virtually no air traffic over the High Plains connecting Houston-Cheyenne is loser right out of the gate. Even Dallas-Denver isn't that busy of a corridor, especially compared to Boston-DC.

It's just the straight line point-to-point aspect that blows my mind on how difficult this will be. Think of CVG and how many cities that airport serves. Now imagine a straight tube that needs to serve all those destinations from a central point in Downtown Cincy. Even if you can connect a few cities in a single tube you'll still need a massive amount of tunnels to get to all those destinations.

Cleburger, I agree with your point here. I've always thought that aircraft and trains shouldn't be competing forms of transportation but complimentary. More HSR to crowded corridors to get aircraft out of the sky over California and especially the NE, I'm totally down with that. Japan does a great job with this. That being said when you look at the project winners, the routes are designed in a way that make it look like they're building a national network to replace airlines. Houston-Cheyenne? In fact they're not even proposing Boston-DC! WTF? Good luck with trying to kill air travel, much easier said than done.

It's not going to work, and I don't know why people want it to work so badly. Said every naysayer about steam engines, automobiles, airplanes, high speed rail, maglev, electric cars, faster-than-sound air travel, the space shuttle, landing on the moon, intercontinental railroads, a plethora of "world's largest" ships, the space station, the construction of early skyscrapers, the Hoover Dam, an endless stream of bridges, the internet, wifi, smartphones, laptops, etc., etc., etc. Failing to see the benefit of a major increase in the speed of land travel requires a complete inability to grasp the benefit of technological advance while living in a world that has relied on technological advances that people like yourself claimed wouldn't work. If it's going to work you need scalability. Think of the amount of passengers that fly in the United States alone. People don't really comprehend it. Now transfer that total to users who can only use certain tubes to travel from place to place. If one capsule breaks down, then what? A bigger tube? More tubes? How many tubes will it take for travel between Cincy and C'bus? What about DC to Boston? Or Chicago to Denver? What about State College? Bangor? Cheyenne? Bismarck? Fairbanks? All these cities have air service. Do they get tubes? Now think of the NIMBY urban areas that won't want 700-mph "trains" moving through their neighborhoods. Think of the safety hurdles. The security issues. I don't think Elon Musk really has on this one. It looks cool don't get me wrong. This would be great for connecting areas on another planet that is mainly flat, like the Moon. TI When commercial airlines started a roundtrip transcontinental flight cost almost as much as a new car. The airlines carried a combined 6,000 passengers in 1930. And look at them now...flying buses, complete with the "people of Wal Mart." We have to start somewhere. Right, this really wasn't my point. The airlines have the entire sky below 40,000 feet to route their aircraft. For the Hyperloop to work on a mass scale it will require digging through thousands of mountains and plowing over plenty of farmland because the tubes can't really bend. Placing these tubes everywhere can't be done without environmental assessments. We already have a massive highway system. Now we're going to compliment that with a series of tubes all over the place? Imagine tubes that will have to run through Native American Reservations to make a Midwest to West Coast route work. Look at the furor over the XL pipeline. It's going to have difficulties. I'm entertained by some (not you Cleburger) who have a problem with adding a lane on an expressway or a runway at an airport yet seem to have little issues with the idea we can lay a tube over protected parkland in the Rockies to have faster transportation from Denver to Vail because it's a Musk idea. Another issue is safety. Flying wasn't the safest mode of transportation at first but it eventually happened over time as government regulators and the airlines put a system in place which made it that way. The Hyperloop is at Wright Brothers stage in terms of safety. These machines have transported exactly zero people and regulators know this. They're not going let a ground vehicle speed around at Mach 1 and pretend it's OK because some think Elon Musk is a genius. It doesn't work that way. At those speeds, safety needs to be almost guaranteed not only because it needs to pass safety protocols but because the airlines have set a very high safety standard for high speed mass transportation. In other words, nobody will ride the Hyperloop even if the crash/malfunction risk is as low as 1-2% because airlines have brought their safety numbers to well below 1%. Look at the DC METRO system as an example of how several crashes and system failures have turned off a lot commuters from riding it. And METRO is slow moving compared to what we are talking about here.

You're not entirely wrong, though knowing the eastside I do believe there is some difference between Beachwood and Orange. Beachwood grew very organically as a second-ring suburb following World War II (and has the current density to back it up), where as Orange has traditionally been more a semi-rural outer-ring suburb that is cynically trying to make a play for retail revenue near its western border in an area that you correctly point out is already oversaturated. Beachwood's population density is 2250 Westlake's density is around 2050 Strongsville's density is around 1825. You are right about Orange. It's density is below 1000. Same, same, same. In fact Beachwood and Westlake are losing population now while Strongsville is stable. Those numbers are coming closer together.

