KJP

Thanks. But can you explain what you mean by saying that RTA doesn't know where Old Brooklyn is? And, yes, here's some insight -- the grant request to NOACA was written by the Old Brooklyn resident on behalf of Old Brooklyn Neighborhood Services (which was since merged with the Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation) to create the Brooklyn-Brighton CDC. Even though Maribeth Feke was president of the OBCDC (and now the BBCDC) and director of planning and programming at RTA, neither she nor anyone else from RTA was consulted by OBNS before OBNS submitted the grant to NOACA. Furthermore, no one at RTA had even seen the grant request to NOACA until after NOACA approved it! That doesn't mean the newly combined CDC won't follow through on it, but if you detect a "chilly reception" coming from Feke or others at RTA and the new BBCDC about this transit study, that's why.

Thanks.

From the 9/6/06 Lima News: PHOTO: Glen Steingass, of Leipsic, makes a point during a meeting in the Assembly Room of the Putnam County Courthouse in Ottawa about the $100 million ethanol plant project in Leipsic. "I'm for anything that will help people and bring jobs," Steingass said. (Lima News photo by STEPHANIE J. SMITH) Residents question water availability for ethanol plant in Leipsic BY DOMINIC ADAMS - Sep. 6, 2006 OTTAWA — A public meeting that was supposed to be about grant money for an electrical project in Leipsic turned into a fight over water. More than 40 people were in the assembly room at the Putnam County Courthouse today for the second required public meeting for the disbursement of Community Development Block Grant money. Several people used the meeting to grill Ken Maag, of Poggemeyer Design Group, about a waterline that would run from the village of Leipsic’s reservoir. Work on the reservoir, which will hold between 425 million and 450 million gallons of water, began Tuesday and should be completed by March. Putnam County commissioners, as early as today, can approve sending the CDBG grant to the state for approval. The grant would pay the village $410,000 to construct a power line that runs from a substation at Protech Coating Inc. to a substation located in the village’s Industrial Park out to a 100-acre site in the industrial park. The electrical project will cost more than $1.3 million. MORE: http://www.limanews.com/story.php?IDnum=29532

Why do we need microwaves when we have stoves? Why do we need the Internet when we have regular mail and telephones? Why do we need cell phones when we have pay phones? Why do we need ATMs when we have bank tellers? I thought this was America, where we don't accept "good enough" as good enough? When we start being satisfied with accepting second-rate status, we fail to progress. It's all about standards of living, and if we lower our standards, we fall behind even if we are standing still. There's always some other city, state or nation which is moving forward to offer their citizens a better quality of life. They win, we lose and that's how the game ends.

This sounds more promising... http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/assets/images/story/2006/9/7/1332_chapple-USE.jpg;jsessionid=73A176B1238E343A71FF685C00168984 Purdue researchers believe that hybrid poplars and similar trees planted like row crops could be processed into ethanol as a renewable fuel. Photo: Jake Eaton, Potlatch Corp. Fast-Growing Poplars Could Be Ethanol Source September 7, 2006 West Lafayette, Indiana [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] Purdue University researchers are using genetic tools to design trees that can readily and inexpensively yield the substances needed to produce ethanol. The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research is funding the $1.4 million, three-year study. A hybrid poplar tree is the basis for the research that is part of the DOE's goal to replace 30% of the fossil fuel used annually in the U.S. for transportation with biofuels by 2030. The Purdue faculty members Clint Chapple, Richard Meilan and Michael Ladisch are focused on a compound in cell walls called lignin that contributes to plants' structural strength, but which hinders extraction of cellulose. Cellulose is the sugar-containing component needed to make the ethanol.

Ohio City does extend south of Lorain. MayDay said "the green areas represent the more cleaned-up areas of both Ohio City (left) and Tremont (right)"

On what street is that gallery?

WVIZ is channel 25, and broadcast over the free airwaves. Too bad I didn't catch your message until the program was 53 minutes over. Dave Beach from EcoCity Cleveland is speaking now. And, yes, I'm videotaping it.

Well done!

