KJP

Thanks CDM -- Constantly Depressing Man. We're happy for Shaker Heights, too. Actually, when I saw Gary/Hammond on the list, I thought the most-progressive list had ended and the "contra list" had begun.

Worth visiting the source web page to see the interesting pictures, including the one of the billboard.... __________________ THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR from the December 21, 2006 edition Railroad boom hits environmental, 'not in my backyard' snags As US railroads try to meet demand and reduce reliance on trucks, landowners and environmentalists worry about pollution. By Ron Scherer | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor PICACHO, ARIZ. – From his ostrich ranch, Rooster Cogburn looks out over a broad mesa covered with cactuses, pecan groves, and alfalfa. In the distance, the granite summit of Picacho Peak towers over the Sonoran desert. "It's beautiful. It's tranquil. No one lives out there," he says. But, the view could be changing. Read more at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1221/p01s02-ussc.html

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/jan/01/interview-dallas-filmmaker-dean-terry/ Monday, January 1, 2007 An interview with Subdivided filmmaker Dean Terry Isolation by design By John P. Meyer In his academic guise, Dean Terry is Assistant Professor of Aesthetic Studies in the Art & Technology program at UTD. Further, he is Director of the Online Worlds Lab, which has something to do with a metaverse which recently premiered a totally non-real (in the taking-up-physical-space sense) art gallery. Kind of like a museum within a dream made e-flesh. More to the current topic, Dean is a filmmaker with something to say about the character and quality of modern living, and the spaces we as a society design for it. Dean's latest project, Subdivided, airs on KERA at 8 p.m. Wednesday night. Subdivided takes an informed look at the current state of suburban life, concentrating on the way architectural and community design affect people and their social interactions. The film contrasts new residential developments, such as those emerging from the prairie on the far commuter fringes of the metroplex, with older communities where historic, character-rich homes are being gradually replaced by cookie cutter McMansions, or "starter castles," as one of his interview subjects colorfully refers to them. If you live in a gated community or a new suburban development and find yourself feeling isolated and strangely removed from any sense of community; if you can't understand why nobody on your block spends time outside, or smiles at you when you bump into them, or bothers to introduce themselves; if you're tired of worrying about global warming and the war in Iraq and the bird flu and the imminent collapse of the global economy (and who is not?), then here's a new ill to consider: the design of your residential neighborhood and the very house (or castle) you live in may be adversely affecting your interaction skills, and those of your family. It might even be contributing to the local crime rate. With all this in mind after viewing a pre-release version of Subdivided on DVD, I had an opportunity to meet with Dean Terry and ask him a few questions. PegasusNews: Was it your personal experience as a homeowner that led you to move forward with this project? Dean Terry: I grew up in Little Forest Hills. That was the 'hood for me. I used to hike the creeks with friends. That was my stomping ground 'til college. When I moved back to the Dallas area (after living in California), one of my first experiences with people in my new subdivision was when I saw this guy across the street mowing his lawn. I figured this would be a good opportunity to introduce myself, but as I walked across the street and the guy saw me, he turned and mowed his way into he back yard. This is by no means something isolated to North Texas - during research for the film I learned about attitudes like this all over the U.S. in suburban residential areas. Anger is a great motivator. I was angry because I came back (to Dallas), had settled down, was ready to make a family. I was ready to settle in and be part of the community. But there was no community. First I was mad at the people (in the neighborhood). I was ready to scream at them. Then I learned that there were macro reasons inherent in the philosophy and execution of neighborhood design that were directly responsible for their isolationist behavior. The interaction dynamic functioned in a fashion similar to that of apartment complexes; I could tell there was something broken. Through research into community design, I found ways that the problem could be corrected: by designing communities better to begin with, and by looking around for examples of how to build stronger communities. As I watched people trying to build a stronger community over the course of making the film, my dominant emotion changed from anger to inspiration. It's not a bad thing to want to be somewhat insular & isolated, but I think most people want some kind of connection, and to feel a sense of place. PN: In regard to Little Forest Hills: you've shown that there are certainly some eccentric people in that neighborhood. DT: Not