KJP

See article below... Let's see, the oil exploration budgets are going to increase? For oil exploration costs in American coastal waters, those costs are tax-deductible, causing an increasing negative impact on the federal budget. What if highway users (consumers of two-thirds of oil in the US) paid for those costs? For every billion dollars of oil exploration costs in US coastal waters, the cost to highway users would rise 0.66 cents per gallon. That's not a big burden. Instead, you and I subsidize those costs in income tax every April 15 whether we drive a lot or not. ________________________ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=aH57.uZe.sAI&refer=energy Total, Shell Chief Executives Say `Easy Oil' Is Gone By Stephen Voss and Tara Patel April 5 (Bloomberg) -- The days of so-called ``easy oil'' are over, making it harder to meet demand without complicated and expensive projects, the heads of two of Europe's largest oil companies said today. The International Energy Agency, an adviser to energy importing nations, estimates oil supply will have to rise 39 percent to 116 million barrels of oil a day by 2030 from about 86 million barrels a day now to meet world demand. Meeting such targets with conventional oil sources will be ``extremely difficult,'' Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive officer of Total SA, Europe's third-largest oil company and its largest refiner, said at a conference in Paris today. New supply will be based on ``huge high-tech'' projects.

You people are sick. I thought I knew the city really well, but this is just out of hand!

Great shots. The bridge/Tremont/UO billboard view is superb! Don't let JoeC's neglect of rail push you to "his" chosen mode!

Let me interject my favorite tag line of all time: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Instead, plan it, marshall it, access it, focus it and sustain it. Then we can decide if a given sample of growth is good or not. But just because something is growing, doesn't necessarily make it good.

Actually, when I saw the report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and saw that the numbers of people on the planet who will be forced to move due to drought conditions, coastal flooding, etc. I kept thinking... Why not here? We have more freshwater in the Great Lakes than any other place on the planet. We do need low-skill jobs for them, and while selling fast food to each other isn't exactly what I have in mind, that's certainly an option for many. So is working at a new coal liquefaction plant or two, tending to urban farms and selling produce from them, home/building renovation work, as well as many other vocations. The IPCC report projected painful global climate changes starting by 2020 (I think 400 million displaced) and displacing 2 billion people by 2050! We should at least give these things some thought, if not start to plan for them now.

Another option is to take a bus (the 20, 22 or the 807) from Detroit Ave & West 25th to the Ohio City rapid station across Lorain from the West Side Market. The 807 goes right to the front door of the Rapid station while the 20 & 22 require you to walk a block from West 25th. However, the 807 runs every 30 minutes while the 20/22 run much more frequently. Of course, the 20, 22 and 326 buses (each one offering frequent service) all cross the Detroit/Superior bridge to Public Square where you can catch the Red Line to University Circle. Or you can transfer to the 6 or 9x running down Euclid Avenue to University Circle. Those two bus routes will be rough rides for the next 18 months while the Euclid Corridor (with a dedicated busway) construction project is continuing. But once they are done, it should be a smooth, fast bus ride.

That's good news. It means that ODOT has to go through a process to find/choose alternatives that mitigate impacts to these structures. And if an alternative exists that lets ODOT avoid negatively impacting those structures, then they have to give a pretty strong reason why they didn't select that alternative.

If it wasn't for the PD's series on Forest City Enterprises last year, I wouldn't have given any of this a second thought. If it wasn't for FCE's large financial support of Frank Jackson's 2005 mayoral campaign, or the campaigns of Commissioners Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora, I doubt I'd be casting a wary eye on the whole convention center process. If it wasn't for the PD's failure to fully weigh the pros and cons of the former Higbee's site vs. the current county adminstration building site for the Medical Mart, then I doubt I'd be doing much doubting. But put all these together, and I smell some linkages between FCE, Jackson and the PD's publisher. Maybe I'm just too skeptical/critical. And I'm not even saying these linkages are bad, because you've got to get the big players together to make something big happen. I'm not attaching any positives/negatives to my suspicions, just stating my suspicions.

