KJP

While it was Mr. James’ drawing power that brought the crowd to Glenville and the wealth he has generated as a basketball player that was important to making the project happen, the basketball phenomenon credited his his partners and friends, especially Glenville native Richard Paul, with making the project happen. That has got to be one of the worst run-on sentences I've ever seen!

Not that I'm aware of, though I haven't done a Google search. Look for a similar thing when RTA's rail and Silver lines go to proof-of-payment. And, I've said a million times before and I'll say it again, if your rail transit lines were built in lousy areas for ridership (next to decaying industries, busy freight railroads, etc.), then redevelop the areas around the stations or adjust the location of the rail transit lines. See the threads on this forum on Red Line TOD projects and the Opportunity Corridor (putting a rail line in its median). Those are considerably less expensive than building all-new rights of way for rail transit within the city or for suburban extensions. This is a lousy way to say it, but many areas along RTA's rail lines have been thoroughly abandoned of industry and housing that this can actually be a benefit to reshaping those areas as modern transit-oriented communities. In those areas, we have a "clean" slate to start over, although some of those areas clearly are not clean of pollutants.

No I wouldn't use Baltimore's as an example either. Hence the reason why I posted it with Buffalo and Cleveland's as the three least-used non-tourist/heritage LRT cities/systems in the U.S. I would hold up as examples these top 10 LRT cities - with their 2004 ridership -- Boston - 70.6 million San Francisco - 45.2 million Los Angeles - 32.9 million Portland - 31.9 million San Diego - 26.5 million Philadelphia - 25.2 million Dallas - 16.4 million St. Louis - 14.4 million Sacremento - 11 million Denver - 10 million Info is from: http://www.apta.com/research/stats/rail/lrservuse.cfm

What other measuring stick would you use to evaluate transit systems? Perhaps only cost-recovery ratio... In my book, that and ridership are the two more important measurements of transit success. Except for heritage streetcars and tourist trolley lines, here are the three least used light-rail transit services in the U.S.: City/System - yearly total ridership Baltimore LRT - 5.8 million Buffalo LRT - 5.4 million Cleveland LRT - 2.7 million Baltimore's LRT ridership was 7.4 million in 2003, but construction of double track caused travel delays and negatively impacted ridership. I wouldn't doubt that ridership will at least climb back to where it was in 2003. Based on this data, I would love it if Cleveland's LRT was as successful as Baltimore's. I believe Cleveland's Red Line (a heavy rail service) had some 5 million riders last year. Baltimore's heavy rail line had 12.4 million riders... Arbitrarily throwing ridership out of the success-measurement equation is like saying hotel occupancy rates aren't meaningful. I understand ridership isn't the only thing, but in the nonprofit world of transit and infrastructure, it's one of the two biggest factors.