a freak show, but to show that people feel a freedom to express themselves. And that's kind of oppressive, when people don't feel any comfort at all, not even to go outside. It's happening everywhere. How you design things affects everything, especially the community. If you just come in and build something so that it will sell - you do have the right to do that, but you don't know how it will affect the community. People get upset, leave. Communities are very fragile. Connections start to crack. PN: Where was the subdivision that you moved to when you returned to Dallas, where you found the neighbors to be so insular? DT: I debated whether to mention that in the film and decided not to. It was the Bent Tree area. PN: When you began the film project, who was your target audience? Do you feel that the PBS viewing audience is perfect for a film like Subdivided? DT: I want people who live in those places to be able to identify what's happening, and to know there are other ways to design places. You should tell your city councilperson to get themselves educated, to understand that you don't have to build the same kind of subdivision sprawl-pattern all through Frisco or wherever they're going. A lot of developers actually know about these things. I interview a really good one in there, Bill Gietema... they actually understand it. They're fighting against the zoning. The whole system is set up to be very, very efficient, but it's all based on this idea of how you're supposed to build things. It's really destructive to community. You drive long distances, you go to school over here and you go to work way over here. The new urbanists who I introduce in the film, the leading new urbanist says, 'No! We want to do all those things together, we want to be able to walk.' So I want people in those neighborhoods to see it. It's happening! You get these people together - I've seen them at conferences - they listen, they learn, but it's turning this machine around, this engine that's been going in the same direction for so long. I think the PBS audience will be very receptive to it, of course. I shot 60 hours (of video), and I'll have a lot of it, for free, on the net: YouTube and Google, so I"ll have a bunch of other content that's just out there. There's this fun thing out there now with Fred Curchack, the well-known performance artist in town - I had him reenact road rage. I couldn't use it in the film but he did such a great job I had to keep it and it's on the web. It's sort of making fun of the whole road rage thing. One day just as almost a performance piece myself I had a friend drive me during traffic - because I never do that - at 4:30 or 5 p.m. from downtown all the way to as far as the suburbs go, all the way up 75, just to feel that thing, and it's an awful thing - it's really awful. So there's one of the best arguments right there for changing the layout of a community. Just do that. PN: If the current state of things collapses, new urbanism gains favor and destinations aren't spread out all over the map, do you see a great contracting taking place? Will people retreat to the urban areas? DT: I don't know. There's different ideas about that. I'm not really an expert on how that would happen. That's an economics question. I think you'd see them trying to make it so most of the things they do are much closer to each other. That's the basic idea. The extreme view is maybe James Howard Kunstler's, who's written a well-known book called The Long Emergency. His theory is basically energy prices are gonna get completely out of hand. Even if part of his idea is right it's gonna get much harder and much more expensive to keep these places, and to drive, and all the energy costs. PN: How about Desperate Housewives? The folks on Wisteria Lane manage to operate under subdivision rules and yet remain neighborly; they know each other by name, etc. How do you explain it? DT: Well, some of them (subdivisions) work, I'm not saying they're all like that, just because they're newer. It's really like dependent on the people who are there and how much leadership is in the area. That's why I showed Little Forest Hills as an example. It's almost like the tone, the neighborhood style - if you live there, you feel like you have to match the style - if everyone's cold and indifferent, that's the way you're going to be. For the most part you're gonna do the same thing or get really mad like I did. Some people like to have their fences really high and not say "hello" to anybody, and that's O.K., but not everyone wants that. This house I moved into right next to UTD over here has much lower fences. It's really kinda nice. You can see around, see everybody. And there's no trees to contribute to privacy. The leadership thing is really important. Every neighborhood has their neighborhood association; some of them can certainly be oppressive, but sometimes... I want some of those people to see the film, because the ones in the neighborhood where I was (Bent Tree), I don't think got it at all. There was a higher and higher crime rate over there, constantly, and the response is, you know, more security systems, big bars on the windows, instead of what like Robert Putnam says, the leading social scientist in this whole