This document has some excellent facts and figures on European rail systems, some bad but mostly good. The table near the end, showing the high-speed lines that are planned or under construction is quite the eye-opener! http://ec.europa.eu/transport/white_paper/mid_term_revision/doc/annexes/annex_13.pdf#search=%22PBKAL%2C%20Louvain%20Li%C3%A8ge%20%22

Not exactly new, but since it hasn't been posted yet, I guess it is new... http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/763&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en Brussels, 9 June 2006 High-speed progress on the Paris-Strasbourg-Stuttgart-Vienna-Bratislava rail link Ministers from Germany, Austria, Slovakia and France have signed a statement of intent committing to complete the Paris-Strasbourg-Stuttgart-Vienna-Bratislava high-speed rail link as soon as possible. Jacques Barrot, Vice-President of the Commission with special responsibility for transport, welcomed the progress and expressed the hope that “the cooperation between the four countries crossed by this rail link will continue along the same course to achieve the rapid completion of this priority project”. More at link above:

VCR/DVR ALERT! On Thursday 9/7 at 8 p.m. ideastream/WVIZ Channel 25 will feature a panel discussion on the challenges of government fragmentation, and how Northeast Ohio plans to address the growing problem of sprawl. Guests will include Hunter Morrison, Sr. Fellow at the Center for Urban Studies Youngstown State University; David Beach, Director of EcoCity Cleveland; Debbie Sutherland, Bay Village Mayor and President of Cuyahoga Co. Mayors & Managers Assoc. and Steve Brooks, Associate Dir. of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

While I can understand wanting to get that driver's license upon your return, if you live in the city you can function pretty well without a car. As MayDay mentioned, if you need a car for running some errands, City Wheels is a good option. Speaking of MayDay, he is car-free, as are others on this forum. While I need a car for my job (I am also a journalist), I seldom use it when work isn't involved. I live at the northeast corner of Lakewood, just off the Gold Coast along Edgewater Drive. If I worked downtown, I would not need a car. There's just a ton of stuff within a 15-minute walk of my condo. At this message (which I posted a while ago) is a list of what's in the area of the Lakewood Gold Coast/Cleveland Edgewater: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2178.msg19994#msg19994

That would certainly be the response of a drug, er, oil addict!

You can get a home with a yard in Lakewood, but be prepared to spend only a little bit more. You can buy a decent house with very little yard for about $125,000, but if you want a yard, you're probably going to spend upwards of $150,000 and probably closer to $200,000. Search Lakewood homes at http://www.progressiveurban.com/homepage_frameset.htm and click "search ALL listings" to get access to the Multiple Listings Service. You may be surprised at what you can get -- especially after experiencing East Coast prices of things. Exceptions to the crammed-in yards in Lakewood are found along Clifton (moderate prices) and Lake (higher prices), but more affordable homes with yards may be found on Manor Park, Lakewood Heights Boulevard and streets in the western part of the city (ie: Overbrook, Riverside, Concord, Daleview etc). You can also find some affordable homes in the Clifton-Baltic-Edgewater neighborhood of Cleveland (between Lakewood and Edgewater Park). It's a very nice, stable area. Look for homes on Clifton, Lake, Edgewater and some of the cross streets NORTH of Clifton, like West 115th, 112th, 110th and 104th). These and other cross streets south of Clifton don't have much yard. When you closer to Detroit Avenue in Cleveland, then its starts to get dicey. In the Edgewater neighborhood, you'll be close to the restaurants, cafes and shops along Clifton, have frequent transit service to downtown, and be an easy walk or bike ride to Edgewater Park. When you use the Multiple Listings Service at the web link I gave, and you're in doubt of where a particular home is, just click on the map feature to see.

That's one optional route for the Cincy - Indy - Chicago service. The other is the former New York Central route via Lawrenceburg (site of the casino), Greensburg (Honda's site for its new plant), Shelbyville (site of, well, Shelbyville) and Beech Grove (site of Amtrak's biggest locomotive and railcar maintenance facility). The route through Oxford is owned by CSX -- not exactly passenger train-friendly. The route through Greensburg is owned by a short-line railroad. As you know, they tend to be more supportive of trains that have windows and people peeking out of them. Wonder if the line through Greensburg will get upgraded with Honda's decision to open a plant there? If so, will the Cardinal stay on the route through Oxford? Hmmm....

