KJP

I'm surprised they're that expensive ($2900). I'm hurting financially now, so a purchase of that magnitude is out of the question. My car is paid off, and while I'm paying much more in gas and insurance to drive it, those are small chunks I can handle. And I don't think a lender (to buy the scooter) would touch me with the credit card debt eating up all my equity anyway. Sad that I'm too poor to save money....

Just saw something interesting on FlightAware... This flight landed at Hopkins after 6:32 p.m., from Le Bourget Airport in Paris (which serves only private aircraft, like corporate jets)... Dassault Mystère 900 (tri-jet) (F900/Q) Origin Le Bourget (LFPB) Destination Cleveland Hopkins Int'l (KCLE) Other flights between these airports Route YQB J560 PLB Date Sunday, Jul 16, 2006 Duration 1 hour 14 minutes (in the U.S.) Status Arrived 41 minutes ago! (track log) Proposed/Assigned Actual/Estimated Departure 08:57PM GMT 09:18PM GMT Arrival 04:57PM EDT 06:32PM EDT Speed Mach .80 Altitude 45000 feet

How much do those cost to buy? Can you also give an idea as to monthly insurance costs?

Very nice pictures. They have a terrific collection which I need to go see one of these days. And I'm just as impressed with their storage/display building! Pretty substantial. I wonder where they got the money for that? Ceveland's Trolleyville USA and Lake Shore Electric Railway are probably very jealous!

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/brent_larkin/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1152952638240110.xml&coll=2 Six convulsive days Hough was a powder keg in 1966, and one word blew it sky-high Sunday, July 16, 2006 Brent Larkin Plain Dealer Columnist It was right around sundown on a hot, humid night in Hough, when the black man walked into the white-owned Seventy-Niner's Café to ask for a glass of water. The Seventy-Niner's sat on the cor ner of Hough Avenue and East 79th Street. It was a dank, dark dump with 20 stools and a couple booths. Muggers sometimes worked the restrooms, and prostitutes the sidewalk out front. As the story goes, the bartender de nied the man the water, tossed in the N-word for good measure, and ordered him out the door. A few minutes later, an angry crowd of about 50 had gathered outside. Soon after, Hough was ablaze. Fires erupted over a 20-block area, the sounds of gunfire filled the air, widespread looting began in retail districts. When several hundred police rushed to the scene, some were targeted with thrown bricks and an occasional Molotov cocktail. It was July 18, 1966 - 40 years ago this Tuesday. ....... http://www.cleveland.com/news/wide/hough.gif

More good news, including some new downtown office tenants I hadn't heard about (ie: Eaton and Chase Manhatten expanding). Still the average leasing price isn't high, but that could change based on absorbtion rates.... http://gkc2.cbrichardellis.com/GlobalMarketReports/us/cleveland2q06ofcdt.pdf

City of Huron buys site to add lake access Toledo Blade, 7/19/06 Boating access to Lake Erie will open up with the purchase of a grain-handling facility and the 19.8-acre peninsula it sits on as part of Huron's ambitious plan to continue its riverfront development. The $3.25 million purchase, lauded yesterday by Gov. Bob Taft and a bevy of state and local officials, is expected to turn the former ConAgra Foods Inc. site near the mouth of the Huron River into a boat ramp that will provide additional access to popular Lake Erie fishing grounds. "From this vantage point, we have a great opportunity to see a picture-postcard view of the Huron River waterfront," said Sam Speck, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The department's Division of Wildlife purchased the property for Huron. The city applied for a $3.14 million grant from ODNR to build the ramps and docks.

Yeah, but some are going ape over Crocker Park.... ________________ Monkey business in Westlake 4:48 p.m. Westlake - Thursday proved to be a night of monkey business for police dealing with calls at Crocker Park. Just before 10 p.m., police and security guards were dealing with a complaint at a restaurant when they witnessed someone clad in a gorilla suit playing in the shopping center’s fountain. As they approached and ordered the prankster to stop, the "ape" took off, loping away simian-style and drawing laughter from bystanders, according to police. The fleet-footed joker disappeared into the Union Street garage, where police later found the abandoned gorilla outfit. The suit now sits in a police property room. By Damian Guevara, [email protected]