I still have visited eBay only a couple of times, just to see what's there. It's too bewildering, and I just don't have time to take on anything else on the web. Most of the time, I'm writing articles on the computer. Only when I'm researching something do I visit more than a few web sites per day.

Where's that gingerbread LRT? BTW, I was looking at your play list, Musky. In addition to having a great avatar, you have good taste in music. I love Juno Reactor!

I was going to tell you a sad story about our transportation system experienced by a friend of mine this morning. But I'll use his words to tell it.... ___________________ This is really no big surprise to anyone who travels. I've been saying the same for a few years now. We do not have a long term viable transportation system. The fact that it is becoming increasing difficult to simply get from point A to point B, let alone getting around once you get to point B should be a wake up call. But we, as a nation, don't want to think about it, let alone deal with the nasty truth that we are not the worlds greatest and have a very serious problem that is going to come to a head soon. We prefer to blame others or try to solve tiny parts of the issue, i.e. alternative fuels, then actually dealing with the main issue - the system is poorly designed, broken and in need of massive, fundamental changes that are not going to be popular with the people who make a profit off the current system. Case in point, I arrived in Cleveland this morning from Chicago, enroute to Ravenna. According to the current system, I was supposed to wake up extremely early this morning, catch a cab or drive to the airport, fly to Cleveland, then rent a car here, drive everywhere for every reason, then do the reverse. All in a very tight timeframe with little to no time to do anything other then travel or drive, let alone catch my breath! But my time and quality of life is too valuable for that treadmill. Therefore I took one of only two possible trains late last night, the 10:00 PM Lake Shore Limited. And got caught in freight traffic jams several times. We left Chicago on time and there were no mechanical difficulties that I know of enroute. Every stop was long waits, then one or two freights passing us. The first was around 47th Street in Chicago - not even out of the city or to the first at-grade crossing of another rail line! Which tells me that the whole line was a single track operation last night. All NS. Where is the Erie RR or the Fort Wayne line when you need 'em? (most of the passengers I talked to or over heard last nigh who were going to Elkhart or Waterloo were going to Fort Wayne by the way...) As a result we were almost two hours late into Cleveland, even with all the padding built in the new schedule. Which meant I had 10 minutes to get off the train and get to Public Square to catch a bus for Kent, connecting there with a bus for Ravenna. Scheduled departure from downtown Cleveland is 8:20 AM. The next and only other bus departs at 5:20 PM. There are North Coast Express buses to Akron, but they are on a "rush hour" only schedule too. Other then renting a car, which would be a major waste of time and money in this case, there is no other way to get remotely close to where I was going. At least in a timely manner without spending a fortune. Or missing half of what I made the trip to do in the first place (which I ended up missing some anyway). Thankfully I had a very close and good friend who drove me direct to Ravenna, as we were supposed to meet for breakfast before I caught the bus at Public Square. While I greatly appreciated his help, it made him late for work too. The effects just multiplied as we went. I ended up losing the morning and a planned visit because I fell asleep when I got to my mothers house and lost over 3 hours to exhaustion and frustration. How much more it effected my friend beyond a missed meeting and late arrival at work I do not know at this point. Or the domino effect his lateness had on others. Magnify my experience by the hundreds of travelers coming to Northeast Ohio every day and the missed appointments and lost opportunities stagger the mind. Even if they do make all their appointments, they are not in top form. My last flight was over 6 hours late back to Chicago due to a thunderstorm. By the time we arrived, got my bag and managed to catch a cab home, it was 5:00 AM! I missed a very important appointment I had scheduled for 9:00 AM that morning as I was too wore out and in no condition to attend. There were thousands in similar situations, headed to conventions and meetings. We were all due in the night before on numerous flights, but were leaving the airport when we should have been waking up from a restful nights sleep. Napping in a coach seat on a plane or in the terminal is not a viable substitute! How much more lost revenue, opportunities and quality of life will we endure before we finally say enough is enough, this is NOT working! Fortunately, I believe we are close to that point. It is increasingly difficult to get anywhere from anywhere in this country. The toll that is taking on our economy is enormous and only getting bigger. But we are treating it like the old fairy tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes" We all know he's naked, but few are willing to publicly admit it. But there will be a time when enough people will be fed up to the point of doing something constructive about it - a transportation system that works.

