KJP

I can't do it on March 29. It's going to be a very busy day for me.

It was Amtrak's late-running Capitol Limited, which has one eastbound and one westbound train each day between Chicago and Washington DC via Toledo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and a bunch of other stations. Hudson isn't a station stop, but the east/west trains go through there every night. For more information on the Capitol Limited, see http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/am2Route/Horizontal_Route_Page&c=am2Route&cid=1081256321384&ssid=133 Amtrak uses electrically powered trains on the Northeast Corridor between Washington DC and Boston. About 60 daily round trips are offered on some or all of that route. Here's what the two principal types of their Northeast Corridor trains look like... Acela Express: Acela Regional:

These stories underscore why we need to change the state constitution to allow gas tax dollars to be spent on non-highway transportation. We're spending big bucks on these sound walls, especially in middle- to upper-class areas, while low-income people can't reach jobs in those areas because we nickel and dime public transportation into irrelevance. I'd say that's worth a constitutional amendment. Some in the inner city who are directly affected might even think it's worth a revolution. But I hope they recognize a more peaceful option is to collect enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot.

Nice job, BuckeyeB. I knew you could do it!

Since I'm neither a West Virginian or an Akronite, I'm pretty sure I don't want to know about Rob's loss of virginity involving family dynamics.

Dearest Pontiff and killer of brain cells, it wasn't any longer ago than Dec. 23rd when we were at Great Lakes Brewing Co. for the Urban Ohio holiday get-together.

By the way there is a way to expand capacity between Cleveland and Toledo without touching the Sandusky Bay causeway... When NS acquired its parts of Conrail in 1999, it built two connecting tracks along the former Conrail mainline between Cleveland and Toledo. One is at Vermilion, the other at Oak Harbor. The result is that a CLE-TOL freight train doesn't have to go via Sandusky anymore though most do since it is a faster, more direct route. But some of the non-time sensitive traffic, like unit coal/grain/ore trains and manifest freights might go via the newly opened route through Bellevue. More could go that way if more passing sidings plus some capacity in the Bellevue vicinity is added. But, in effect, the bypass of Sandusky Bay has already been opened up by these two track connections. And it can serve as a third main track for a large portion (roughly half) of the CLE-TOL segment. Remaining third mains can be built from Oak Harbor to just east of Toledo (22 miles) and from Vermilion to Cleveland via Berea (38 miles). Although nearly 20 of the 38 miles between Vermilion and Cleveland has passing sidings or secondary tracks along it that could be linked up and upgraded to create the third main.

Now THAT is a streetscape!!

Excellent responses.

Starting a thread is easy to do. Just go the page where all the transportation topics are listed. Toward the upper right-hand side of the page, you will see a tab marked "New topic." Click on that. Then, fill in the blanks.

Public to hear ideas for Bowling Green aquatic center Toledo Blade, 3/8/07 The first of three public meetings will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday in the Simpson Building on Conneaut Avenue. The other two meetings will be held at 7 p.m. March 13 and 15 at the same location. At the meetings, Michelle Grigore, Bowling Green Parks and Recreation director, will do a PowerPoint presentation showing various indoor and outdoor aquatic facilities, present cost analysis, and gauge public support. "I want to make sure we're all on the same page and moving ahead because it's going to cost people money," she said. In a 2005 survey, residents said they wanted an outdoor pool and an indoor aquatic facility but no new taxes. That's not going to happen, Ms. Grigore said.

I can tell you about it. It's called the South of The Lake Bypass, and Indiana DOT did a study on a it a couple of years ago. Amtrak also quietly bought some property to implement it in the hopes that federal funding would be available to finish the job. Of course, the federal funds never materialized. The actual routing uses a former Michigan Central (later NYC, P-C and then Conrail) line west of Porter and south of the Norfolk Southern mainline. It included putting the Michigan corridor trains on a flyover above the NS main as well as over the CSX main (twice -- once in the area of Willow Creek east of Gary and the other near Clark Junction west of Gary). From Hammond into Chicago, additional tracks would be laid next to the NS main with another flyover built at Englewood. The Englewood flyover was/is part of CREATE. I believe the cost of the South of the Lake Bypass was about $1 billion.