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2663.htm U.S. EXPERIENCED RECORD WARM FIRST HALF OF YEAR, WIDESPREAD DROUGHT AND NORTHEAST RECORD RAINFALL July 14, 2006 — The average temperature for the continental United States from January through June 2006 was the warmest first half of any year since records began in 1895, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Last month was the second warmest June on record and nationally averaged precipitation was below average. The continuation of below normal precipitation in certain regions and much warmer-than-average temperatures expanded moderate-to-extreme drought conditions in the contiguous U.S. However, much of the Northeast experienced severe flooding and record rainfall during the last week of June. The global surface temperature was second warmest on record for June. (Click NOAA image for larger view of January-June 2006 statewide temperature rankings. Please credit “NOAA.”)

City to lease former CSX RR property Defiance Crescent-News, 7/12/06 Defiance City Hall has finally found a use for the former CSX Railroad property on South Clinton Street, and it was quickly seized upon by city council. An ordinance allowing the city to lease the property from CSX was approved by council Tuesday night. In turn, the city will allow the local Master Gardeners club to landscape and maintain the bare lot. The CSX property has been an irritant for City Hall in recent years. The city wanted CSX to maintain the old depot there and trim the weeds. But the building was severely damaged by fire last year, and was finally demolished several months ago. Since then, the property’s condition - related to weed growth - has prompted additional concerns. However, CSX will lease the property to City Hall for $1 for an indefinite period, according to law director David Williams. CSX will assume control again when it finds a use for the land, Williams indicated, but in the meantime Master Gardeners will improve the property’s aesthetics.

America, fuck yeah.

True, but the PD article said the traffic on Euclid was 7,700 vehicles a day? Actually, that seems pretty low for Euclid east of East 79th to East 105th (I can believe it for Euclid between East 79th and about East 30th). But if the numbers are right, I don't see a major traffic problem for either Chester or Carnegie if Euclid's traffic is diverted. There is, however, something that bothers me about losing a part of Cleveland's Main Street as a complete thoroughfare. Call me a traditionalist, sentimentalist or whatever. I guess I'd have to see a total masterplan of the area to understand the context within which the non-thoroughfare Euclid Avenue would function. IE: Clinic buildings fronting Euclid better add some "messy uses" on the sidewalk or the "transit plaza" will end up feeling like a 1960s commie block.

Excellent piece. To me, the key point is: In many metropolitan areas, transportation planners find themselves in a position of reacting to sprawl and its related congestion problems, producing public transportation systems that fail to capitalize on their potential to shape future development patterns and instead try to get people living amongst sprawl to use transit... Traditional transit development has focused primarily on creating systems where a significant number of riders already exist. But the region’s planners ... should carefully consider their ability to shape development patterns in a prospective manner. This “pioneer” model is inherently risky; it requires a substantial initial investment in hopes of a future payoff that may or may not be realized. In the end, however, understanding and effectively harnessing the complex and varied relationship between transit and development might just help win the showdown between sprawl and well-reasoned growth. This is clearly not anything new, but many have forgotten it as the best way to build pedestrian-scale communities and build transit ridership. Streetcar-real estate-electricity syndicates built "promotional" rail lines into undeveloped areas to spur their development in a dense pattern that was favorable to higher transit use. Many older Midwestern and Northeastern cities were developed in this way, with notable examples in Ohio being much of Cleveland, as well as many of its inner-ring suburbs, most prominently Lakewood and Shaker Heights. Sometimes the answers are often right in front of us.

Wonderfully and accurately said!

People seemed to want to talk about this a lot. I started a thread like this before, but I allowed it to denigrate into an argument with someone I didn't agree with. Yet I see from the GCRTA thread that this is a hot enough topic, so I've transferred the discussion from that thread to this one. You all can chat about the Waterfront Line extension all you want. But someone will have to force it down Joe Calabrese's throat to get RTA to consider it again. Just to re-cap, this is the routing for the Waterfront Line extension which RTA seemed to favor after conducting a Major Investment Study in 2000 or 2001..... waterfrontlineII-m by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

Only if the month-ahead price hits $80. I've got $1.60 and more than five months left. My bet is looking pretty good. They might, but they are also in major cities in the northeast, including Cleveland. More independent gas stations seem to be in rural areas, and the independents are the ones that get shorted first of gas. That happened right after Katrina, especially in the south.

