KJP

I said worth voting for, not throwing-up for!

Seems pretty clear that Tricarichi didn't tell the Port Authority to blow him :behind:...

I think the bankruptcy of the Federal Highways Trust Fund in only a couple of years may be sufficient enough to put a lid on adding significant new road capacity. Problem is, the bankruptcy may also negatively affect maintenance needs as well.

"I've made really nice returns in these other markets," he said. "But the Sunbelt areas are really starting to flatten out. Cleveland wasn't a good place to invest a couple of years ago, but I think now there's potential for upside here." Nice to hear it from him. I agree with the guy. "I might be ahead of the curve, or I might be under the bus," he said. Or under the lake wearing cement shoes....

^ I think his estimates are low, based on the revenues generated by the Chicago and Indiana toll roads and what those entities got for leasing them. I was surprised at how the revenue-lease ratios were almost identical between the two. So I applied that ratio to the Ohio Turnpike's revenues and came up with a lease estimate of $8 billion (75-year lease) to $8.5 billion (99-year lease). BTW, for more information on this funding idea, visit the discussion string at: http://members.cox.net/neotrans/Turnpike_Lease_PP-BP.pdf Or, download a copy of the report NEOtrans researched/wrote for All Aboard Ohio: http://members.cox.net/neotrans/Turnpike_Lease_PP-BP.pdf

^ MLK used be a lot of different roads, streets and boulevards that were stitched together under one name.

^ Like you say, it's all about the land use when it comes to how bad the road congestion is. If you run a MARTA heavy rail line through sprawlville, you'll probably get riders who are trying to evade the traffic, but it doesn't reduce the traffic. Like water, traffic finds its own level in low-density, auto-centric communities where land uses aren't mixed and walking/cycling is punishable by maiming or death.

Hey, I'm 38-45, but that doesn't mean I can't admire the looks of a 22-year-old councilwoman. No laws (statutory or of nature) are being broken here! Any other hotties worth voting for out there?

I'll start it off. Here's an idea I had for funding a regional rail system for Northeast Ohio (aka NEOrail).... CAPITAL ALL NEO COUNTIES - 3 percent rental car tax Estimated revenue of $70 million per year Allocate $35 million per year to local 20-year bond issue at 5% = LOCAL: $425 million bond issue STATE MATCH: $125 million grant FEDERAL MATCH: $550 million grant TOTAL CAPITAL: $1.1 billion OPERATING $35 million excess rental car tax revenues plus Cuyahoga County $5 vehicle registration fee = $5.8 million Lake County $5 vehicle registration fee = $1.3 million Lorain County $5 vehicle registration fee = $1.4 million Portage County $3 vehicle registration fee = $0.5 million Summit County $5 vehicle registration fee = $2.6 million TOTAL REGISTRATION FEE REVENUES ... $11.6 million + EXCESS RENTAL CAR REVENUES ........... $35 million ANNUAL OPERATING FUNDING EST. ...... $46.6 million That ought to build for us a decent system!

Since our beloved elected officials in state capital have cut yearly transit funding from $40 million to $16 million (and counting?) and offers only about $30 million for rail development projects (while other states are increasing transit, rail $$$), we need some creative ideas on how to catch up and compete. So please consider posting your ideas here, as I'm aware that local and regional governmental officials view this site. Give them some hope on how we'll be able to move the masses in our state in a post-peak oil world!

Wow :-o She's babe-a-licious

And between Elyria and the Cuyahoga County line it's Butternut Ridge Road.

So oil companies are price-gouging? Think again. Here is an excellent analysis by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial page editor... http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/mcnickle/s_448525.html The price of oil, gas & ignorance By Colin McNickle TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, April 30, 2006 "Ignorance is the mother of devotion," wrote Henry Cole in 1599's "Disputations at Westminster." And never have so many been so devoted to ignorance than in the escalating debate over gasoline prices. Let's start with the prices themselves. The current per-gallon pump price for regular gasoline and a barrel of crude oil are not "record" prices. If you calculate the prices in inflation-adjusted dollars, both cost more 25 years ago. If you paid for a gallon of gas in March 1981 in 2006 dollars, it would have cost just under $3.11.

Columbia > Great Northern Blvd. (Possibly) Lorain > Carnegie > Cedar I wouldn't include these because the roads run parallel to each other. Great Northern splits off from Columbia and Carnegie splits off from Cedar, even though the road splitting off becomes the dominant roadway.