area, who I interviewed - he has this thing in there, the number one determiner for the crime rate is how many people in the neighborhood know each others' first names. Not how many police, not how many alarms - we need to figure out ways to strengthen our community bonds, rather than figure out ways to create higher walls and more gates and all those kinda things. It just doesn't work: all you do is lock yourself in and become more fearful, and what you really should be striving for is to be more open to each other, rather than more closed. So in Little Forest Hills, their leadership style is wholly inclusive - it's the opposite, and it's worked! I show Scot Williams down there, who's one of the leaders, and MAN does he work hard! They have 8 or 12 that are very engaged, maybe 20 or 30 that are sort of engaged... they all kind of cycle in and out as to whoever's really on fire, so whoever those neighborhood leaders are, they have to kinda "get it." And I hope the film helps with that. PN: It seems so common sense, but apparently a lot of people don't get it. DT: The common reaction is "more gates, more fences" - there's a misunderstanding at a fundamental level. The point is overcoming the design deficit - there's a design deficit that leads to dysfunction, and understanding that you really have that. It's like, "O.K, we understand that we can't walk anywhere, we understand there's no cafe, no store, no anything. The streets aren't walkable, they're dangerous." All those things are bad for the community. They're TERRIBLE! There's no parks. The problem is the people these city leaders go to first are people who work with traffic. So they figure out the traffic part first, what's good for cars and how that works, and then maybe they'll consider putting a crosswalk in or something. And it's sort of the opposite, really, of what it should be. PN: It's funny, speaking of creeks, I used to collect fossils, and the area around Las Colinas, for instance, is a great place to hunt because of the strata - and there's all these creeks cutting through the topsoil exposing the rock, but when you actually park your car out there and get out to walk around you immediately attract the attention of the cops - because you're not driving, you're actually out walking. And apparently you're infringing on some kind of sacred property rights, though nothing is actually posted. DT: Texas is a rough place to have... yeah, I grew up hiking around in the creeks too and I think that doing anything in nature that's not highly controlled nature seems very suspicious here. People wonder why land in California is so expensive, well there's a reason for that, a lot of the land has been left alone and not developed. You've gotta take care of what you have. PN: You mention isolation vs. community, and you talk about the neighborhood associations and such, but you don't really talk about church as an institution that might contribute to pulling people together. DT: There's quite a few of those: things I didn't mention at all, but I did give a lot of thought to church, and in fact I went to one, hung out in one, a big one, a huge thing that looks like an aircraft hangar - Prestonwood Baptist, a GIGANTIC thing - it looks like another airport. It's huge. It's a megachurch. I did go there and sorta hang out. I think churches can be good and bad: I think they can be good if they're inclusive, open, helpful and provide a center for community activity. When we were in Little Forest Hills, the churches there allowed the community groups to meet there and do things. They even showed my film when it premiered in Little Forest Hills in the main part of one of these churches, which was weird for me because I haven't gone to a traditional church in a long time - but it was nice of them to do that, and they were very helpful. But at the same time, and Robert Putnam talks about this, churches can also be very divisive. They can have a lot of views that lead to separation from one another. And I think, to be blunt, some of the Southern Baptist churches do just that. You know, they're not inclusive of gays, things like that, not good. And they have a long history of that. Robert Putnam says there's "bonding social capital" and "bridging social capital" - they're really good at bonding, but not very good at reaching out to people and bridging. Some churches, not all. To do that in the film would have taken so much time, I just didn't deal with it. I will put some of it on the web - in fact I"ll probably write a little piece about this and put it on the web, to provide filler. Because the other big thing is media. One of the biggest reasons we are so isolated is because of media, television, things like that. I'm big on technology, and design can connect people and design can separate people. People design cell phones, iPods, interfaces, software, everything - and so I'm real concerned right now, my next project is technology that connects us, rather than disconnects us. So I'm gonna have a section on the web that deals with media, I interviewed one of the leading media critics, and I'll put that online, but it was just too much to bite off (for this film). PN: That's you narrating the film, right? DT: Yeah. It's highly annoying, but