I thought the whole system would cost $3.2 billion -- not just the 3-C Corridor. We don't need to scare elected officials with higher price tags suggested through careless reporting. The point of today's meeting is regarding stations, yet not a word about Cincinnati's station location planning work from a year or two ago about where to put the station in Cincinnati and how it could interface with The Banks development. I didn't like the writer's use of the word "insists" when referring to Nicholson's comment. Rail freight congestion is a major reason for implementing the Ohio Hub plan, not a reason against it. And any use of the words "pie in the sky" in an article about rail always bothers me. As if we're trying to do something that has never been done before and no else is even considering except maybe in a Jules Verne novel...

A pretty disappointing article, which started with some misleading information right off the bat (later corrected [or confused] with the factoids at the end of the article).

http://www.cleveland.com/cuyahoga/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1152865871318090.xml&coll=2 Clinic wants to clear up congestion on Euclid Plan to divert car traffic raises concerns about effect on RTA corridor project Friday, July 14, 2006 Tom Breckenridge Plain Dealer Reporter The Cleveland Clinic, renowned for life-saving medicine and research, wants to perform its boldest surgery yet -- take cars off Euclid Avenue. In a plan for its fast-growing campus, the Clinic wants to divert car traffic off Euclid Avenue for nearly 20 blocks, from East 86th to East 105th streets. Buses would continue to roll through. Removing cars would create a pedestrian-friendly "campus center" along Euclid, as the nonprofit behemoth seeks to green up and soften its institutional look. The Clinic has yet to file a formal plan with any public agency, but its vision is already generating concern. ......... http://www.cleveland.com/news/images/euclid_avenue0714.gif

There is a way to add rail cars during off-peak hours without increasing labor costs, and that's by having a proof-of-payment system enforced by putting more RTA police on the trains. Until this happens, RTA will keep many stations unstaffed especially during off-peak travel hours and limits the length of its trains to control the boarding of passengers via the front door so passengers must walk past the operator to pay their fares. RTA couldn't implement the proof-of-payment soon enough IMHO. It will allow RTA to put the second car back on the Shaker rapids (which the Breda cars' design requires a costly second driver anyway on 2-car trains), allow a second car more often on the Red Line, reduce boarding times on all lines, reduce travel times, reduce in-service vehicle hours, potentially reduce labor costs and increase a police presence on the trains, thereby increasing a sense of security. I don't know why it's taking RTA so long to implement the proof-of-payment system. The only reason I can guess is that it takes time to hire and train more RTA police.

Does he still work for ODOT? :evil:

Check this out... On the New York Mercantile Exchange (one of two market places in the world where oil prices are determined--London is the other), oil contracts for upcoming months have topped the $80 per barrel mark for the first time ever. If they remain that way for the next month's oil delivery, that will equate the highest-ever oil prices from the 1970s, after inflation. This is from the http://www.nymex.com/lsco_fut_csf.aspx Contract Last Month Price Aug 2006 77.83 Sep 2006 79.30 Oct 2006 79.93 Nov 2006 80.35 Dec 2006 80.64 Jan 2007 80.79 Feb 2007 81.12 Mar 2007 81.00

If they want to proceed with the plan for a stadium having a semi-enclosed stadium, they should contact Texas Stadium officials in Dallas first. The artificial turf there takes an awfully long time to dry out and is very slippery, often causing athletes' injuries.

Nancy Lesic did call me back, but after deadline. I will run a follow-up next week with her comments. But the gist of her statement was that as long as the port authority is doing the property acquisitions and, since then, taking the legal actions, Scott Wolstein can't get involved in negotiations. Yet that only reinforces the basic theme of my article -- no one appears empowered to alter/adjust the process based on changing conditions (such as a legitimate development proposal or two). The whole thing is locked in a state of legally enforced inertia and with no apparent ability to change it without the intervention of a common pleas court judge.

That looks superb! Congratulations. Question: on the home page for the Ohio Hub site, it prominently mentions moving freight and moving people. But the link from the ORDC page says "Ohio Hub Passenger Rail System"... Why not drop "passenger" or add "freight" since I suspect freight capacity issues are ultimately going to drive this system to reality, with passenger riding on its coattails? Based on what I've seen thus far, I'm really looking forward to seeing updates of the Ohio Hub pages. Looks VERY good!