When are these fuckos going to realize that there is no free market in the transportation system? Start by eliminating the roughly $300 billion in federal subsidies annually to domestic oil exploration and production firms and watch the price of gas more than double (and that $300 billion doesn't include military protection of vital oil shipping routes). Once that happens, give me a call to see how people are choosing to travel and where they are choosing to live. Then we'll work on eliminating or equalizing other subsidies so travel modes can compete more equally without the massive governmental distortion of the free market that once existed in transportation.

Aw, c'mon! Go ahead and post the scale image. Pretty cool project.

Great stuff. I like this one, but don't recognize where it is...

Good night, Cleveland Quarries. Hello SOS (Same Old Sprawl) to justify the county's expense.

mrnyc, do you get a commission every time you use an emoticon?

I don't think it's bullshit at all. When: > 25 percent of Cleveland households don't have a car (more than 50 percent don't have cars in some poorer neighborhoods like Kinsman) > only 8 percent of the region's available jobs are within a 40 minute public transportation trip and > 60 percent of the government-assistance recipients are in the core city and 70 percent of the new jobs are in the exurbs ...you're going to have a very tough economic situation for inner city residents. This isn't just an economic situation. It's matter of civil rights. But, hey, let's go build another friggin' highway interchange in the exurbs (Avon).

Thanks. The other media are probably still trying to figure exactly what the law says with respect to Steelyard Commons (as am I -- it's damned confusing!!). As for the column I wrote on the Inner Belt, it's posted at: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2438.msg168462#msg168462

I like the Sun version better. It's tighter and gets to the point more quickly. But, here's the original Train of Thought column... ________________ Train of Thought As one of the state's oldest urban interstate highways, downtown Cleveland's Inner Belt harkens back to a dark era in the history of American cities. The 1950s was a time when men like New York's Robert Moses or his Cleveland counterpart Cuyahoga County Engineer Albert Porter unabashedly sought to shred the nation's urban fabric. For more than a thousand years, cities worldwide thrived as places for people to meet – to conduct commerce, share ideas and make acquaintances. And as strange as it may seem today, much of that exchange happened in city streets where the pedestrian was king. There were street markets, endless storefronts, parades, rallies, speeches and ever-present conversations carried out between someone on the sidewalk and another in an upstairs window or balcony. The arrival of the streetcar only increased the pedestrian activity. To people like Albert Porter, that urban fabric needed shredding. He and others bought into General Motors' vision of "The City of Tomorrow" unveiled in 1939 at the New York World's Fair. In that same year, Paul Hoffman, president of the Studebaker Corp., was among the corporate titans who explained the need for the new urban vision. "If we are to have the full use of automobiles, cities must be remade," he said. Like his allies, Porter, the county's engineer from 1946 to 1977, went about the business of ripping up rail transit services, blocking construction of a voter-approved downtown subway, tearing down urban neighborhoods and replacing them with a patchwork of highways. Back then, it was reasoned that the best way to save a city neighborhood was to demolish it. Nearly a decade ago, the Ohio Department of Transportation announced it needed to rebuild the Inner Belt and was prepared to spend handsomely to do it. Downtown Cleveland's portion of Interstate 90 was one of the oldest, most congested and dangerous sections of interstate in Ohio. Planning for the project began with so much promise, but is ending as a symbol of all that is wrong with ODOT. Then-Cleveland Planning Director Hunter Morrison said it was an opportunity to shift ODOT dollars back to the city from the suburbs and restore urban neighborhoods that were sliced up by the highway two generations earlier. ODOT said it was openly encouraging any and all ideas for redesigning the highway. Some proposed adding lanes to the Inner Belt. Others suggested eliminating the highway's closely spaced ramps. Some wanted to shrink the land-gobbling Central Interchange to avail land for restoring neighborhoods lost to its spaghetti bowl of pavement. A few wanted I-90 relocated through University Circle, an idea that later morphed into a boulevard project called the Opportunity Corridor. There were non-highway ideas as well, but none were included by ODOT. The only exception was a cosmetic expansion of express bus services to suburban park-and-ride lots. More transformative solutions like commuter rail service were rejected by ODOT as too expensive. A hiking/biking path across the Inner Belt's Central Viaduct was tossed aside, even though 25 percent of Cleveland households don't have cars. Extending the dead-end, light-rail Waterfront Line to create a downtown rail loop also was rejected because it wouldn't affect the Inner Belt's dominant source of traffic – suburbanites commuting downtown. And, at a brainstorming session when EcoCity Cleveland's David Beach proposed adding downtown housing units so more people could walk to work, ODOT officials appeared dumfounded. They stood silently as though Mr. Beach was an alien and had just spoken in his native tongue. ODOT wasn't in the business of altering land-use, they countered. Every project ODOT does alters land use, replied Mr. Beach to deaf ears. Furthermore, ODOT never considered massing all of the non-highway options into a single package to determine their collective impact on improving the city's economic, social and environmental conditions. It only counted the people driving their cars (and paying their gas taxes). Worse for Cleveland, ODOT placed greater emphasis on reducing access ramps to the central business district and pushing the Inner Belt's congestion onto city streets. ODOT won't be fostering a populous, walkable, 24-hour downtown laced with bicycle paths, looped by a light-rail line, fed by thousands of daily commuter-train riders and accessed by motorists from a rebuilt but de-emphasized downtown highway. Instead, ODOT will spend $1.5 billion over the next 15 years so that motorists can drive more quickly from one side of Cleveland to the other. The highway will be wider, have a more complex labyrinth of ramps along it, be a more significant barrier between urban neighborhoods and result in the demolition of 19 buildings. Albert Porter is probably rolling in his grave, laughing his derrière off. END