yes it's me. I wanted to have a personal voice in there. As bad as my voice is, I wanted to have it in there. PN: I didn't think it was bad at all. But it is recognizably you. DT: And just on that note, that's the whole point. The thing in the program that I do, the emerging media program, is establishing or empowering authentic personal voices. The film is trying to be that. This is my little experience. It's not journalism, it's not objective, it's not any of those things. It's my view, my little experience over a three year period: there it is. PN: It came across that way. I see you did the music for the film. What's your musical background, that would prepare you for that part of the project? DT: I've had a recording studio, I've produced records out in California, and I've made recordings of myself since 1985 up at UNT - I studied music at UNT, so I have a long history of making recordings. PN: Yeah, you were really jammin' there on the last tune in the closing credits. DT: All a capella guitar - just a guitar and no other instruments, but for the next film - I've built my studio up again. This one, the music is very minimalist, just for time's sake, 'cause I could spend a year or more, just on music. I'm very meticulous with the music. So instead of being meticulous I thought I'd be more improvisational. PN: I thought it was great. I enjoyed it. DT: Thank you. Wait for the CD! No, I'm just kidding. PN: Where does a $1 billion sports stadium fit into the new urbanism scheme of things? DT: That's an ugly question. I'll have to think about that. That sounds like an Andres Duany question. I have no idea. I'm not gonna answer, but thanks for warning me on that one - that and the Desperate Housewives question, I'll have to be prepared for those. PN: There's an artsy "unsteadicam" video sequence in the middle of the film where you're tracing a white stripe across an empty parking lot, the camera's floating along, and then it tracks up a light pole. DT: Most of the video I've done for a long time is very experimental, and so I wanted to have some of those elements in there wherever I could have them. The visual part was very important to me, how it looks... especially the non-people part. I really tried to work hard with the camera work and did almost 98% of it myself. PN: It flowed really well. That part in the parking lot made me sit up and take notice. DT: That comes out of my experimental background - that's really like a performance art piece, with me going to the parking lot - I call it 'drawing a line' - I use it in my classes, I tell my students to go out and draw a line with their video cameras. It's just a way to get away from the voices and the ideas and see something purely visual. Like an interlude. My other favorite shot is during the parade sequence, where Gary Griffith is up there talking, and I pull backwards past all the kids on their bikes. If you watch it - it goes by pretty quick - all the stuff (like kids getting on their bikes and riding off) happens at just the right moment. I was walking backwards and not looking behind me and just going. I spent a lot of time just hanging out in parking lots and weird places way up north, and stuff like that. The project actually got started with still photography. I was so assaulted by the environment, now I'm sort of used to it, which is scary, I HATE being used to it, but I was like, 'Wow, it's so stark!' So I just went around with my camera when we first moved here and just took pictures, like the backs of Targets, these houses with no trees, all this stuff. PN: I like the photo used on the DVD jacket (pre-release version), in the parking lot, with the single tree growing out of the middle of all the concrete. DT: That's my favorite photograph. It's a parking lot up in Frisco. PN: It says a lot, all by itself. DT: It's my favorite photo, that's why it's on there. And so I took lots of photos like that... and that's before I knew it was gonna be a film. Quotes from Subdivided interviewees: WILLIAM GIETEMA JR.: "Homebuilders are looking for as few regulations as possible, and they're not interested in offering a lot of choices." JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER ON THE CURRENT STATE OF SUBURBIA: "It's a cartoon of country life in a cartoon of a country house. The dirty secret of it is it's very disappointing. It's less clear where 'home' is. We live our lives in big triangles (going from home to work to shopping areas), and the triangles have gotten much larger." ROBERT PUTNAM: "For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more and more connected with one another. And then suddenly, mysteriously, in the mid- to late-60's, all across America, people began doing all these things less. There's a big change in the degree to which American communities are connected with each other." ANDRES DUANY: "We Americans know about design, except when in comes to architecture. In architecture, we're completely incompetent. The American example is a bad example for the rest of the world." ________________________ Also see some film clips at the bottom of the webpage where this interview came from.... http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/jan/01/interview-dallas-filmmaker-dean-terry/

