KJP

Which article are you responding to? The one about John Carroll's expansion?

Good point. Is there a way they could account for that? In my book, you take a factory or office and make it residential, that has the same effect as new construction.

...Or your sky was as black as dusk but at midday (see Pittsburgh or St. Louis during WWII and at other busy economic times -- like some industrial cities in China are now).

Conrail demolished it. They did other station demolitions by moonlight to prevent communities from trying to save them. That almost worked in Aurora in the 1980s, where wrecking crews showed up one night to raze the Erie Depot, despite that the city was trying to buy it. A man living near the depot looked outside when he heard a front-end loader and saw what was happening. He knew the mayor and called him up. The mayor came with the police to depot in time to physically block the demolition crews. The depot still stands today.

How do you say it's misleading? How can you discount the long hauls' higher revenues because they have sleeping car and dining car revenue? That's like me discounting a car's fuel efficiency because it's a smaller vehicle. Sleeping cars and dining cars are an intrinsic feature -- as is the fact that passengers' average trip lengths are longer, seats stay occupied and produce revenue longer, and therefore generate more total revenue.

Please post news, ideas, suggestions and critiques concerning the Downtown Cleveland Alliance here -- including their ambassadors, cleaning crews, strategic planning process, website, programs and other activities. Frankly, I was surprised to learn today that DCA has a strategic planning process, and that at least one forumer is involved in that process. We need more transparency of the organization charged with making Cleveland's most prominent neighborhood more vibrant and this thread might be a good place to start that. For me, I would like to DCA take the lead in having more events downtown and seek out sponsorships for them. I remember the Sohio Riverfest in the 1980s, and those were a great success to draw more people, attention and business development to the Flats. IMHO, a wide variety of publicly engaging events are needed on a weekly basis downtown -- year-round. There are lots of great indoor spaces downtown that can be used for shaking off the winter blahs. We just need some organization to take the lead on bringing in multiple partners and sponsors for these, and the DCA comes to mind as the likely lead.

That photo is quite a commentary on the state of passenger rail in Ohio (and many other states).

The way I read the article, it does have something to do with expansion and other airport improvements.

Good report, though Yergin considers peak oil to be at worst something that's many decades away and at best a fallacy.

Note the Euro amounts in the last two paragraphs. One Euro = 1.3 US dollars. Never ceases to amaze me how much they invest in rail in Europe. ________________ http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=CES/06/112&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en 23 November 2006 EESC meets with Polish State Secretary for Transport, Mr. Boguslaw Kowalski, to push "Rail Baltica" ....... TEN-Transport funds are available only for rail and may be used for work studies, bottlenecks and cross border investments. The budget for the financial period 2007 2013 amounts to 5,6 billion EURO for the 30 priority projects of the EU, Rail Baltica being the only priority project in Poland. A much higher budget (more than 18 billion Euro) is available under the Cohesion fund from 2007-2013. Here Poland is free to decide the areas of investment it wants, be it road or rail, within the transport part of the Cohesion allocation. ###

Not what I expected. How do we turn this into a turnaround? _______________ from Cleveland.com Ohio ranked 1st for manufacturing ability 10:25 a.m. Ohio ranked first among all states in a research group's assessment of manufacturing competitiveness. The Chicago research firm, eMvoy, evaluated 100,000 companies on factors including technology, stability and Web presence, and then distilled that information to create the state rankings. The company rates manufacturers to sell its services to industrial purchasing agents. ... Top 10 states in manufacturing competitiveness 1. Ohio 2. Illinois 3. Michigan 4. Pennsylvania 5. Texas 6. Wisconsin 7. Minnesota 8. Indiana 9. New York 10. California SOURCE: eMvoy (for full list, click here http://www.emvoy.com/state/list.html )

RTA has funding in hand to replace the station, and will likely be relocated midway between Mayfield and Euclid, with walkways connecting to both travel corridors. But the Euclid/East 120th station has seen an increase in ridership since the opening of CWRU's campus village and the growth of the Cleveland Institute of Art next to the station. A link to Mayfield would provide an even bigger boost to ridership, like you said.