The start-up draws near.... http://www.musiccitystar.org/ On Sept. 18, the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) will launch service on the Music City Star, a 32-mile commuter-rail corridor linking Nashville and Lebanon, TN. Trains will operate along existing Nashville and Eastern Railroad Authority tracks. RTA spent about $40 million to install continuous-welded rail, replace ties, upgrade crossings, align track and install a new signal system. The five-station line is expected to average 1,300 passengers daily.

This is a non-debate. There is no hard-and-fast rule over how rail networks should be designed or where stations should be located on them. Each is tailored for the market which exists, or could be created by the investment. Every rail service is a hybrid of what has come before, though there are some general similarities which allow various services to fall in differing classifications. We can debate what these are until we're on our death beds. Simple answer: if there is a market for a train station in Oxford -- build it. (P.S. Lafayette, Indiana does have a station stop on the same route that passes through Oxford, and the route/service is called the Cardinal, not the Capital Hoosier. The Hoosier starts in Indianapolis and goes to Chicago, also via Lafayette! The Capitol Limited goes through Cleveland and Toledo). The real debate is... what is holding up the construction of the Oxford station. The answer -- a federal requirement for level-boarding to every car on the train from the platform. The intent of the provision was make passenger trains more accessible for disabled patrons. The actual result is that it is making the construction of new, or reconstruction of old stations too expensive, and thereby limiting the number of cities/stations where trains can stop. The outcome is that disabled patrons have fewer mobility options. Yet another brilliant idea brought to you by faceless bureaucrats in Washington D.C. :bang:

Agreed... great shot! Ditto! Just tell the kids to watch out for the pigeon poop!

Those who were prepared to complete testing have all confirmed our claims; however none will publicly go on record. That should tell you something right there. In the Old West, such claims of more than 100 percent energy efficiency would earn for the braggard the brand of "snake oil salesman."

I never know for certain whether articles like that should go in this thread, or the one at: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1666.0

This is not just a problem of transportation, but of land use as well, which isolates the urban poor from suburban jobs. Transportation and land use are inextricably linked, and different types of transportation beget different types of land use. Yet, they are not automatic linkages -- if community land use policies (zoning, planning, etc) aren't supportive of transportation investments, then the synergies between them won't happen. Bus services into the suburbs, even where the bus services are frequent, often aren't supported with such policies. Instead, communities continue to promote auto-dependent land use patterns (subdivided land uses, building setbacks, large/free parking lots separating transit stops from buildings, cul de sacs, etc) at the exclusion of those which would support transit usage. Too often, those who sit on municipal planning commission boards have never even taken an urban planning class, let alone graduated with a degree in the field. Or, those that have, still don't understand the relationships and synergies between various modes of transportation and land uses. I submit that urban planning is at least as complicated as human medicine. The difference between a city and a human body is that each of the cells in a human body don't have minds of their own. Thus, in my opinion, urban studies don't go far enough in their depth of coverage -- there needs to be a large human psychological component to it to understand how different people relate to their various surroundings. But I digress -- a bit. I'll close with three statistics, all from the U.S. Census: + Nationally, there is a huge spatial mismatch between jobs and job-seekers. While 58 percent of those on public assistance live in the cities, 70 percent of new jobs are in the suburbs. This is likely even more pronounced in Greater Cleveland, given our chronic poverty rankings. + Nationally, 43 percent of those on public assistance do not own a car. In some Cleveland neighborhoods, up to 70 percent of households do not own a car. + Only between 8-15 percent of available jobs in the Cleveland-Lorain-Akron MSA are accessible by public transportation in less than 40 minutes. Keep that data in mind when you visit the Cleveland-Lorain commuter rail thread, and you'll get an idea why I'm pushing that introductory project.

How appropriate that such a concept is not translatable to English, or perhaps more accurately, to American.

A different view.... ______________ http://www.utu.org/worksite/detail_news.cfm?ArticleID=30229 UTU, AFL-CIO voice concerns over new Amtrak CEO The United Transportation Union and the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department each expressed concern about the qualifications of Amtrak's new president, Alexander Kummant, as reported by Bureau of National Affairs writer Derrick Cain.

Those look like copper, which turns green in the elements.