Thanks all. Yes, I chopped it down. It was originally a "Train of Thought" column in the All Aboard Ohio newsletter. But IMHO, it needed to be read by more people. So I used it for my Write of Way column in Sun. I didn't chop it much, but at 25 column inches, it was still a little long for Sun (20 is typical). Fortunately, it ran without further deletions. But the original Train of Thought column was about 30 column inches.

My favorite is the GM commercial showing their cars lifting up out of the stifling traffic congestion and "flying" above all the other stopped cars. I need to videotape that commercial for posterity, and to remember it for the ridiculous lengths the automakers are willing to go to convince people that, even when stuck in a horrific traffic jam, they are still free.

Here's what the law says... In the Ohio Revised Code, Sec. 4981.04 (A) "The Ohio Rail Development Commission shall prepare a plan for the construction and operation of an intercity conventional or high speed passenger transportation system in this state. The system shall be constructed and operated by the commission. The plan for construction and operation shall be based on existing studies, and shall state that the system's initial route will connect Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati and any points in between those cities determined by the commission..." It doesn't say the first passenger trains provided through the ORDC's actions shall link the 3-Cs. It says that in the ORDC's plans, there needs to be some text in there saying the first route will be the 3-C Corridor. If Amtrak wants to extend trains to Ohio irrespective of the Ohio Hub planning process, and ORDC financially supports those efforts as an action separate of Ohio Hub, that's entirely legal.

By Eileen Blass, USA TODAY file Commuter Scott Clinton steps on an express train at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia heading to Paoli, Pa., in this 2006 USA TODAY file photo. Congress and the White House are in rare agreement that it makes sense to expand Amtrak service where demand is the greatest. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-09-amtrak_N.htm Amtrak may expand with federal funds USA TODAY March 9, 2007 By Raju Chebium, Gannett News Service WASHINGTON — States could receive millions of dollars from Washington beginning next year — for the first time — to run more trains between cities within 400 miles of each other.

Are we still fighting the Cleveland Bridge War of 1837? :shoot: