KJP

This comes from a rail advocate: The first thing Atlanta needs to do (as do many other cities) is get a handle on their land use. Adding a rail line to a metropolitan area where "mixed use" means having a McDonalds inside a Wal Mart is an exercise in futility. Worse, that WalMart is set back from the street behind a sprawling parking lot. And so is the store next door. And so is the apartment building down the street. Which is right across from a massive housing subdivision set behind a fence and a gate. This is repeated over hundreds of square miles with the spacing requiring everyone to drive -- and drive a long way to get where they're going. As most of here know, traffic isn't just about the number of cars, but how far they travel, hence the use of the term vehicle-miles traveled to measure traffic congestion. Instead, start stacking land uses vertically (ie: retail/restaurants/public services topped by offices topped by housing). Put them next to landscaped, tree-shaded sidewalks and streets that are narrowed to four lanes or less to slow down and discourage traffic. Consolidate free surface parking lots into paid decks (also having leasable spaces along the sidewalk). Ensure greenspaces and parks that are evenly spaced throughout. Now Atlanta has not only made walking pleasant, but convenient for everyday needs. Now stick a rail line in that setting, and use it to link multiple settings of similar land use, and it will make a difference. It will put that 10-, 20-, 30-lane highway on a diet, allowing it to be reduced in size. Instead, what Atlanta is doing is akin to letting out its belt to control obesity. And it never works.

Note that the conventional high-sped rail line costs $21 million per mile while the Maglev line costs $39 million per mile. Yet maglev buys only a 40 mph increase for nearly double the cost. Either way, China is kicking our ass. _____________________ China approves construction of two high-speed railways BEIJING - China announced a $22 billion plan Monday to build two new high-speed railway lines linking Shanghai with Beijing and another city, including one using magnetic levitation technology that can reach speeds of 260 mph, according to an Associated Press story published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Both lines are among the world's most ambitious railway-building projects. They had been long-awaited by international suppliers of railway technology, but the announcements did not specify which companies would be involved in constructing them. The 820-mile Beijing-Shanghai link will run at speeds up to 220 mph, according to an announcement by the Cabinet's National Reform and Development Commission, the government's top industrial planning agency. The announcement did not say when the line would be built or give a cost. But China’s official Xinhua News Agency cited Railway Minister Liu Zhijun as putting the price last week at $17.5 billion. Japan lobbied China to use its Shinkansen bullet train technology, France its TGV system, and Germany its maglev (magnetic levitation) technology. But China says it wants to build the line with domestic technology adapted from that in use overseas. The second project, a 110-mile maglev line from Shanghai to Hangzhou, is to be completed by 2010 at a cost of $4.3 billion, Xinhua reported. The world's only commercially operating maglev train, built with German technology, links Shanghai's main airport with its financial district. Maglev technology uses powerful magnets to suspend a train above a track and propel it at speeds of up to 260 mph. The government plans to build more than 7,500 miles of high-speed railways in coming years at a cost of $250 to $310 billion, according to Xinhua.

Interesting. When I write up the Second District police blotter for the paper, I don't even bother with a lot of those same types of crimes. For that matter, I usually don't even put stolen car reports in, since there are so many and most cars are often recovered by the CPD (albeit, sans radio, tires, front end....)

^ Get some structured parking there and you just might!

MGD, that theater was actually built by Hilarities in the mid-1990s, which was being moved out of its Warehouse District location by RTA for its offices. Hilarities went belly up before the project was done, and Second City took over to finish the project. They bailed out of it and it has sat empty ever since. I hope this nightclub will make a go of it, but nightclubs being what they are, I suspect it will have a half-dozen names and probably as many owners in the next decade.

You guessed it -- laptop is coming with. I like taking vacations, just as long as I can unwind at home. Going out of town for a while is a big pain in the ass. But when it's time to come back home, I don't want to leave....

Some good news..... This Friday NOACA staff will present to the Transportation Advisory Committee of the NOACA Governing Board its list of projects recommended for approval under its Transportation for Livable Communities Initiative ( http://www.noaca.org/tlci.html ). Included in the 16 successful (so far) projects (9 projects didn't make the cut), are the following (the original 25 can be seen at http://www.noaca.org/fy07tlciapps.pdf ): 1) E. 120th Rapid Transit Area Development Plan (RTA sponsor, Little Italy co-sponsor) 2) Lee/Van Aken TOD Plannning Study (City of Shaker Hts. sponsor, RTA co-sponsor) These grant requests are on top of two other NOACA TLC grants awarded last year... GCRTA/Bellaire-Puritas Development Corp. -- $70,000 -- Puritas Rapid Transit Station Area Plan; Land-use analysis of the rapid transit site and continous commercial corridor at West 150th Street and Puritas Avenue with the goals of innovative design, enhanced pedestrian amenities, improved access, public safety, and exploring ancillary development options. GCRTA -- $50,000 -- Transit Oriented Development Implementation Strategy; The project will create a set of guidelines for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) that GCRTA, developers, and stakeholders can use to implement TOD opportunities. To fulfill the second project (noted immediately above), RTA late last week interviewed consultants to assist in the preparation of the updated TOD guidelines. My understanding is the teams that came in were well-qualified.

Thanks for the very good and detailed report. Gotta luv Hunter Morrison! I wish I could go to the Euclid Corridor meeting on Wednesday. To show my screwed up sense of priorities, I'd rather go to that than stick with my original plan -- start a five-day vacation in Florida.

^ Pittsburgh and Ottawa. BTW, swift transit on Euclid Avenue was first seriously planned long before Carl Stokes. It goes back to the first years of the 20th century. See "Cleveland's subway story told with maps and graphics" at http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=2726.0

Hey Smackem81 - do you need a partner/investor? That's a terrific price! You could put more than a dozen good-sized units into a building like that.

Very true about people like Harden, who will never let an absence of education get in the way of having an opinion. I only hope his head has more than just a mouth.

Get that Class A vacancy under 10 percent and an office tower might be built on speculation. But I do believe an anchor tenant is needed. We'll see what happens after the DFAS expansion.

You snap a shitload of photos while walking around Ohio City and Tremont and you take no pics of this Slavic Village beauty despite getting access to its interior? Bad UrbanOhioan! :whip:

Cool pics. I sure hope CMHA gives those Duck Islanders the bird.

I fail to see how bringing up the incident from 96 years ago has any application to today. There is no lesson to be learned from it. Mike Harden's rationale smacks of: "Since O'Leary's cow may be responsible for burning down Chicago in 1871, we should be careful in our application of urban agricultural policies." Or, "Perhaps Princess, Carnival and Royal Caribbean shouldn't consider trans-atlantic cruises because of what happened to the Titanic in 1912. Who knows, one of their boats might hit an ice cube." It was a silly column and a waste of editorial space. Now, if he wanted to give us a meaningful, applicable warning, he should point to Buffalo's Metro Rail, Cleveland's Waterfront Line (and even it's Red Line) as well as Baltimore's Central LRT of how not to build rail transit. They were done on the cheap, didn't serve enough interactive traffic generators and weren't part of an overall urban redevelopment plan. Instead, they WERE the redevelopment plan! That would be a far more instructive lesson from the past than conjuring up a labor riot, threats of socialism and tales of organized labor seeking recognition from 96 years ago as the reason to be careful about streetcars today. Oh, by the way, we should reconsider our policy towards airships over sports stadiums. Did you hear what happened in Lakehurst NJ in 1937?

Yup, and right where the old Central Viaduct was located (note the cracks in the pavement where the streetcar tracks were). Hence, the reason for my suggestion as posed at: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3697.msg76372#msg76372 BTW, that picture's a real head-turner!

No where does he suggest it's bad?? I think his last two lines are strongly suggestive of what he ultimately believes. This is a crap article that taps fear as an excuse to avoid change. Why would someone write an article like this if they weren't opposed to streetcars? Don't sugarcoat this piece (of shit). Call a spade a spade. This guy is a fearmonger.

Here's a troubling development. Admittedly, the graphic below is only an option being considered, but the fact that this option was developed and is still under consideration is inconceivable to me. Look at how this totally unnecessary ramping and bridging system interfaces with East 55th Street. This abortion wipes out many more buildings than it should and isolates the soon-to-be rebuilt East 55th Rapid Station even moreso from its surrounding neighborhood, what little will be left of it. Memo to HNTB and ODOT -- nearly 2/3 of all transit ridership comes from pedestrians. Whoever designs this stuff sure must hate cities and transit.... <click on image and scroll right to view the entire thing>

I am certainly African-American, have been all of my life. Very funny quote!

That's a minimum of 10 TODCs nationwide.

Actually, I should have posted the Centurions rankings, which are the fastest growing Northeast Ohio companies with at least $100 million in sales in 2005 (and thus, be large enough to afford building a skyscraper downtown).... http://www.weatherhead100.org/currentrankings/centurions.asp Rank Company Name Sales Growth % Description 1 National Interstate Insurance Company 231.02% Specialty property and casualty insurance company 2 Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. 218.05% Cleveland-Cliffs Inc, largest producer of iron ore pellets in North America, supplying raw material needs to the integrated steel industry. 3 Marous Brothers Construction, Inc. 168.50% A premiere construction firm offering integrated services for complete construction solutions. 4 Safeguard Properties, Inc. 150.60% Provider of field services, assest management, valuation, title, hazard insurance claims and repairs, property inspections and other property preservation services for the mortgage loan industry 5 Edgepark Surgical Inc. 129.05% Medical supply distributor 6 Fasteners For Retail, Inc. 109.14% Since 1962, FFr has been a leading provider of innovative, high-impact retail merchandising solutions. 7 Developers Diversified Realty 99.87% Developers Diversified Realty (NYSE: DDR) is the nation's leading owner, developer and manager of market-dominant community shopping centers. 8 Emergency Medicine Physicians, Ltd. 96.13% Emergency medicine management including physician staffing and billing 9 SummaCare, Inc 76.43% Offers a wide range of group and individual health care plans as well as administrative services for self-funded employers

I've often wondered about Sherwin Williams, since their offices are spread all over the metro area. Here are the 10-largest companies headquartered in Northeast Ohio (2003 sales): Rank Company Name Location ($ billions) Description 137 Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Akron $14.7 Rubber 158 FirstEnergy Akron $12.3 Utilities 165 Progressive Corporation Mayfield Heights $11.8 Insurance 206 National City Corporation Cleveland $9.5 Banking 319 Key Corp Cleveland $5.7 Banking 253 Eaton Corporation Cleveland $8.0 Motor Vehicle/Parts 291 Parker-Hannifin Corporation Cleveland $6.4 Aerospace 333 Sherwin Williams Company Cleveland $5.4 Chemicals 405 OM Group Cleveland $5.0 Metals 426 International Steel Group, Inc. Richfield $4.0 Steel 444 Timken Canton $3.7 Alloy Steel Here is the Weatherhead 100 -- a current ranking of the 100 fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio (though it doesn't give the size of these companies).... http://www.weatherhead100.org/currentrankings/winners.asp

Thanks. I hope this condo building is more than just a dream. But I can't tell from the rendering where they propose to build it. Anyone else know?

Glad to hear the local response was positive.

Here's some new federal energy legislation to develop transit oriented development corridors.... http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.2025: S.2025 Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act (Introduced in Senate) http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:1:./temp/~c109f0YagZ:e84619: SEC. 308. TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT CORRIDORS. (a) Definitions- In this section: (1) TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT CORRIDOR- The term `Transit-Oriented Development Corridor' or `TODC' means a geographic area designated by the Secretary under subsection (b). (2) OTHER TERMS- The terms `fixed guide way', `local governmental authority', `mass transportation', `Secretary', `State', and `urbanized area' have the meanings given the terms in section 5302 of title 49, United States Code. (b) Transit-Oriented Development Corridors- (1) IN GENERAL- The Secretary shall develop and carry out a program to designate geographic areas in urbanized areas as Transit-Oriented Development Corridors. (2) CRITERIA- An area designated as a TODC under paragraph (1) shall include rights-of-way for fixed guide way mass transportation facilities (including commercial development of facilities that have a physical and functional connection with each facility). (3) NUMBER OF TODCS- In consultation with State transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations, the Secretary shall designate-- (A) not fewer than 10 TODCs by December 31, 2015; and (B) not fewer than 20 TODCs by December 31, 2025. (4) TRANSIT GRANTS- (A) IN GENERAL- The Secretary make grants to eligible states and local governmental authorities to pay the Federal share of the cost of designating geographic areas in urbanized areas as TODCs. (B) APPLICATION- Each eligible State or local governmental authority that desires to receive a grant under this paragraph shall submit an application to the Secretary, at such time, in such manner, and accompanied by such additional information as the Secretary may reasonably require. © LABOR STANDARDS- Subchapter IV of chapter 31 of title 40, United States Code shall apply to projects that receive funding under this section. (D) FEDERAL SHARE- The Federal share of the cost of a project under this subsection shall be 50 percent. © TODC Research and Development- To support effective deployment of grants and incentives under this section, the Secretary shall establish a TODC research and development program to conduct research on the best practices and performance criteria for TODCs. (d) Authorization of Appropriations- There is authorized to be appropriated to carry out this section $50,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2007 through 2012.