Ken, I agree. Strongsville and Greater Cleveland doesn't need this but at least it's not plowing over vacant land. You always talk about sprawl in a balanced way. Others not so much. If it's off of I-271 it's more about the quality of the stores and less about the need for any of this additional retail. Then Strongsville gets a project and it's sprawl, sprawl, sprawl. People need to realize all of it is bad for the region.

A developer wants to build new retail in Strongsville: Lots of discussion on here about sprawl. A developer wants to add retail in Beachwood or Orange: Lots of discussion on here about what types of stores will be in it. Hate to tell you guys but Beachwood, Westlake and Orange are just other high-end versions of Strongsville. Actually, in fairness to this project it will eliminate vacant office buildings and the developer will at least try to entice a tenant to the remaining larger one. Isn't the redundant project in Orange off of I-271 just plowing over woods?

This is good news but the debt burden is still way too high for such an out of date facility. So it's improving but isn't anywhere near a stable or good situation.

This is a function of the whiteness of the Cincinnati area. This in not a predisposition of just older white people. I've seen plenty of drivers of all skin colors and from all over the world here in the DC area get very aggressive with cyclists and pedestrians. It's not a racial thing.

Awesome. Can you provide a link with May data?

No surprises here, Cleveland's long standing "meh" economy continues. Summary from the BLS: Of the 51 metropolitan areas with a 2010 Census population of 1 million or more, Denver- Aurora-Lakewood, Colo., and Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, Tenn., had the lowest unemployment rates in May, 2.3 percent each. Cleveland-Elyria, Ohio, had the highest jobless rate among the large areas, 5.8 percent. Thirty-six large areas had over-the-year unemployment rate decreases, 10 had increases, and 5 had no change. The largest rate decreases occurred in Birmingham-Hoover, Ala.; Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Ill.-Ind.-Wis.; Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, Ind.; and Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Ore.-Wash. (-1.2 percentage points each). The largest over-the-year rate increase was in Cleveland-Elyria, Ohio (+0.9 percentage point). https://www.bls.gov/news.release/metro.nr0.htm

I was just visiting friends and family in Parma and Old Brooklyn over the holiday weekend. I think there's a very positive demographic change going in both areas over the last several times I visited: There are immigrants with large families primarily from the Middle East moving in as older families and empty nesters move out. It's not widespread but it is happening at a steady rate. The proximity to the fairly large Mosque in Parma probably helps to drive this change. It also helps the housing stock is cheap and the split levels are built to accommodate a family with a lot of children as well. Large immigrant families settling into one area helps in turning around population loss, even moreso than gentrification, I'd argue. Maybe this is the path for Old Brooklyn.

Ken, you should post this in another thread. This is an interesting proposal but the city is not that forward thinking in aviation or mass transit. They'll worry about the Hopkins funding gap of 2029 starting in November of 2028. :-D

CVG is the only airport I can think of that is touting these numbers to the press. CLE, IND, PIT, STL, hell almost any Midwest airport outside of Minneapolis, Detroit and Chicago O'Hare are hitting record O&D numbers due to the restructuring of hubs in the region. Yet you bring up a good point about the local situation in Cincinnati. Most other airports didn't have such a dominant carrier ruling the roost on fares for decades. I guess that's the intended target of the press release.

The basic measure of how competitive an airport is relative to its peers will always be O&D traffic. CVG was once much larger when accounting for connecting passengers, true, but was also leaking passengers to Dayton like a sieve because Delta charged an arm and a leg for a seat. Is that really what you want from your airport? That *more* local people are using the airport than ever means a greater share of the airport's economic impact is staying local. Connecting passengers spent a lot of money at CVG in the hub days, but all of that money went elsewhere -- to Delta, to Delaware North, etc. The economic impact of lower fares originating from CVG all stays local -- local businesses pay less to fly, lower travel expenses make local firms more competitive, and it's attractive to companies looking to locate here, etc. The problem is that the CVG Delta hub was so large compared to other similar sized cities in the region that it was more attractive to businesses than what's offered now through multiple carriers even with the large amount of O&D. So yeah costs may be lower but Cincinnati has lost it's global connection it once had. I agree that O&D is better revenue generator but I find it hard to believe that CVG, on the passenger side, is generating more revenue now when it was serving 25 million pax unless they charge an exorbitant amount for facility fees. Again, not talking about cargo. Also even with the O&D growth it's still smaller than CLE and PIT. So, yes, it's a passenger "record", it's just not something people in the industry would go "wow" about.