More wishful thinking from the United State of Cornucopia... ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION EIA Reports U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY WASHINGTON DC 20585 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE JUNE 20, 2006 Strong Growth in World Energy Demand is Projected Through 2030 Worldwide marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 71 percent between 2003 and 2030, according to the reference case projection from the International Energy Outlook 2006 (IEO2006) released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The IEO2006 shows the strongest energy consumption growth in developing countries outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), especially non-OECD Asia (including China and India), where robust economic growth drives the increase in energy use. Energy use in non-OECD Asia nearly triples over the projection period (Figure 1). Projected reference case world oil prices are 35 percent higher in 2025 than in last year’s IEO, reflecting a more pessimistic view of the willingness of oil-rich countries to expand production capacity as aggressively as previously envisioned. The higher prices dampen expected growth in world oil demand, which is 8 million barrels per day lower in 2025 than in last year’s reference case. As a result, oil’s share of total energy use is projected to fall from 38 percent in 2003 to 33 percent in 2030, whereas natural gas and coal both gain in their share of total energy (Figure 2). Petroleum consumption is still expected to grow strongly, however, reaching 118 million barrels per day in 2030. The United States, China, and India together account for 51 percent of the projected growth in world oil use. Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are expected to increase their supply of oil by 14.6 million barrels per day between 2003 and 2030. Higher oil prices contribute to a substantial increase in projected non-OPEC supply, which rises by 23.7 million barrels per day, including 8.1million barrels per day of unconventional production, over the same period. World unconventional production (including oil sands, bitumen, biofuels, coal-to-liquids, and gas-to-liquids) increases by 9.7 million barrels per day between 2003 and 2030, representing 25 percent of the total world liquids supply increase. Other report highlights include: Coal use grows at an average annual rate of 2.5 percent between 2003 and 2030 in the IEO2006 reference case projection, while demand for natural gas grows by 2.4 percent per year. The higher oil prices used in IEO2006 increase the competitiveness of these fuels. Rising fossil fuel prices also allow renewable energy sources to compete more effectively in the electric power sector. Consumption of hydroelectricity and other grid-connected renewable energy sources expands by 2.4 percent per year. Higher fossil fuel prices and concerns about security of energy supplies are expected to improve prospects for nuclear power capacity over the projection period, and many countries are expected to build new nuclear power plants. World nuclear capacity is projected to rise from 361 gigawatts in 2003 to 438 gigawatts in 2030, with significant declines in capacity projected only for Europe, where several countries have either plans or mandates to phase out nuclear power, or where old reactors are expected to be retired and not replaced. In the IEO2006 reference case, which does not include specific policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise from 25.0 billion metric tons in 2003 to 33.7 billion metric tons in 2015 and 43.7 billion metric tons in 2030. Much of the projected increase in emissions is expected to occur in the non-OECD regions of the world, accompanying large increases fossil fuel use. Non-OECD countries accounts for three-fourths of the projected growth in emissions between 2003 and 2030 (Figure 3). The full report can be found on EIA’s web site at: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html

Problem is, I suspect many Ohio legislators have little or no awareness of what's happening in the rest of the country, so I can see why they might think what we're doing (or not doing!) isn't anything unusual. This is why I started up this thread, so that some of their constituents would become aware of what other parts of this nation (and other nations) are doing. My reasoning isn't simply to build choo choos for the sake of building choo choos. Instead, we have to compete with these other cities, regions, states and nations for jobs. And if they're able to offer a range of economic development tools, amenities and services (including rail and transit) that we're not able to match, then Ohio is going to fall behind in creating and keeping jobs. ... And guess what? We already are!!!!!!!!!

But where does "big" start and "small" end? At 200 units? 1,000 units? Should it be measured in dollars instead, since a number of downtown housing projects aren't strictly residential? Is $50 million considered big? $100 million? Very subjective stuff. Even so, if we're talking $50 million as the baseline, I count up to a dozen downtown Cleveland projects, just off the top of my head. Perhaps 10 of those would survive raising the baseline to $100 million. That's still a lot of discussion, and each of the existing threads on those projects generate something like 1-20 responses per day. See the problem??

Thanks! See... http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=9270.msg104135#msg104135

The Partridge Family.

For some old pictures of Euclid Avenue, I posted a bunch at the following thread: Cleveland and Crowds http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2327.msg21836#msg21836

I can't see how it would be more convenient. If we had just one thread about all downtown projects in any of the three C's, each thread would probably see hundreds of posts per day, making it very difficult to follow, carry on a coherent and fluid discussion, and generally be a pain in the ass. The multiple separate threads on individual projects are usually prefaced with the word "Cleveland" which is what made it so easy for me to find all the links I posted in my first response to this thread. It took me all of a few minutes to find all of those links. Research is usually a time-consuming, pain-staking thing. This site at least helps ease some of the research pains. I don't think you're going to do much better than this place. I can't speak on the subject of other cities' threads, but every so often, just to catch our breath and take stock of everything, some of us in Cleveland post a summary of projects in the "Random Cleveland Developments Thread" in the Projects and Construction section. If you want to do some research, that's as good a place to start as any.

