Eigth and State

I agree with this.

Here's my pick. http://www.amazon.com/Schwinn-Sanctuary-Cruiser-Bicycle-26-Inch/dp/B00AWNHVVG/ref=sr_1_38?ie=UTF8&qid=1399525156&sr=8-38&keywords=bicycle+women+cruiser My mother has one like this and she enjoys it. It is a one-speed with a coaster brake, which is fine for level areas. What it lacks in gearing components it makes up in overall quality for the price. Here are some things you should consider: 1. A women's bicycle, with the drop frame, allows her to wear a skirt an stand over the bicycle, but the lack of a top bar might make it harder to mount the bicycle on a car rack. 2. A car rack might cost as much or more than the bicycle. The best racks attached to the roof (high lifting required) or to a tow hitch. The cheaper racks that sit on the trunk or bumper and attach with straps often require the top bar on the bicycle. 3. The amount of hassle that it takes to get the bike out of storage will influence the amount that you ride it. The less hassle, the better. The best thing is to park in a safe place such as a garage, if you have one. Dragging it in and out of the house, or even worse, hanging it up, is a pain. 4. Make sure a bike lock and a helmet are in your budget. 5. The goodwill store, garage sales, flea markets, etc., often have lots of used bicycles and these places are much safer than Craigslist. 6. Bicycles are a lot of fun! I encourage you to get one.

After unsuccessfully shopping for a used one, I bought a new mountain bicycle from a bike shop. I also bought a large luggage rack, fenders, lights, and smooth tires. I had the bike shop assemble all of it at the time I purchased it. I paid $850 for the whole lot. I think the bicycle was $650 and the accessories were $200. The plastic pedals broke, so I replaced them with metal ones, for another $80 or so. I opted for pedals with clips on one side and treads on the other. I never felt the need to get bicycle shoes, and always use the tread side, since most of my trips are for shopping, etc, and I don't want to carry two pairs of shoes. I added bags to the luggage rack, and bought a new cable lock and helmet. After patching the tire several times one month, I bought a new tire and tube, only to discover a piece of glass embedded in the old tire. At about the ten year mark, I had a tune up with cables and some other components replaced for about $150. My original headlight with rechargable batteries quit working, so I bought a new one with replacable batteries. It is heavy and rather slow, but it has held up well. I use it most often for trips of 10 miles or less, with an occasional longer ride. I find that it becomes uncomfortable at about 25 miles, since it has an aluminum frame and fork, straight handlebars, hard seat, and no shock absorbers. I use the bags on almost every trip. I also have a more expensive, fast road bike that I can use for long bike rides, but I use the commuter bike much more often.

I remember when they laid the pavers in Court Street and dressed it all up. It looks really nice now. I think the intention was to have more space for street vendors on the wide sidewalks. Occasionally I see one, but the "Court Street Market" has been mostly a disappointment. Those parking spaces are in fact very heavily used, because the nature of the county administration building, etc., leads to a lot of "run in and out" type of traffic. Actually, I just drove there yesterday. There were no spaces open, so I parked about 8 blocks away and walked. (Urban Ohioans tend to walk a lot). I'm sure the reason why they didn't decide to place the equipment in a surface parking lot is because the city doesn't own the property.

Didn't I read on this board that the system will be able to be broken into two loops, one north of Central Parkway and one south, so that only half of the system could be run at a time for maintenance on the other half? If so, I would assume that they need at least two substations. There are many of the historic substations still around. Some of them are housed in nice buildings.

The Western Hills Viaduct doesn't get the attention it deserves because it leads to the West Side. No one really cares about the West Side except west siders.

Streetscape work is expensive. I read that on one of the Denver light rail lines, the streetscape work was 50% of the total project cost, but they got new street trees, street furniture, all new curbs and walks, etc. It goes without saying that the more things that are included in a project, the more expensive it is, but also the nicer it will be. This is important when making comparisons between projects, including between streetcar lines and bus lines.

^I can't speak for everyone on this board, but I think most on this forum are in favor of keeping the Peavine line east of Claire Yard open for rail. The discussion is about the Hyde Park branch, which travels between Norwood and Claire Yard. The Hyde Park branch has no railroad customers on it. The railroad wants to sell the property, and there are two special interest groups, the bicycle advocates and the light rail advocates, who have their eyes on it.

^So the maximum grade that the streetcar can run is 8%, or whatever it is. What is the maximum grade for a streetcar stop? Is there a maximum?

The picture is a composite of 7 of my own photos, taken on different days, from different places in the Cincinnati area. The sun photo was taken with a solar filter, obviously. Jupiter and Saturn were taken through an 8" reflector, Mercury and Venus through a 80 mm refractor, and the 3 others were taken through a 127 mm Maksutov. The cameras were 3 different entry level digital cameras. All of the photos are simple snapshots, without any post processing.

But aren't we talking about a retirement community? Yes, retirees may get out of the community sometimes, and the community still needs workers and supplies, and visits from family, but isn't the whole point of a retirement community to be self-contained? That is, most of the residents won't leave the community most days?

The ancient world knew of 7 planets. Here they are in one composite picture.

From 2013

It's a different world there. This makes me feel like I live in a log cabin or something.

"I saw the sign. I hope you like the thread." ha ha ha ha ha Thanks for posting.

I like it.

Thanks for posting, and more Toledo please!

^ On another project Duke took over a year to complete a gas main replacement. The main and the services were done separately. Concrete sidewalks were demolished and replaced with asphalt sidewalks for a very long time. The very last step was to restore the concrete sidewalks.

Thanks for posting!

Didn't Burnet Woods oringally go all the way to McMillan? When U.C. (or its predecessor) moved out of Over-the-Rhine, they built in Burnet Woods, gradually expanding north, until MLK Drive finally provided a barrier. The Clifton neighborhood is very sensitive about any new construction of any kind in Burnet Woods. (Jefferson also provided a barrier on the east side of U.C., which now forms a "superblock". Old maps remind one of Central Park in New York City: a massive rectangle of green space in the middle of a developed area. The trails in Burnet Woods are actually very well-used. And yes, although it doesn't have a reputation for crime, it does have a reputation for being sketchy, and not just in the way mentioned above. When I was about 6 years old, my grandfather took me to Burnet Woods. He showed me the slide, and told me that when he was my age, he rode down the same slide. I always thought that was neat.

^The grocery industry shifted to big boxes in the 1950's and 1960's. The boxes got bigger and bigger until about 2000. A typical pre-war grocery store was actually quite small. Old time grocery stores did not include meat, dairy, canned goods, bakery, wine, tobacco, drugs, magazines, and all of that in the same store. All of those things used to be in separate stores, with separate store fronts. There's a thread about the former Clifton IGA. Clifton residents are trying to start a co-op to return a grocery store to the old building on Ludlow Avenue. While in an urban neighborhood, that store is actually a big-box - it's just not as big as today's Wal-Mart, Kroger, Meijer, etc. Many of these early big-boxes have gone out of business: the Cllifton IGA, the Northside Save-a-lot, etc. The Short Vine site is big enough for a moderately sized big-box, but not a super-Wal-Mart sized big box. I think that some skillful design will make it fit in quite nicely. That's the key - it has to be well designed for the neighborhood, not some standard big box plopped down in the middle of a sea of parking lots. Here's a photo of a pre-war grocery store. This would not be economically viable today.

^Huh? The United States uses the metric system. Granted, we don't use it for everything, but neither do most of the other countries.

^The current layout is awful mainly because the building is in the middle of the site surrounded by parking, with hardly any sidewalk connections. When there is a muddy trail down the side of a slope due to people walking, you know there is something wrong. At least it connects to the street on one side. Connecting Auburn and Vine to short Vine the way it used to be would be good in some ways, but it would also divide the property into triangles. I have an alternate idea that might ruffle some on this board, but please hear me out: Build a big-box grocery store, but..... squeeze the box onto the east end of the site, and make it multi-story, with the big box on the ground floor and some other use, maybe housing, on top. The housing will face the adjacent streets, and have ground level entrances, taking advantage of the change in grade between short Vine and McMillan. Place a parking lot on the west end of the site, but not as big as the typical surburban bix box parking. I worked out a plan of this years ago. One challenge is to get the fire exits, which are typically at the corners of a big-box, to work. I was able to get the loading docks to work, but only by using the street space to turn the trucks. Why a big box? Whether you like it or not, the grocery retail industry is turning to big boxes. We have a whole thread about it in the urban grocery thread. Both urban and suburban dwellers are shopping at the big box; urbanites in large part are driving there. (Someone on this board will probably deny that he shops at big boxes.) The grocery industry simply cannot supply a big box experience without the big box. That said, the problem with the big-box is not the building, but the parking and the way it connects to the street. It is possible to build a big box in an urban area with some careful design without looking like a suburban big box monstrosity. A streetcar stop near the big box is certainly possible, but it can't be right in front of the front door. There has to be some distance between the door and the stop, in order to provide space for people to wait. Also, in regard to the conversation about bicycles earlier, shopping carts CANNOT cross streetcar rails.

By the way, the same issues apply to the U.S. Census, which is used to apportion representation in the United States House of Representatives, and by extension, electoral votes in presidential elections. The U.S Census is not perfect, and it is well known that the Census does not count everyone. Most notably, poor and homeless people are not counted because of the difficulty of finding them. Some say that the U.S. Census undercounts by as much as 30%. Democrats want to count everyone because it helps representation in states that favor them. Democrats thus favor statistical methods that estimate the number of people not counted directly. Republicans want to keep the Census the way it is, and not use statistical methods, for the opposite reason.

Obviously, some people still wish we had them. Is there any doubt Kasich-Husted would implement such a system, were they allowed? State laws excluding any group from voting rights for president and certain other positions are NOT prohibited by the Constitution, but the fourteenth amendment says that if a state prohibits voting rights, then the number of electoral votes for that state will be reduced in the same proportion. So, Ohio Republicans could legally block, say, poor people from voting by enacting a poll tax, or prohibit prisoners from voting. It's not likely to happen because if they did, Ohio would lose electoral votes. "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state." - Fourteenth amendment, section II Ohio could NOT however, block voters based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude (15th amendment). Ohio could NOT block voters based on sex (19th amendment). Ohio could NOT block voters over 18 years old based on age (26th amendment).