Wait until I relay the story of my friend Mark, a Chicago resident, who tried to use Amtrak and transit to reach his mother's house in Ravenna today. I will post it in the ODOT policy thread after I get home from work. That will reinforce how far behind we are...

I agree. There seems to be a bit of mutual back-scratching going on here.

Romney hates France Reformer.com Brattleboro Reformer Friday, April 6 Former Massachusetts governor and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a campaign stop in Keene, N.H., on Tuesday morning. We'll leave aside for now the contrast between the more than 2,200 people who showed up for Sen. Barrack Obama, D-Ill., at Keene State College the night before with the 100 or so people who were at the Colony Mill Marketplace to hear Romney. We'll also leave aside his relatively recent shifts to more conservative positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control, or his attempts to position himself as the only electable candidate for social conservatives. Our question for today is, why does Romney hate France so much? .........

I've seen that on other high-speed rail lines, so it may be standard practice. But that's just a guess on my part.

That's bizarre. No wonder why too many Clevelanders don't appreciate their city's amazing history.

Interesting article, IMHO. The part about the sonic booms in tunnels is pretty amazing... _____________________ http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2007/gb20070405_879375.htm?chan=globalbiz_europe_more+of+today's+top+stories Europe April 5, 2007, 12:34PM EST text size: TT Is Energy-Guzzling TGV the Wrong Answer? So the French-manufactured train broke all kinds of speed records, but at what environmental and safety costs? Trains will never travel as fast as commercial air planes -- that's a certainty. But certainty can be challenged -- as French train company SNCF has consistently demonstrated. On Tuesday, SNCF set a new world speed record on rail when a special TGV train barrelled down new tracks east of Paris, reaching a top speed of 574.8 kilomters (357 miles) per hour. The previous record of 515.3 kilometers per hour had also been set by a French TGV train. The aim of the record high-speed train trip on Tuesday, according to an official statement by French TGV manufacturer Alstom, was to demonstrate the "highly promising future in the domain of very high-speed rail transport." But more than anything else, the lightning-fast race down the tracks merely illustrated just how frivolously advanced train technology can be put to use. No railway company in the world is seriously considering putting trains that travel at such high speeds into regular passenger service. .......

Here's 7+ minutes of EXCELLENT footage from earlier this week of the high speed train record of 357.2 MPH in France! This is from French television news, apparently broadcast live in France. Note the voices of the newscasters getting quicker as the train picks up speed, accelerating past 500 km/h (312 mph) toward the record speed. And take note of the aircraft needed to keep pace with the train!

More arrest photos available at: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0405071drag1.html Bikini firefighter gets burned Cincinnati Enquirer MASON - A Wayne Township volunteer firefighter is scheduled to appear Thursday in Mason Municipal Court on drunken driving and other charges after he was found wearing a woman's blond wig and bikini in a public park. Steven S. Cole, 46, Waynesville, was arrested about 5 p.m. Tuesday at Heritage Oak Park off U.S. 42 after Mason police received a report of an intoxicated man. Cole was charged with drunken driving, having an open container, public indecency and disorderly conduct. For more information, click the above link.

Not sure if this belongs in this thread, but I think it's certainly worth posting here! ___________________ American Society of Civil Engineers and Student Chapter from Cleveland State University Wishes To Invite You To… The April ASCE Dinner Meeting Presentation By: Pete Sklannik Jr. Chairman, ASCE Transportation Security Committee Rail to the Rescue In September 2005 More than 1 million people scurried to get out of the way of Hurricane Rita, a Category 5 hurricane. As the hurricane grew more turbulent, becoming the third most intense storm in history, the Governor of Texas ordered the use of light rail (KJP note: actually, it was diesel locomotive-powered commuter trains) from Dallas - Ft. Worth to evacuate Southeastern Texas. Pete will relate his perspectives and lessons learned Thursday April 26, 2007 The City Club of Cleveland 850 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44114 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM Registration / Mixer 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM Dinner 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM Presentation / Q & A Menu Breaded and Sautéed Chicken Breast Topped with Mozzarella & Romano Cheeses Atop a bed of Fettuccini Breaded & Sautéed Eggplant Topped with Mozzarella & Romano Cheeses Atop a bed of Fettuccini Field Greens with Cucumber, Grape Tomato, and Garlic Croutons topped with Vinaigrette Roasted Red Skin Herbed Potatoes Green Beans with Red Pepper & Dill Dessert Triple Chocolate Tiger Cake Note: Persons with special dietary requirements please inform when making reservations. Members $35; Non Members $40; Students $20 Members absolutely must confirm their reservations before 5:00 PM on Friday April 20th to: Sarah Catanese - Cleveland State University 440-667-8810 –– [email protected] Cancellations: Please note that due to commitments that must be made to the restaurant, any cancellations After Monday, April 23th or no-shows will be billed for the cost of the dinner.