Hey, go easy on the guy. I knew what he meant. Thank him for the compliment of our fair city. But, yes, there's lots of abandonment along RTA's Red Line. It's why the line is carrying only 20,000 a day these days, compared to 60,000 in 1960. Back then, the rapid transit line cut through industrial areas where many tens of thousands of people worked, and neighborhoods where many more lived. Of course, me being the optimist, I few the abandonment as an opportunity to have a fresh start to build transit-oriented neighborhoods around stations. The problem is, the land isn't fresh. There's probably hundreds of Brownfields and even EPA Superfund sites along the transit line, from rotting factories, their discarded chemicals and even lead paint in older homes. But Battery Park shows us what can be done when Superfund sites are cleaned up. Too bad Brownfield and Superfund funding is pitifully tiny and the roster of polluted properties is so lengthy.

from Cleveland.com County board seeks Clean Ohio cash for Scranton Peninsula project Nov. 30, 2006 5:22 p.m. Cuyahoga County commissioners will ask the Clean Ohio Assistance Fund for $750,000 to help developers with a housing project on the Scranton Peninsula, which sits across the Cuyahoga River from Tower City Center.... By Henry J. Gomez, [email protected]

Here's three of them, right in a row... My clients actually prefer assless chaps, its really weird.

Please keep in mind that when Amtrak runs more than one train on a route, that second train doesn't cost twice as much to operate as the first one, but typically only 66 percent more. The third train may cost as little as 50 percent more, and so on. Those economies of scale aren't enjoyed by long-distance routes which often have only train per day on them -- and sometimes less (like the Cardinal through Cincinnati). And it bothers me when Northeasterners say: our trains are profitable while yours aren't. Well, whose accounting figures are you using? Amtrak's? Their accounting system has already been discredited as totally misleading and unreliable. Amtrak received a special appropriation last year of $5 million to switch to a more accepted managerial cost accounting system. I think you will soon start to see some interesting (and accurate) numbers come out of Amtrak after the changeover. People seem oblivious to the fact that each dollar of capital invested into interregional markets served by the handful of long distance trains produced five to seven times more ticket revenue and transportation output than any dollar invested into shorter corridor markets, even, or especially, the Northeast Corridor. The long-distance trains consume only 8 percent of Amtrak's operating subsidy, or $100 million, yet produce 23 percent of the national system's ridership and nearly half of its revenue. Amtrak has just 15 long-distance trains, but they generated more than $550 million in revenue last year -- the same total amount of revenue as all the trains on the Northeast Corridor. The problem isn't that we have too many long-distance trains. The problem is we don't have enough to capitalize on economies of scale to lower their total costs and to generate revenues. For more information, check out these charts at http://www.unitedrail.org/pubs/longdistance/index.htm

Aw, go easy on the lad.

It's a toddling town! More of Clark Avenue, please. I really like that area.

I think we ought to create a thread "Watching the libertarian assault on cities" and put this stuff in it. These guys are kissing cousins to the Buckeye Policy Institute, Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation and all white suburban men who talk out of their asses.

Not really. It's relevant. Greyhound and many other bus companies also carried U.S. mail. There was a bus (not Greyhound) from Cleveland to State College PA that followed US422/322 (never went on an interstate), and stopped in every little hamlet. I don't know what its passenger loads were like, but it carried mail to those tiny towns. I suspect the passenger loads weren't much, because it stopped running in the 1980s when the USPS relied more on trucks (even many USPS contracts with airlines were canceled in favor of trucks). The same thing happened in the 1960s when the USPS canceled contracts with the railroads for hauling mail on passenger trains. The privately owned passenger trains didn't last long after that.

Uh, yeah, thanks for the "compliment."

Hey, Utt: Ever ride a bus on the Greyhound Highway? Ever see a Greyhound snowplow? When highways get sold to private enterprise without any continuing government involvement, or the massive subsidies are ended to the oil industry, then we will: + find out how much it costs to use highways. + see how the transportation modal shares of the market shake out. + have a free market for transportation. I won't hold my breath for that day, but it would sure be interesting to see. Until that happens, those who proclaim to be defenders of the free market while defending the most massive government program this side of the military need to shut Utt, er, up.

And the vehicles in the background aren't bad either for the long-emergency. I suspect you could use wood in them -- a lot more renewable than coal or oil. Too bad you can't eat it when it breaks down.

I think you just repeated yourself

grassyass