Every second tier city pays one way or another for the initial couple of years of European service. Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc. Sometimes it's ticket sales guarantees, sometimes it's promotion expenses, sometimes it's profit guarantees, almost always it's waived airport landing and rental fees. For example, PIT put up $800K for Wow and won; CLE offered $400K and lost. A lesson learned we hope. I don't think the city can offer incentives other Airport Authorities have. Does the city or the business community care? Looking at what happened with WOW!, I'd say not really. Maybe as the Clinic grows and demand increases it can offer a large subsidy itself. I still say the airport would be run better through a regional structure than the city of Cleveland. Include Akron-Canton and put together a package as a region. It's how most other major airports are run now. Also, I have a strong feeling that if CLE had offered $800K or even $1M they would have lost because of the existing cost structure at Hopkins. Behind the eight ball.

There's just nothing special here. Cleveland and Pittsburgh and drawing in larger amounts of origination passengers than Cincinnati yet aren't putting out press releases.

I'm not making an argument, I'm providing part of the answer to: If people rather have transatlantic flights than a giant chandelier at Playhouse square or a pedestrian bridge from the mall to the lakefefront, can't say I'd disagree. But it's not like international carriers are choosing Pittsburgh over Cleveland just because of landing fees and ordinary facility management. Gotcha. Lower landing fees are a real cost saving incentive for all intl/domestic airlines. Quality of the facility may not be quite as important but it hard to believe airlines wouldn't question why Pittsburgh is creating a better arrivals experience while offering lower costs.

Boeing 757-200 I never understand this argument. Yeah, they pay for service. So what? They have service. It's not like the folks running Hopkins are getting offers for free transatlantic service and are turning it down. Cleveland is really behind the eight ball compared to Pittsburgh because their facility costs are lower and the airport provides a better overall arrivals experience. So Hopkins has to increase incentives to a competing airline well beyond what Allegheny County offers just to make it a fair fight.

It's fine to be an optimist. I'm not being a pessimist though. This is just a current assessment of what's going on. LaGuardia is being transformed into something modern as we speak. They won't be comparable airports in 2021.

This article is just silly on the passenger side. Sure Cincy is setting a record pace now after losing roughly 65% of total passenger volume since 2005. Woo-hoo! Cincy/Northern Ky used to be twice the size of Cleveland in terms of passenger counts, now it's 85% of Hopkins despite Cincy still being a connection hub and 16% growth this year. Tout the cargo side which will only be more respectable but leave it at that.

CLE should file its 2016 financials in a couple of weeks. 2015 was greatly improved over 2014; we'll see how they do this time. The fact that passenger counts have rebounded so well after UA's departure means that Passenger Facility Charge income is booming. Also costs are down since not a lot of construction is going on now. Last year they took the debt down about $35 million. If they do so again this year, it will start to make a dent in the total - enough to support construction of a better FIS. I don't think things are nearly as bleak as you make them seem. In context to this discussion: If it's not that bleak, how many international carriers have moved in since Continental ended service to Europe? AFAIK they haven't lowered the landing fees despite the better financials. Also, the financials are based on United paying for gate space they no longer use. Once that lease is up a major funding source goes away. It's down the road but it is there and AFAIK there is no concrete plan for filling that gap. And when that source goes away landing fees will go through the roof for a really dated facility. I know first hand that's why Spirit started duplicate service from Akron-Canton. Costs are much cheaper there. The want to have a second station set up there so if CLE raises rates or the competitive aviation structure in the region changes (like Frontier failing) they can walk. As for mismanagement go look way upthread and see where former director Mok was not collecting fees from vendors back in the Continental hub days. Literally ignoring one source of income while charging one of the highest landing fees in the nation at the time. That's just embarrassing. People in the industry know this and are very skeptical Hopkins is a better run facility now.

Hopkins charges an arm and a leg for landing fees compared to other airports around the country and the ROI is just awful. Look at the Customs facility alone. Not only does the Port charge a high amount, Hopkins holds a higher debt average than most other facilities so they can't really lower the costs to attract more business. It's been mismanaged in so many ways over the years it just can't compete with Pittsburgh or the planned upgrades at Columbus. Look what Cincy/Northern Kentucky did with Amazon in order to offset costs with the drawdown of Delta hub there! Sadly, that's a pipe-dream for a place like Hopkins. It's not like this is a secret either, most in the industry know how dysfunctional Hopkins is. It's going to be very hard to get Transatlantic back with so many modern ports of arrival into the US. It is what it is.