There was no other property he could find within a mile or less of his desired Cleveland location? Something isn't being said here....

And I don't understand why the MarshAllan building (post demolition) on West 85th Street couldn't be the site of new residential construction. I don't think it's isolated from other residential. It's in a narrow plot of land between residential areas, is next to a new drug store and, like MGD says, could be a good spot for a Red Line station. This is one that should be given more open-minded thought.

http://www.therealdeal.net/issues/JANUARY_2006/1136235729.php January 2006 National Market Report Phoenix tops nation in housing appreciation Phoenix remains one of the most lucrative housing markets in the U.S. The city's metro area led the nation in housing appreciation during the third quarter as well as during the 12 months ending Sept. 30, according to data from the Office of Federal Enterprise Oversight. During the third quarter, the housing of the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale area appreciated 8.32 percent, and during the 12 months, it appreciated 34.37 percent – well ahead of the national averages of 2.86 percent for the quarter and 12.02 percent for the year. The desert city also leads the nation in drawing condo converters, according to the Slatin Report. During 2005, investors spent $1.3 billion to convert 11,862 units – an increase of 1,384 percent from 2004's $91.9 million spent for 961 conversions. -- Atlanta Residential/Commercial Developers of one of Atlanta's most prominent high-end residential projects announced that the 26-story St. Regis hotel and condo complex would open in 2008 in the Buckhead neighborhood. Starwood Properties said the project will include 150 high-end hotel rooms, plus a spa, two restaurants, butler service, and a 9,200-square-foot ballroom with an assembly hall, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The complex on West Paces Ferry Road will also include 50 condos averaging about 4,000 square feet each and priced at more than $2 million a unit. Boston Residential A cooling housing market in Massachusetts has pushed brokers to use selling incentives not seen in the Bay State in more than a decade, the Boston Globe reported. As of mid-November, there were 25,656 houses for sale in Massachusetts, 39 percent more than were on the market the same time in late 2004, according to MLS Property Information Network. This overabundance has driven brokers, the Globe reported, to offer buyers free plasma TVs and other deal sweeteners. Also, brokerages are now giving their agents cash bonuses for selling properties that are sitting on the market. Residential As the market for houses continued to weaken in and around Boston as 2005 disappeared, the condo market in the area actually remained strong. Condo sales were up 15 percent in October over October 2004, the Globe reported, and the median price of the 1,777 units sold in October was 0.5 percent higher than September's $271,350. Chicago Residential Even before the year ended, 2005 was a record for the downtown Chicago housing sales market. During the first three quarters of 2005, 6,937 housing units were sold downtown, the Chicago Tribune reported, the highest annual total since the downtown building boom started in 1997. In all of 2004, 6,298 units were sold. The numbers include newly constructed condos and townhouses, redeveloped lofts, and rental conversions. Residential A planned 71-story skyscraper could transform the south end of Chicago's Magnificent Mile. The skyscraper, a hotel-condo hybrid, would replace the north tower of the InterContinental Chicago hotel on Michigan Avenue, according to the Chicago Tribune. If approved by the city, construction on the skyscraper could start in mid-2007. Las Vegas Commercial At least seven malls are planned or under construction in the Las Vegas Valley. They include the 1.5-million-square-foot Great Mall of Las Vegas being built at the corner of U.S. 95 and Interstate 215 and set to open in 2008, according to the Las Vegas Sun. Also planned are the Summerlin Centre and another yet-unnamed mall in the southwestern part of the valley, the Sun reported; both are slated for 1 million square feet. The biggest new mall – the 1.7-million-foot Town Square at the intersection of Interstates 15 and 215 – is expected to open in mid-2007, with 250,000 square feet also planned for offices. Los Angeles Residential Los Angeles' housing market didn't collapse toward the end of 2005 – but it did level off. The median price was still up by more than 21 percent compared to the same period in 2004, according to the California Association of Realtors. But month to month, the tale of the market was different: Sales declined more than 22 percent from September to October, and the median price dropped 0.6 percent, too. Commercial The Los Angeles office market should continue to tighten in 2006. Net absorption in the L.A. area office market in the third quarter totaled 3.3 million square feet and the overall vacancy rate dropped to 11.3 percent from 12.6 percent the quarter before, according to a report from Colliers Seeley International. With the area's economy expected to stay healthy, demand for office space, the report said, should remain strong for at least another 10 months. Memphis Commercial As the market for Class A space tightens in Memphis, the city may be headed this year for a rare office building boom. The availability rate for Class A space in the 385 Corridor reached 10.4 percent by the end of the third quarter, according to a report from CB Richard Ellis; for East Memphis, the city's other major commercial district, the rate was 6.2 percent. These vacancy rates are the lowest that the Memphis office market has seen in years, the Memphis Business Journal reported, fueling speculation that the city will see fresh Class A construction as current space continues to disappear. Miami Residential The once mighty South Florida housing market cooled decisively as 2005 drew to a close. Like most of the nation, the market there had been coming down off record highs since the summer, but it was data for October that really turned heads. Sales of existing single-family homes plunged 48 percent in Miami-Dade County and 44 percent in Broward County compared to the same month in 2004, according to data from the Florida Association of Realtors. These were some of the steepest monthly declines in recent memory, the Miami Herald reported. Commercial Western Broward County is one of South Florida's most active areas for new office construction. More than 912,000 square feet of office buildings were in various stages of development in the area toward the end of 2005, the South Florida Business Journal reported. The average rent for Broward's 26.8 million square feet of office space was $24.90 a foot, with rents in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, the county's biggest city, at $28.51 a foot. Philadelphia Residential Philadelphia's also-ran status among major East Coast cities may actually benefit its housing market this year. With the current median price of a house in the city roughly half that of a house in Washington or New York, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, price growth in Philadelphia could be near 10 percent in 2006, even as the rest of the nation is expected to see a price growth of 5 percent. Plus, the Inquirer reported, Philadelphia's job market is generally strong and its housing market doesn't have the same speculation-driven investor interest as places like Las Vegas or Miami. San Francisco Commercial It's a foreign investor's market when it comes to commercial real estate in San Francisco. Foreign and institutional investors dominated the office sales market there in 2005, investing nearly $2 billion in it as of the end of November. About 54 percent of all office buyers in San Francisco were both institutional and foreign, the San Francisco Business Journal reported. REITs and other publicly traded entities made up 17 percent of the year's purchases – leaving private owners with the remaining 29 percent. That's a decidedly different breakdown than the rest of the nation, according to the Journal, where one-third of office buyers were foreign or institutional in 2005 as of early December. Washington, D.C. Residential/Commercial More than $1.5 billion in office, housing, and retail development was recently completed, is planned, or is under construction along the long-neglected H Street corridor from North Capitol to Blandensburg Road and 17th Street NE. The corridor, according to the Washington Post, never fully recovered after the 1968 riots. Now, though, more than 30 new shops and various developments, including the Security and Exchange Commission's new 1.5-million-square-foot headquarters, are either done or going up along H Street.