That made me laugh, too. If some of these yahoos sat down to figure out how much it actually costs them to drive, they would sell their second or third car and change their spendthrift lifestyles. Let me provide an average driving cost from, of all places, AAA... 56 cents per mile. For a motorist driving a car they own 15,000 miles per year, that works out to $8,400. Gas is a small part (15-20 percent) of the cost equation of driving a car you own, yet everyone is in a tizzy over it.

It's also interesting how much the death of the Flats East Bank seemed to drop RTA rails already weak 9M numbers to 7M in the course of about 5 years. That would be hard to do since the Waterfront Line's best year of ridership was about 900,000. I believe it's down to about 250K or so now. I'd say a bigger factor in the rail ridership slide was the loss of several major downtown office and retail employers. Losing BP, Higbee's/Dillard's, May Co/Kaufmann's and perhaps others I'm overlooking made a lifestyle surrounding the rapid less convenient. RTA often acts as if these setbacks are a result only of unfortunate circumstances beyond RTA's control -- and that's true if you have no financial resources, staff or programs in place to affect change in land use surrounding transit facilities. Instead, RTA increasingly depends on commuters (work/school trips) for its ridership. While ridership based on commuting (work/school) is a solid foundation, that's all it should be -- a starting point. Getting larger ridership increases from a "transit lifestyle" -- large amounts of trips to the store, theater, restaurants etc. -- tend to happen more when TOD is being practiced. And, TOD happens most often where there are fixed transit facilities, with rail being the most "magnetic" for developers.

I don't have them either. I just made up my own based on what I know of the rail lines.

By the way, I thought you all might get a kick out of this then-and-now stuff.... First is the picture I posted in the previous message, taken by me in May 2003... Then there's this picture by the late Dave McKay, taken in March 1976, of the Erie Lackawanna commuter train backing toward Cleveland Union Terminal (Tower City) from E-L's East 55th Yard for the afternoon rush hour departure for Youngstown and a dozen other stations enroute (ie: Lee Road, Solon, Aurora, Mantua, Warren, Niles, etc.). The service had 10 more months to live...

"The best alternative fuel is to not use it," Linnell said. Linnell gets my Gold Star O' The Day award for best quote!

I was just going to post that stuff! Thanks for doing that Archer!

I thought I'd post some stuff from the EcoCity report I authored on the Lakefront Bypass. The following is the minimum trackage/infrastructure required to reroute a limited amount of freight train traffic (perhaps up to 15 of the 70-80 freights per day) off the lakefront. An overview graphic is below. The section that needs to receive the minimum investment -- in order to close a critical gap in missing trackage -- is between East 37th and Control Point 117 (a CP is a railroad site where a switch, or a complex of switches is remote controlled by a dispatcher or some other operator) via the North Broadway Corridor. The minimum investment is Option 1, which could cost upwards of $30 million.... Going west to east, here are some detailed images showing the options, starting with existing conditions: Start at the East 37th area.... Pictures of the West 37th area from the I-490 rail overpass: Here is the North Broadway corridor, with all options shown in the same image.... An image of the Vonwiler Yard area (the East 55th abutment is at the left edge). Track basically needs to be replaced here: Now for the CP117 area, where the former Erie Lackawanna crossed the former Pennsylvania RR. These all became Conrail properties, and now are all owned by Norfolk Southern.... And a photo of CP117, looking north from Union Avenue overpass...

I wonder if this seemingly innocuous project could provide impetus for trackwork that would begin to open up a Lakefront Bypass for freight trains (see http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=10544.0 or http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3384.msg95259#msg95259 )... ______________ http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1146558822175410.xml&coll=2 Historic brownfield new home for trucks Tuesday, May 02, 2006 Joan Mazzolini Plain Dealer Reporter Cuyahoga County provided a $1 million loan Monday to develop the site of John D. Rockefeller's first oil refinery, south of downtown Cleveland, to help a trucking company expand its freight distribution facility.

You've been a busy guy, Grasscat! Thanks for the compilation.

I think Norfolk Southern is single-track at that location. If so, a pedestrian crossing isn't needed. But the station platform would have to be set back from the road a bit so that when a train stops there, an "island" circuit for the crossing devices will cause the gates to rise when a train stops and doesn't cross the island circuit. When the train starts moving again, it will cross the island circuit and cause the gates to lower again.

And a number of predicted major projects haven't panned out as expected -- Caspian Sea is the most notable. And where technology was used to increase production from aging reserves, such as in the United Arab Emirates, it ended up having the opposite effect by damaging the wells.