Dan I said FUNDED not built with! If the olympics had not come to Atlanta - let me carefully select my words - I do not believe, the MARTA rail system would have been expanded further than: east/west - Ashby to Decatur and North/South - North Ave. to the Fort. I've never heard of any part of MARTA funding coming from, being built for or otherwise having anything to do with the Olympics. That's a new one on me. How'd we get on this silly subject anyway? This is like those debates that occasionally come up about which city is bigger, Cleveland or Columbus. Let's focus on ridership trends, discuss ideas for improving the numbers, and the like -- in other words, go back to the intent of this string!

This smelled like a competition when I read the first message. Shame on me for biting on it. :bang2:

Sorry. I'll tell the developers to ease up a bit.

There's a couple of projects happening in Cleveland, most of which are actively discussed on this forum. See the following threads: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3594.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2492.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1823.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2873.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=5948.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3883.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=1684.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2289.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4058.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3638.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2525.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=9195.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=6727.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=7120.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=8900.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=8774.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2876.0 http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=8408.0 Is that enough for ya?

More than basically -- it is free. Plus, RTA will get revenue from it. I'll have an article about it this week, and I suppose the PeeDee will attempt to write something as well....

Lorain County commissioners are entertaining the idea of having Lorain County Transit be the administrator of it, who would then contract out to someone to actually run the trains (Amtrak, Norfolk Southern, Herzog, whatever).

http://www.progressiverailroading.com/prdailynews/news.asp?id=9039 6/19/2006 Funding Utah Transit Authority gains $489 million federal grant for Front Runner project The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) recently received a $489 million Full Funding Grant Agreement from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the “FrontRunner” Weber County-to-Salt Lake City commuter-rail line. The federal agency will allocate the funds between this year and 2012. UTA plans to begin operating the 44-mile line in November 2008, providing service every 20 minutes during peak periods and 40 minutes during off-peak periods. By 2025, 12,500 people will use the system daily, UTA projects. (Note, previous info is that they plan to use locomotives and coaches, probably double deck type coaches.)

The platform is less of a problem than the size of the rapid transit trains. If RTA is willing to run dedicated rapid trains to connect with the commuter trains, or if they're willing to go to three cars trains in the general times when the commuter trains would run.... But both are wishful thinking on my part. I've wanted to pursue this project in a way that won't cost RTA much if anything. I don't want to rely on them to bring this project off. I think the most we should ask of RTA is access to the Westlake Park-n-Ride, the West Boulevard Rapid station, and an agreement for free (or at least discounted transfers to/from RTA buses and trains). Other than that, I don't want anything from RTA that might turn them into an opponent.

^ Like those neighborhood-scale hotels you see in European cities? I like the idea, but they'd have to be very carefully watched by police and the building department to make sure they don't turn into "love shacks" where johns take hookers and pay for rooms by the hour. And I don't think Cleveland police or the building department has the manpower to keep after those things. I'm pretty leery of these, unless some reputable hotel chain starts up a subsidiary to run small, urban neighborhood-based hotels like those in Europe.

Actually, the regional rail service could operate through to Vermilion from the outset, without incurring any part of the huge costs of extending the line to Sandusky. Looks like I need to do some more maps. Plus, I think I have a way for the communities to pay a share of the costs without negatively impacting their budgets. It's called offsets, and I'll work up some numbers later this evening....

Now that makes even more sense!

So then, can I count on you for at least part of that $3 million? :speech:

Oooh, it's going to be right across Detroit Avenue from "The Store" -- where one can get all their convenience items: bread, milk, beer ... marijuana, crack, heroin.

If I was a developer, here's what I'd do: I'd give money to relatives under contract that they each buy these two-parcel homesteads throughout Duck Island. Then, when my family has come to own a percentage of the properties (ie: more than 50 percent), my real estate company offers to buy out the rest of the properties. I'd put infill housing on all those parcels left vacant by Duck Island's two-parcel homesteading, build shops on street corners like those eyesore lots along Abbey, build a massively dense mixed-income residential development along Columbus Road and around the rapid station, acquire the West Side Market parking sea across the Lorain, build a parking deck in its place for market visitors, top the deck with offices or live-work spaces (such as for market vendors or suppliers), and put some dense residential on the former surface parking areas. Anyone want to loan me a few million bucks to get started?