I wish I could have gotten that tidbit into the second installment of the Zaremba piece (which comes out tomorrow). I would love to know who is the buyer and what is the combined square footage of the penthouses he/she purchased. I have building floor plans that I can scan and post. Unfortunately they're at the office and I don't have access to them here at home.

I didn't realize NKP did that on such a short-distance market, but as I write this, I recall seeing in Pennsylvania RR timetables that the PRR offered set-out sleepers between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. My father traveled with his father between Cleveland and New York City on New York Central, and boarded a set-out sleeper at Cleveland Union Terminal. They never felt the car being switched onto a New York City-bound passenger train. When they woke up in the morning, they raised the blinds to reveal the banks of the Hudson River speeding by their window. Now that's civility. For that to work on Amtrak, I think some attention has to be paid to increasing the capacity of the existing freight railroads and get contracts with them that are based on fully allocated costs rather than the so-called "avoidable costs" their existing contracts are based on. And the set-out sleepers might work best for travelers going from Chicago to Cleveland because the time difference means having to wake up awfully early to catch a flight at Midway or O'Hare to make an early meeting in Cleveland (or fly the night before and spend a night in a Cleveland hotel). Amtrak could offer joint ticketing with an airline so travelers could take the train in one direction and fly in the other, and still get the round-trip discount.

Yeah, yeah. I'm just holding out for more global warming so I can save the expense.

Hey, it's daylight service! :clap:

http://www.innerbelt.org/Lakefrontwest/LakefrontProjectOverview.htm http://www.gcbl.org/planning/lakefront/lakefront-west-project Yes, it does include those things. Very little new right of way is needed, as it will involve capacity enhancements to also benefit traffic-clogged freight railroads. Unfortunately, the freight railroads do not earn enough revenue to afford enough capital investment to meet their needs for growth. In fact, they are having to turn away customers. Thus, the Ohio Hub isn't just about passenger rail but freight rail as well. Here's the website... http://www.dot.state.oh.us/ohiorail/Ohio%20Hub/Website/ordc/index.html Here are threads about the Ohio Hub System and the growth in freight rail traffic.... http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1414.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=9389.0 There is no passenger train service between the 3Cs. The reason is that Ohio is the most densely populated state without a passenger rail development program. The state spends nothing on passenger rail, while all our neighboring states except Indiana have active passenger rail development programs. A dozen states with less density than Ohio have such rail programs. In fact, Ohio has only three Amtrak routes, just five trains per day for the entire state serving seven stations in Ohio. All are Chicago - East Coast routes, and all have their trains passing through Ohio in the middle of the night, making them essentially useless to Ohioans. Please cite an independent source (university, TRB, USDOT, etc) for this alleged "fact." Here's a better one, from individual transit agencies reporting their annual ridership data.... A double-tracked light-rail line, when built responsibly as a planning tool to reshape land use in more compact ways, carries 40,000 to 80,000 riders per day (see St. Louis, Portland, Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego etc.). The eight-lane Inner Belt highway bridge in downtown Cleveland carries 120,000 vehicles per day (per ODOT's Craig Hebebrand). Now I'm not going to take that 120,000 and divide it by eight and say that one lane has a 15,000-vehicle per day capacity. It might have more or less without the availability of the parallel lane. But all of this is a myopic issue anyway. That point is to decide what kind of cities we want to have and then design the kind of transportation system that's needed to support it. But too often, people act as if this is "social engineering." Um, people decide the shape and form of cities. They're not acts of God. Excuse me, but who "belongs" in cities? And it is always a question a perception of what is "cool" that influences people's choices. It was "cool" after World War II to have a determines wAnd how are American highways substandard and dangerous? Certainly not in their availability and extent. I would argue that the U.S. has an oversupply of highways compared to the rest of the developed world. Now, I would agree that U.S. highways are substandard in their construction. They simply aren't built to last like those in Europe. But then, Europe doesn't allow 80,000-pound trucks on their roads. U.S. highways, while safer than secondary roads with intersections, are designed for speed and volume, which carries their own safety issues. I'm not sure where this debate is going however. I'd rather dicuss what kind of state we would like to have, and what kind of cities we want in that state. Then, we should debate how we want to design our transportation system to support that vision. Otherwise we're just pissing into the wind.

Litt probably complained about the design of the mountain, too. I shouldn't say that, though. I like Steve and I don't count him as part of the problem at the PD. If other writers were more like him, I think readers would have a better sense of the good things going on in this town.

Here was my solution: I moved to a walkable, densely populated neighborhood with lots of restaurants, grocery stores, drug stores, banks, video stores and a post office that are all within a 10-minute walk or a 2-minute drive. Much more is accessible by bicycle. And for trips outside my neighborhood, I have seven bus routes (one a community circulator and another running 24 hours) plus a rail transit line that gets me across town in 30 minutes or to the airport in 20. Three bus routes take me past the Greyhound station downtown. I also augmented my condo's natural gas heating with electric panel heaters and put better weatherstripping on my windows. Next stop, get the condo association to install solar panels and a wind turbine or two on our building's roof. Since we're close to Lake Erie and the roof is seven stories up, we get strong winds year round. But the strongest winds are in winter when the sun doesn't shine that often. Do smart things for your own situation. If more of us made smarter choices, the impact on energy consumption (and our own pocketbooks) would be dramatic.

How do explain Chicago's leasing of the Skyway? I know they had a fiscal crunch, but there's a million ways to skin a cat. Even more ironically, there are Democrats in the Illinois state assembly sponsoring legislation to lease toll roads in other parts of the state and use the proceeds to pay for transportation improvements, including expanded, higher-speed passenger train services.

The next meeting I would hope many of you will attend is the 9 a.m. Jan. 16 full board committee meeting where RTA's board will decide if it will support efforts to improvement transit in the West Shore Corridor (commuter rail, express bus, transit-oriented development around stations, etc.). This was put on the board's agenda by GM Joe Calabrese so that RTA's representative to NOACA's board will know how to vote when a request to NOACA for funding of an alternatives analysis comes up. I encourage anyone with an interest to attend and speak up. This could be a great opportunity!