Not sure if this belongs in this thread, but I think it's certainly worth posting here ___________________ American Society of Civil Engineers and Student Chapter from Cleveland State University Wishes To Invite You To… The April ASCE Dinner Meeting Presentation By: Pete Sklannik Jr. Chairman, ASCE Transportation Security Committee Rail to the Rescue In September 2005 More than 1 million people scurried to get out of the way of Hurricane Rita, a Category 5 hurricane. As the hurricane grew more turbulent, becoming the third most intense storm in history, the Governor of Texas ordered the use of light rail (KJP note: actually, it was diesel locomotive-powered commuter trains) from Dallas - Ft. Worth to evacuate Southeastern Texas. Pete will relate his perspectives and lessons learned Thursday April 26, 2007 The City Club of Cleveland 850 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44114 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM Registration / Mixer 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM Dinner 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM Presentation / Q & A Menu Breaded and Sautéed Chicken Breast Topped with Mozzarella & Romano Cheeses Atop a bed of Fettuccini Breaded & Sautéed Eggplant Topped with Mozzarella & Romano Cheeses Atop a bed of Fettuccini Field Greens with Cucumber, Grape Tomato, and Garlic Croutons topped with Vinaigrette Roasted Red Skin Herbed Potatoes Green Beans with Red Pepper & Dill Dessert Triple Chocolate Tiger Cake Note: Persons with special dietary requirements please inform when making reservations. Members $35; Non Members $40; Students $20 Members absolutely must confirm their reservations before 5:00 PM on Friday April 20th to: Sarah Catanese - Cleveland State University 440-667-8810 –– [email protected] Cancellations: Please note that due to commitments that must be made to the restaurant, any cancellations After Monday, April 23th or no-shows will be billed for the cost of the dinner.

New CB Richard Ellis market report for downtown office market, for first quarter 2007, is available. However, I cannot seem to find a link to the Cleveland report to copy and paste here. The summary is that Class A office vacancy declined to 11 percent overall and 8 percent direct vacancy. However, Class B office space vacancy rose slightly. Another down side is that unemployment for the metro area rose from 5 percent (if I remember right) to 5.9 percent. That was considered a seasonal drop, but unemployment statewide fell slightly.

I see there's another video of the Seattle LRT testing.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64wRy1ZaTZM&mode=related&search=

Absolutely... To learn more about the Ohio Hub, visit: http://www.dot.state.oh.us/ohiorail/Ohio%20Hub/Website/ordc/index.html To learn more about how to help make the Ohio Hub happen, join: http://www.allaboardohio.org/cms/index.php

I have several contacts at the group seeking the downtown streetcars. It's called Lake Shore Electric Railway (named after Cleveland's last electric interurban). See: http://www.lsery.org/index.htm They have their hands full enough trying to get funding for a permanent storage and car renovations building to be built on the lakefront, at the end of the Waterfront Line. That's their first priority. Getting the OK to operate on the Waterfront Line for special events and such is priority #2. And somewhere in the distant future, they want to expand to operate on new streetcar tracks on an undetermined route. But let's make sure they have a permanent home first. The city owned warehouse building on Dock 32 won't last, as the city would like that area redeveloped. The streetcars and interurbans need a new home soon!