By the way, I want to emphasize that I'm glad Seicer is here and posting on this subject. What good is it to have a bunch of us transit/urban geeks bitching to each other about the state of the state without an opposing viewpoint? I find that I'm able to adjust or refine my presentations and articles on cities, transit and intercity rail when I hear people from another side of the argument question what I'm saying. That's when I learn the most.

I-71 is fine for those who can afford reliable cars and are not aged or disabled. There are more than a half-million Ohioans in metro areas (I do not have non-metro data) who do own cars, and many more surely do not trust the reliability of their cars to make trips outside of familiar areas. There are also 1.5 million Ohioans who are 65 years old or older -- more than the entire populations of 12 states. The number of elderly Ohioans is only going to go up in the coming years as the Baby Boom generation ages. And then there are those who are physically disabled. I-71 may or may not be efficient, but driving is not an efficient use of a business traveler's time. Having a fast train that does no worse than the same door-to-door travel time as driving still saves time because the business traveler can prepare for a meeting, conduct post-meeting follow-up, eat and drink, or catch up on some rest while speeding through a snowstorm at 100 mph. And while I-71 was widened to increase throughput capacity in the most affordable way (paving its median), the next way to add capacity will likely be to go outside the existing right of way. That of course means property acquisitions, demolitions and earthmoving -- a far more expensive proposition than the $500 million ODOT just spent to widen I-71 to three lanes. That doesn't even take into account normal inflation, let alone the energy price-induced spikes in steel, asphalt and general construction costs. Over the past 50 years, I think we've built all the highways Ohio needs. I'll even argue that we've built too many of them, exacerbating urban sprawl, causing the premature obsolesence of existing communities, economic isolation of the poor, and forcing unecessary costs on communities. Those include costs to handle storm water runoff from too much paved land, extra safety forces to handle vehicle-related emergencies and traffic control, and environmental regulations from worsening air quality. So there.

I hate to give this answer: but it's likely a combination. I was downtown for the holiday lighting ceremony. We stayed for a couple hours afterwards, and there were good crowds in the Arcade and on East 4th (prior to the Corner Alley's opening). I'm sure a factor in the size of the lingering crowds we saw was the 50+ degree weather, too. My only concern is that downtown's population hasn't grown enough to have more than one MAJOR nightlife district be successful at one time. We saw the Flats fade when the Warehouse District emerged. Will the Warehouse District fade as East 4th keeps adding venues. But I think the difference is that the Warehouse District has more housing, office and hotel (nearby) uses than the Flats East Bank ever did. Same goes for East 4th. It can draw from daytime and nighttime populations, as well as visitors. Like the Corner Alley's partner said in an article I wrote, East 4th is getting pretty close to its critical mass, and it's showing.

Is there a museum nearby? If not, how about leasing it to a local historical society? Or, you could always let them use it for free and then write off your costs of ownership/maintenance of the donated space on your income tax filing -- as long as they're a 501©(3) educational organization.

I used to, but my friend at the Dispatch now works for worthy causes.

It started in November of 1998 and ended in February 2003.

It was a long transition though. When I was living in Geauga County, I became friends with someone in Bay Village in 1989-90. When I drove over to the west side, I remember seeing a Sohio gas station in Rocky River that went from its red, white and blue logo sign to a Sohio sign that was green. A few months later or so, it went to the green BP sign. We called that transition the "greening" of Sohio.

Cities, townships whatever -- real estate. The fact is 200 square miles vs. 77 is an apple vs. an orange. But nice maps! Keep 'em coming.

And Cleveland is still 77 square miles while Columbus is now more than 200 square miles. Any city can grow in population when it eats other cities. Doesn't mean that it's growing in a sustainable way.

MyTwoSense -- please don't assume everyone is as wealthy as you. I can't afford to buy a home worth more than my existing condo ($60K). Come to think of it, I can't even afford this place! I've had to depend on credit cards to make ends meet and am sinking under $17,000 in credit card debt (plus the card with the larger balance just jacked up the interest rate to 19 percent!). I've sent out lots of resumes for jobs and even got a few interviews. Until I can get a better job, I'm stuck -- least of all not being able to buy new housing in Cleveland. And I know others in the same situation as me. We need the tax abatement if we're even going to be able to consider buying new housing in Cleveland. Singed, The Working Poor